Public Impact Research

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APLU Impact

• APLU recommends using Public Impact Research (PIR) as a broad label to describe how university research impacts society.
• APLU has created several guides and an action framework to help university leaders better support scholars engaged in Public Impact Research (PIR). These include the PIR report, PIR Activation Guide, and Modernizing Scholarship for the Public Good Action Framework.
• APLU created a searchable database of university PIR examples. APLU invites member universities to submit stories of research with public impact.

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APLU’s Public Impact Research (PIR) working group recommends using PIR as a broad label to describe how university research improves lives and serves society—locally, regionally, nationally, and globally. Using PIR consistently along with fundamental discovery and training the next generation workforce communicates powerfully to the public the value of university research and could help restore public trust in our institutions.

APLU unveiled its initial Public Impact Research: Engaged Universities Making the Difference report in 2019. The report included work by more than 60 university leaders and provides five action steps for the public university community and stakeholders to advance PIR.

A companion guide, the Public Impact Research Activation Guide, helps university leaders emphasize the value of collaborative research with communities. The guide provides best practices and recommendations for presidents, chancellors, provosts, research leaders, communications and marketing leads, writers and content creators, and researchers and scholars.

Seeking to spur more publicly engaged and impactful research, APLU launched the Modernizing Scholarship for the Public Good (MSPG) initiative in 2022 with support from the Kavli Foundation, Rita Allen Foundation, and Burroughs Wellcome Fund.  The MSPG Action Framework outlines eight areas for strategic action that universities can take to support publicly-engaged (PE) and publicly impactful research (PIR) to benefit society. The Supplementary Materials include the database of strategic actions and tactics in Airtable, institutional case studies, and pdfs of institutional mapping worksheets.

APLU and The Pew Charitable Trusts (Pew) convened a cross-sector workshop to explore how to collectively foster the Public Impact Research (PIR) ecosystem. This workshop included over 60 participants representing disciplinary societies, government agencies, higher education associations, institutional leaders, private foundations, publishers, and researchers. From the workshop discussions, a central theme emerged that it is incumbent upon the entire ecosystem to align efforts, supports, and incentives to empower researchers to do PIR.

Submit Your Research Examples

APLU created a searchable database of university PIR examples. APLU invites member universities to submit stories of research with public impact.