Being asked to prove impact? This is how you demonstrate it

The data you need to demonstrate your research’s influence and societal impact

At some point, you’ll be asked to show the impact of your research.

Not in general terms, but with something you can stand behind with confidence.

Your research is making an impact. The challenge is proving it. Citation counts tell part of the story, but the conversation happening in policy documents, news outlets, and online communities tells the rest. And that data is scattered across dozens of sources. 

Altmetric brings it together, giving you a single view of where your institution’s research is being picked up, discussed, and applied in the real world.

How Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam gives leadership the answers they need

At Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, research intelligence teams needed a clearer way to support leadership decisions.

Metrics simply weren’t cutting it. They needed to understand:

• Which areas of research were gaining traction outside academia
• Where their work was influencing policy and clinical practice
• How impact varied across disciplines and geographies

With Altmetric, they can build dashboards that answer those questions directly.

Leaders can explore the data, filter it, and see where attention is building, without needing a separate analysis each time.

Altmetric is the only source we trust to bring all our societal and clinical impact data together.’

Matthijs de Zwaan

Co-ordinator of the Research Intelligence team, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

How BI Norwegian Business School builds accreditation narratives with confidence

At BI Norwegian Business School, the challenge was more immediate.

Accreditation requires clear, evidence-backed examples of impact that already exists, not potential impact in the future.

Finding those examples manually is slow and uncertain, which is where Altmetric comes in.

It helps their team:

• Identify research mentioned in policy documents and government reports
• Prioritise outputs that are most likely to demonstrate impact
• Build a first draft narrative before validating it with researchers

Altmetric helps us discover research outputs that look interesting and prioritize which ones to investigate for impact…”

Craig Aaen Stockdale

Senior Adviser for Research Administration, BI Norwegian Business School

Here’s what you’ll learn:

• How to move from citation metrics to real-world impact evidence
• How to quickly find research influencing policy, media and clinical practice
• How to support accreditation with stronger, clearer impact narratives
• How to give leadership a more complete view of research performance