As governments and funders worldwide invest in the impact of research as an unquestioned good, there are growing concerns about the ethics of pursuing impact generation. As a result, there is significant demand for capacity building in responsible impact. This includes the ethical imperative to address significant problems and unintended consequences arising from the incentivisation of impact, such as undeclared conflicts of interest.
The primary focus of this project for the University of Plymouth is on the ethics of impact, particularly within the SHAPE (Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts for People and the Economy) domain.
The project aligns with Plymouth University’s new ethics system, which is predominantly influenced by health disciplines. It includes a comprehensive literature review, a series of online scoping workshops, and toolkit development.
IMI has been contracted to support the University of Plymouth in the synthesis of existing literature and guidelines for responsible research impact generation, as well as planned online scoping workshops with researchers to identify relevant gaps, creating a free online ethics toolkit and an accompanying scholarly paper intended for broad dissemination to help foster responsible impact practices.