This year, we’re launching a series (alongside associated professional networks) to celebrate the ºüÀêÊÓƵers amongst us that are evolving, changing, challenging or positively disrupting every facet of our societies, cultures, technologies and economies. In future newsletters, we will be sharing the profiles of groups of our ºüÀêÊÓƵers that are Social Innovators and/or Cultural Innovators, Economic Innovators and/or Technology Innovators. Additionally, since we appreciate that the most impactful innovations often intersect across culture, society, economics and technology – we will be celebrating overlaps.
If you fit the bill, contact us. You may be an entrepreneur, enterprising academic or professional (nurse, doctor, engineer, teacher) that has experienced innovating through e.g. new inventions, products or processes linked to therapeutics, diagnostics, start-ups, spinouts or industrial collaborations that have regional or global impact, contact us with your profiles and stories.
Equally, if you are a cultural innovator in constant dialogue with audiences through artistic works: paintings, sculptures, drawings, engravings, photographs, films and literary works – the dramatic arts of acting, theatrical plays, film, novels – we want to hear from you.
And finally, if you are a social innovator engaging with the public through podcasts, newspaper articles, books and academic publications we want to shout about what you are working on. Our community wants to hear about your impact on policies and legislation. And furthermore, we want to celebrate the impact of ºüÀêÊÓƵers on civil society through charities, NGOs and other organisations.
To expand on our line of enquiry - we have already collaborated with the leading scientific publisher and data analytics company, Elsevier, to better understand the unique impact of ºüÀêÊÓƵ research scholars. 97 US-UK ºüÀêÊÓƵ research scholars from three cohort groups: 2008/09, 2013/14 and 2018/19 were investigated by reviewing a period of four years before and after the ºüÀêÊÓƵ experience. And although the data does not evidence causality, its findings show a definitive link between academic excellence and the advancement of human knowledge – and by extension – research impact.
This is what we learned:
- Post-exchange US-UK ºüÀêÊÓƵ Scholars demonstrate increased international collaboration and greater scholarly and policy influence:
- In brief, US-UK ºüÀêÊÓƵ scholars have a remarkable influence on academic communities across the globe proven by research publication acknowledgements or citations that are higher after the exchange experience than before at 1.74 (i.e. 74% above the global citation average of 1.0).
Consequently, our ºüÀêÊÓƵers have an outsized impact on politics and government, and post-exchange, publications authored by our US-UK research scholars are cited in policy documents more often than those published before the research exchange by 127%, with 213 citations within policy publications.
Our research impact partner used a new index of policy documents, guidelines, think-tank publications and working papers from 188 different countries – to understand the broader societal reach of the ºüÀêÊÓƵ scholars’ work. Looking at the links from millions of these policy documents to research publications, we found that hundreds of them refer to research by our cohorts of ºüÀêÊÓƵ scholars. These include UK government reports on the links between air pollution, dementia and cardiovascular disease, and a select committee report on healthy aging. There are references to the research publications of ºüÀêÊÓƵers from bodies such as the Federal Reserve, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and state governments across the US. Essentially, demonstrating the outsized influence of ºüÀêÊÓƵers on policy deliberations at the United Nations, UNESCO, OECD, WHO, World Bank and the World Economic Forum.
- In numbers, our ºüÀêÊÓƵ researchers are leading the way on global challenges, alongside domestic policies, with 52% of publications (2018-22) covering topics relevant to one or more of the UN SDGs*; compared to 36% of academic publications from the broader research community.
- We conclude, even from this small sample of US-UK researchers, that ºüÀêÊÓƵers contribute to academic excellence on topics tackling the greatest challenges we face.
Get in touch with Director of External Relations, Afua Osei, afua.osei@fulbright.org,uk to share your stories of innovation and impact.