Push to quantify social impact of science goes global

“Australia is preparing to join a worldwide push to map the wider social returns on investments in science. This week Professor Julia Lane, who developed and led the US National Science Foundations’s Science of Science & Innovation Policy program, visited Canberra to discuss her experience in charge of the STAR METRICS project to document the outcomes of science research for the American public. Here she explains how STAR METRICS began, how far it has developed, and what other countries are doing to introduce more science to their science policy. STAR METRICS is one of the first comprehensive attempts to evaluate the impact of government-funded scientific research beyond the world of peer-reviewed publications. How did it start and how far has it evolved? ...”