Due to the fragmented nature of background data on the overall impact of social sciences and humanities (SSH), developing impact indicators for legal studies presents special challenges. In SSH, societal impact is the predominant type of impact, as opposed to technical and life sciences, where non-academic impact is frequently evaluated in financial terms. Although societal impact in research is clearly valuable, measuring its success can be challenging. Creating a research impact database can tackle this issue.

Goals

Goals of the Research Impact Database:

• Understanding the way qualitative research is used and social impact is measured.
• Mapping out the current state of affairs.
• Developing a living document impact table that is used by researchers to help measure their social impact.

Activities

• The first step is to understand what is currently happening, and how researchers at our Faculty deliver and track their impact activities.
• Put together an impact table 
• Aligned the table with the existing impact outputs as defined by the PURE system to ensure consistency.
• Making the table a living doc where researchers can add new evidence of impact.

Impact numbers

• 27 interviews have been completed. Answers have been classified on 2 levels:
  1. General overview of all FdR impact activities.
  2. Personal impact profile per researcher, including stakeholders, activites and goals.
• Impact highlights:
  1. Fairer health choices – Our researchers have launched successful campaigns to curtail the use of AI in elderly care and “Digital Health” programmes.
  2. Interpretive Declaration on Copyright Directive secured 60 co-signatories and led to a case at CJEU and citation by A.G. Expert advice on civil damages for criminal cases requested by OM for Hulptroep Alliantie case.
  3. Non-academic writing with 10k+ views – our reach is now better than EU Commission.
  4. Prof. mr. E. (Evert) Verhulp was the most cited Hoogleraar in NL in the media in 2023.
  5. Invited to submit fundamental research proposal on whistleblowers by BiZa.
  6. 2 day training programme for 55 EU judges on climate litigation