IMPACT-EV. Report 1. State of the art in the scientific, policy and social impact of SSH research and its evaluation

The project IMPACT-EV aims to develop a permanent system for selecting, monitoring, evaluating and comparing the impact and outcomes of European social science and humanities (SSH) research, taking into account the latest quantitative and qualitative evaluation tools, identifying new ways to implement them and exploring new standards and indicators to complement existing impact assessment processes. This report presents a review of the existing scientific literature on research evaluation procedures and the changing structure of scientific, social and political impacts of SSH research. This is a starting point for further developments and will be complemented by a comparative analysis of a number of selected SSH evaluation systems and an impact assessment of SSH European projects. Beyond that, the project will explore in depth the scientific, social, and political impacts, and the contributions of SSH research to the European Research Area (ERA), in several identified examples. It will integrate this knowledge, thus defining comprehensive indicators and processes for evaluation.