Researchers' contributions go beyond the academy and include impacts on the economy, industry and business, public policy, culture, behaviour, and society. 

This type of impact can include:

• Instrumental impacts that influence the development of policy, practice or service provision, shape legislation, or alter behaviour.
• Conceptual impacts that contribute to the understanding of policy issues or the reframing of debates.
• Capacity-building impact that occurs through technical and personal skill development.

To learn more about societal impacts of research, try the University of Alberta Library's Introduction to Research Impact tutorial.

First, the bad news: for a variety of reasons, including the difficulty of attributing societal changes or benefits to a particular research output and time lag between the production of research and its impact, it is not clear how to evaluate the societal impacts of research.

Despite this, some approaches being used are:

• Impact narratives or case studies, which include any social, economic, or cultural impact or benefit beyond academia
• Financial return, for example selling or licensing research outputs
• Expert review
• Payback model
• Stakeholder surveys
• Cost-benefit analysis
• Commercialization surveys
• Citations or links to academic research in policy documents, white papers, patents, clinical practice guidelines, media, non-academic conferences, and websites
• Direct involvement of academics in decision making by government or professional advisory committees, business corporations, interest groups, trade unions, charities, or other civil society organizations