Abstract
Academic research in computer & information science (CIS) has contributed immensely to all aspects of society. As academic research today is substantially supported by various government sources, recent political changes have created ambivalence amongst academics about the future of research funding. With uncertainty looming, it is important to develop a framework to extract and measure the information relating to impact of CIS research on society to justify public funding, and demonstrate the actual contribution and impact of CIS research outside academia. A new method combining discourse analysis and text mining of a collection of over 1000 pages of impact case study documents written in free-Text format for the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014 was developed in order to identify the most commonly used categories or headings for reporting impact of CIS research by UK Universities (UKU). According to the research reported in REF2014, UKU acquired 83 patents in various areas of CIS, created 64 spin-offs, generated £857.5 million in different financial forms, created substantial employment, reached over 6 billion users worldwide and has helped save over £1 billion Pounds due to improved processes etc.To various sectors internationally, between 2008 and 2013.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | APIT 2020 |
| Subtitle of host publication | Proceedings of the 2020 2nd Asia Pacific Information Technology Conference |
| Place of Publication | New Yok |
| Publisher | Association for Computing Machinery |
| Pages | 78-85 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9781450376853 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 17 Jan 2020 |
| Event | 2nd Asia Pacific Information Technology Conference, APIT 2020 - Bali Island, Indonesia Duration: 17 Jan 2020 → 19 Jan 2020 |
Publication series
| Name | ACM International Conference Proceeding Series |
|---|
Conference
| Conference | 2nd Asia Pacific Information Technology Conference, APIT 2020 |
|---|---|
| Country/Territory | Indonesia |
| City | Bali Island |
| Period | 17/01/20 → 19/01/20 |
Funding
Public education and research is generally supported by governments with tax-payers’ money and different types of funding agencies for the welfare of modern society. Welfare includes economic benefits in the form of revenue and jobs, Like in any other countries, HEIs play an essential role in UK society. According to a latest Universities UK report, the UK HE sector contributed £39.9 billion, equivalent to 2.8% of the UK’s gross domestic product (GDP), and employed 757, 268 individuals in 2011 (Universities UK, 2015). According to the Higher Education Statistics Agency [17], a typical UK HEI’s revenue break-down is as follows: 35% tuition fee, 30% funding council grants, 16% research grants and contracts, 1% from endowments/ investment income, and 18% from other sources i.e. alumni donations etc. [17]. Visibly, a large portion of revenue for the HEIs come from the funding councils, which generally award the funding based on performance, thus making research evaluation and the financial returns of research conducted an important question for academia to inquire. The REF is the UK’s national research assessment exercise which awards funding to UK’s HEIs based on their quality of research, jointly conducted by Higher Education Funding Council of England (HEFCE) and Wales (HEFCW), the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) and the Department for Employment and Learning (DEL) of Northern Ireland [31]. An HEI’s REF ratings are known affect funding acquisition capabilities, league table scores, reputation and attracting talent [42]. The recent REF exercise assisted in the yearly disbursal of £1.6 billion per year of performance based research funding to UK based higher education and research institutions until the next such exercise, possibly commissioned for 2021. The submission process involved HEIs choosing the fields of research (called Units of Assessment/ UoAs) out of the available 36 UoAs, which they wished to be evaluated upon and prepare their submission in a prescribed format. Subsequently, the submissions were evaluated by 1052 individuals, out of which 77% were academics and 23% were users (individuals who apply HEI research and collaborators outside academia), under the guidance of 36 expert sub-panel chairs, additionally supported by four main panel chairs to evaluate and determine the quality of research [31].
Keywords
- computer science
- information science
- research funding
- research impact