How can funders tell better research impact stories?

The purest realms of science

Once upon a time, research was funded by wealthy patrons, including royalty, aristocrats, and, later, leading industrialists. When King Frederik II of Denmark gave the astronomer Tycho Brahe a private research estate on the island of Hven (now Ven) in 1576, including funding for the construction of his famous observatories, he was interested in knowledge and its associated prestige, but not in any anticipated practical applications. In return, Tycho undertook to enhance his monarch’s reputation as a patron of learning, although he always maintained a robust intellectual independence, observing later: "An astronomer must be cosmopolitan, because ignorant statesmen cannot be expected to value their services."

To understand research impact stories, it is necessary to tell the story of research impact – although perhaps we need not venture as far back as Tycho Brahe. After all, aside from some small-scale government support for scientific institutions such as the Royal Society in London, this largely private model of research funding continued until the early twentieth century. As ever, conflict and the scramble for global strategic advantage proved the catalyst for transformation. In 1915, responding to vulnerabilities exposed by World War I, the British government instituted a Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, which broke new ground by using a “Million Fund” to support industrial research. These changes were consolidated three years later by the Haldane Report (1918), which codified the relationship between government and academia by separating "general" (or fundamental) scientific research and departmental research (research needed by a government department to solve specific issues). The same report introduced the Haldane Principle, the concept that government should fund research, while decisions regarding its direction and application should remain in the hands of independent experts.

This set the tone for the next seventy years, with similar ideas being put forward in the US by the engineer and administrator Vannevar Bush – most influentially in Science – the Endless Frontier, the 1945 report that urged President Truman to create the National Science Foundation. Keen to bolster national security and sustain the technological momentum established during World War II, Bush held that the pursuit of fundamental research would inevitably result in societal benefits in the long term. “New products and new processes do not appear full-grown," he wrote. "They are founded on new principles and new conceptions, which in turn are painstakingly developed by research in the purest realms of science.”

Science with a mission

While this was forward-looking, the funding model that emerged in the US in the latter half of the twentieth century was both more dynamic and more reciprocal than even Bush had envisaged. Fuelled by superpower competition, Cold War-era "Big Science" saw a massive expansion of state-funded, military-oriented research characterized by large-scale interdisciplinary projects. This was driven by, and helped to propel, rapid developments in areas like computer science, physics and aerospace, while benefits were transferred to society through industrial-academic partnerships like the commercialization of the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET), the backbone of the emerging internet in the early 1990s. At the same time, researchers such as Paul Romer were formally describing the link between knowledge and technological innovation. Romer’s observation that “non-rival” ideas can be used by an unlimited number of people — unlike physical resources, which are depleted through use — still underlies the idea of sustainable economic growth.

Growing acceptance of this link contributed to a shortening of government planning horizons. While Bush had largely been content to stand back and let the pursuit of basic research work its slow magic, a combination of post-Cold War budget constraints and nascent knowledge-based economies in countries like the US, Canada, the UK, Germany and Japan was beginning to make policymakers impatient for evidence of positive societal impact. One way of tackling this problem was the development of mission research – large-scale, cross-disciplinary and time-bound programs that typically focus on societal goals such as reducing carbon emissions, curing cancer, or cleaning oceans. In the words of the economist Mariana Mazzucato, the primary architect of the modern mission-oriented approach, it was important to begin by “identifying the most pressing societal challenges that require system-wide transformation before breaking them down into manageable policy pathways.” Advocating the replacement of government “market fixing” with decisive "market shaping,” Mazzucato’s work signaled a move away from the traditional, passive interpretation of the Haldane Principle. The purest realms of science were no more.

The impact agenda

Modern research impact reporting is still struggling with the legacy of the "Haldane Principle" era, where funding allocations were based solely on scientific excellence rather than policy or political preference. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the academic citation-based performance metrics that emerged during the postwar era – notably Eugene Garfield’s Impact Factor – remain prevalent. However, by the beginning of the twenty-first century, the very success of these indicators seemed to be perpetuating a more insular academia, where the Publish or Perish culture had become widespread, and the ultimate concerns of research were partly eclipsed by the need to retain jobs, earn tenure, secure funding and advance careers. At the same time, many in the research community were growing impatient with what they saw as flawed metrics that did not adequately capture the quality and influence of their work. Meanwhile, both policymakers and taxpayers were beginning to demand clearer justification for public investments. While this “Impact Agenda” was a response to factors like the desire for increased accountability and a need to maximize the returns on more limited investments, it was also reinforced by developments in the wider public realm such as the sharp decline in public trust in science during the late 2000s (US), and again after the COVID-19 pandemic of 2021-3 (US, UK, Germany, France).

Sitting at the intersection of government, academia, industry and society, in a position of great power and great vulnerability, it is funding bodies that have arguably had to engage most consistently with the challenge of moving from academic to “real-world” impact evaluation. While funders need to demonstrate past success to gain future budget from governments that are themselves grappling with a mass of competing financial priorities, there can be uncertainty around how best to apply newer indicators like policy and patent citations, or media-oriented Altmetrics, to complex projects. This situation is compounded by long-standing evaluation challenges like the time lag between research publication and impact, which can vary greatly depending on the field or the type of research undertaken. In a widely cited statistic, it takes an average of 17 years for medical research evidence to reach clinical practice, so some kind of “pathway to impact” plan will likely be required as a proxy for as-yet-unavailable evidence. Once again, real-world impact is often cumulative, rarely stemming directly from specific studies, while science itself is now often thought to progress incrementally rather than through disruptive breakthroughs. So, what is the best way for a funder to identify and showcase the contribution made by their portfolio?

One advantage of tightly defined mission research, focused on major societal objectives, is that it can provide a ready-made framework for real-world impact assessment. The problem is that, by their very nature, mission challenges are highly complex, requiring huge numbers of researchers to work together across geographical and disciplinary boundaries, so rather than evading the issues around causality, policymakers may just be containing more ambiguity within the scope of larger projects. Similarly, by requiring evidence-based outcomes within strict timeframes, ambitious, moonshot thinking can struggle to find a way around the time lag problem. While it may be possible to highlight significant progress within the 5-year scope of a major program – for instance, a first large-scale clinical trial in a groundbreaking area of medicine – definitive outcomes such as approved treatments may well still years away.

The power of stories

However large or small a research project might be, methodologies, results and analytics will often need to be contextualized and explained if public accountability is a serious goal. Quantitative evidence can help with the “how,” but not with the “why.” However, explaining the “why” is not always easy, with even seasoned professionals falling victim to the so-called “curse of knowledge,” whereby someone with expertise in a field finds it difficult to explain a concept to a lay person because they cannot remember what it was like to be ignorant of their subject area. Increasingly, the way these problems are being tackled is via a method that would have been familiar to Tycho Brahe, regularly updating his royal benefactor on his astronomical observations – simple storytelling.

While Tycho maintained a vigorous correspondence with his patron, modern researchers are required to describe their academic and societal impact in funding and promotion applications or prize nominations. For funding bodies, this opportunity might come during annual report writing, when seeking funding for, or the reauthorization of, specific programs, or even in a Pathway to Impact plan. Mariana Mazzucato’s suggestion that the impact of mission-oriented research should be measured by evaluating the direction and societal relevance of innovation can be interpreted as a call for a narrative based on the amplification of public purpose and progress towards time-bound goals.

Whatever the channel or format, the aim is to avoid simply listing activities and make submissions more compelling by providing a narrative context. This means borrowing techniques from the ancient discipline of storytelling and organizing events, actions, evidence and data points into a coherent structure that conveys meaning. This makes shared information much easier to remember and can help highlight the human contributions behind the data, especially if there is an emotional charge connected with the overarching research objective. When listening to a story, our brains experience "neural coupling," which is to say, our brains mirror the emotions and experiences of the storyteller. The aim is to establish a link of understanding and empathy with our audience (the more inclusive the better) and then take them on a journey – from the original problem to the research undertaken, to its outcomes in society at the human level.

Taking control of the research narrative

Although empathetic narratives might seem a world away from disinterested scientific truth and cool-headed funding allocation, storytelling pervades our daily lives – helping to form the framework through which we understand, structure and communicate our experiences. Indeed, one of the advantages of mission research programs is that they come with their own built-in narrative momentum. For example, research occurring under the Net Zero umbrella is setting out to save the world in as literal a sense as any superhero. Even if the program may have a more realistic approach to the time and resources required for such an ambitious undertaking, its work is suffused with meaning and emotional resonance. The same kind of framing can also be deployed concisely in real life situations. For instance, when Renee Wegrzyn, the inaugural director of the US ARPA-H agency, introduced the NITRO program to the 118^th Congress (average age 58) with the question “What if we could make our joints heal themselves?”, a murmur of sympathetic recognition immediately swept the chamber. While this half-humorous, half-pained response did not signify an automatic buy-in, it was a great start and showed assured control of the evolving research narrative.

Although clearly related, these two examples – the large-scale effort to achieve a seemingly insurmountable objective and the bald statement of the problem – represent two of the main approaches to research impact storytelling. To borrow terminology from Christopher Brooker’s book of narrative theory The Seven Basic Plots, the first can be characterised as The Quest (“A hero goes on a long, dangerous journey to achieve a specific goal or find a treasure”), and the second as Overcoming the Monster (“A hero battles a terrifying force threatening them or their community”). In impact terms, the Quest story is distinguished by its stress on the research journey, while the Monster story is typically more focused on the problem to be overcome. Note that, for funders, the “the hero” of these narratives would normally be the government body that is allocating or authorising budget (e.g., Congress), or the group that ultimately benefits from the research in wider society (e.g., osteoarthritis sufferers). Your job is to show, as compellingly as possible, how the struggles of these “hero” groups have been brought to a successful conclusion, or at least significantly ameliorated, making them the focal point of the story. In terms of narrative theory, you are “the guide” – an authoritative facilitator of change. The structures of these two impact story types can be represented as follows:

The Quest Story – the research journey

The Quest Story is the classic long-form research impact story. It generally has a positive orientation, focusing more on the benefits of the research than on the problem to be solved.

• Context – Background on the research project and the problem it addresses. This is where you explain how the study fits into the research landscape and delineate the real-world challenges behind it.

• Objectives – Specific goals of the program, anticipated outcomes and how they relate to the wider objectives.

• Methodology – The journey taken, including the methodology adopted, collaborations (who did you meet along the way?) and how resources were used responsibly. Did the work involve any novel approaches? Were there any setbacks? If so, how were they resolved?

• Results and Impact – Presents the results of the research and ties them directly to their impact. The onus is on explaining what has changed or is liable to change because of this work. Have there been behavioral, policy, or technological shifts? What were the impacts on social, environmental, economic and health systems? Who, specifically, are the beneficiaries?

• Evidence – This section backs up the claims of the previous one by utilizing both quantitative data (policy citations, media coverage, performance metrics) and more qualitative “human” evidence (feedback, testimonials, independent reports, or case studies).

• Lessons Learned/Implications – Reflects on lessons learned from the program and provides actionable insights that can help future projects maximize their own impact. What does this mean going forward?

The Monster Story – the research problem

Although Renee Wegrzyn articulated the issues around osteoarthritis via a tantalizing promise of change, Monster stories can often begin on a negative note, focusing on the adverse effects of the problem under consideration. This approach exploits the "negativity bias," whereby humans react more intensely to negative stimuli than positive ones.

• The Challenge – Highlights the problem to be addressed at the societal level and outlines its consequences. This can be done positively by teasing a possible solution, or negatively by focusing on the negative implications of the status quo.

• Methodology – Explains how the team set out to tackle the problem, highlighting the methodology adopted and the tools and resources used. Again, a description of setbacks and their resolution can help to give this section dramatic momentum.

• Results and Impact – What were the results of the study and how has it tackled the underlying problem? What has changed as a result?

• Evidence – Substantiating the program’s impact credentials with quantitative data and qualitative evidence.

It should be noted that both approaches have striking structural similarities with primary research papers – highlighting a problem or gap in knowledge, outlining a rationale for addressing it, describing what was done, enumerating the results and how they fill the gap, and, finally, assessing what this might mean going forward. While the goals of the scientific method obviously represent a major departure from the narrative world of quests and monsters, the way humans like to present and absorb information seems to be remarkably consistent. One takeaway from this is that researchers – however mathematically oriented, however diffident they may feel about writing – are already professional storytellers.

And in the end...

Storytelling helps to highlight the wider impact of research by incorporating data points and qualitative evidence into narratives that evoke emotion, foster empathy and drive action. It does so by tapping into techniques that are deeply rooted in the human psyche and have been used for centuries to share cultural, historical and personal experiences. Of course, while some skills do not date, the context around them does. John L. Heilbron points out that Tycho Brahe’s research establishment on sixteenth century Hven – “with its parade of Danish, Dutch and German students, its staff of senior observers, its up-to-date equipment, its schedule of observations, its director always seeking financial support” – might superficially have resembled “a modern international research institute,” before noting the absence of scientific journals for independently publishing results, or any peer-review beyond the favor of the local nobles and the king. Now, of course, we have a more open, merit-based research ecosystem that allows for broader participation and can, through the mechanism of government funding, be actively steered towards the collective good.

Demonstrating exactly how this good is accomplished in a robust and accountable way is among the greatest academic challenges of our times and requires the same rigor as the research itself. Storytelling can be used to give these analytics, reports and testimonials a thematic coherence and emotional resonance that underscores the significance of a program or portfolio. This is true even in a world that resists the simple closure of most fictions – where impact can be long-term, new lines of inquiry emerge constantly and as every sequel-hungry studio knows, a program that has a recognized pedigree of success and an established “brand” will likely seem a more reliable investment than other less familiar offerings. Any research impact story must be mindful of this dynamic, economically driven future. Every impact story should be crafted in the knowledge that a new chapter is nearly always possible – just as the researcher’s love of an unanswered question will continue to outweigh the ephemeral consolation of any happy ever after.

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