How to Build a Research Impact Culture in Universities and Research Institutes

In academia and research organisations, a strong research impact culture ensures that research influence extends far beyond laboratories, classrooms, and campuses. It shapes industries, informs policy, and contributes to social, economic, cultural, and environmental change. As custodians of knowledge and innovation, universities and research institutes have a responsibility not only to generate high-quality research but also to ensure that research is translated into meaningful impact.

Achieving this requires more than excellence in discovery alone. It requires intentional investment in the processes, skills, systems, and behaviours that support research translation as the pathway through which research impact is realised.

Research translation and research impact are not the same thing

These terms are often used interchangeably, but they are distinct and both matter.

Research translation is the pathway. It includes the activities that make research accessible, usable, and relevant to those who can act on it. Translation activities may include dissemination, communication, adaptation of outputs for different audiences, stakeholder engagement, co-design, capacity building, and implementation support.

Research impact is the result. It is the change or benefit that occurs when research is applied in policy, practice, service delivery, decision-making, products, guidelines, public understanding, or other real-world contexts.

A strong impact culture supports both. It makes translation activities normal, resourced, and valued, and strengthens an institution’s ability to demonstrate the impacts.

What is a research impact culture?

A research impact culture is a shared institutional ethos where researchers and professional staff understand, value, and contribute to translation pathways and impact outcomes. From professors and postdoctoral researchers to research assistants, research managers, and communications teams, everyone plays a role in enabling research to be used.

An embedded research impact culture helps institutions:

• Align research with real-world needs and priorities

• Strengthen partnerships and credibility beyond academia

• Demonstrate value and accountability to funders and communities

• Improve the consistency and quality of impact evidence over time

Key strategies for building a research impact culture

The strategies below strengthen both research translation capability and research impact outcomes. Implemented together, they create sustainable, institution-wide cultural shift.

1. Leadership and governance

Leadership support
Visible commitment from senior leaders legitimises the time, effort, and skills required for research translation and impact. It signals that this work is core business, not optional extra labour.

Clear objectives
Clearly articulated research and impact objectives, aligned to institutional mission and strategy, provide shared direction and reduce ambiguity about expectations.

Policy and procedures
Policies that recognise translation activities and impact pathways help embed expectations in everyday practice. This includes how projects are planned, supported, documented, and evaluated.

Risk management
Impact-oriented research often requires engagement, partnership, and innovation. A healthy culture manages risk thoughtfully rather than avoiding it, enabling more ambitious translation and impact.

2. People, skills, and capability

Training and development
Regular professional development builds translation capability, including stakeholder engagement, co-design, communication, implementation thinking, and impact planning.

Mentorship programmes
Mentoring relationships between experienced impact practitioners and less experienced staff build confidence, capability, and institutional memory.

Hiring and promotion policies
Recruitment and promotion criteria that recognise translation contributions and impact outcomes reinforce their legitimacy and reduce the “hidden labour” problem.

Incentives and rewards
Recognising translation efforts and impact achievements signals that these contributions matter, alongside traditional academic outputs.

3. Collaboration and engagement

Collaboration
Cross-disciplinary and external collaboration strengthens relevance, applicability, and reach, and increases the likelihood that research will be used.

Knowledge sharing
Internal knowledge sharing enables lessons from successful translation and impact to spread across teams, faculties, and institutes.

Communicating impact
Sharing examples of translation pathways and the impacts achieved helps staff understand what impact looks like in practice and how it can be enabled.

4. Systems and enablers

Resource allocation
Impact rarely occurs without deliberate investment. Institutions need to provide time, funding, and support for translation activities, not just research outputs.

Technological infrastructure
Digital systems and tools that support engagement, tracking, and communication help capture translation activities and make impact evidence easier to assemble and report.

Feedback mechanisms
Ongoing feedback on translation activities and impact outcomes supports learning and continuous improvement, strengthening both processes and results over time.

Practical steps to create a cultural shift

If you want to move from good intentions to consistent action, focus on three immediate moves:

1. Name and normalise translation work
   Make it explicit that translation activities are a valued part of research practice, not an add-on.

2. Embed translation early
   Encourage project teams to plan translation pathways from the outset, including audiences, engagement methods, and intended use.

3. Strengthen evidence capture
   Create simple routines and tools to capture translation activity and emerging outcomes as they happen, rather than scrambling later.

Building sustainable impact for the future

Nurturing a research impact culture is no longer optional in a rapidly evolving research environment. It requires intentional leadership, supportive systems, and a shared understanding of how translation pathways lead to impact outcomes.

When institutions invest in research translation capability and create the conditions for research use, research impact becomes more achievable, more demonstrable, and more sustainable. This is how excellent research becomes influential research.