Pathways to Impact
Concordia has a long-standing commitment to fostering meaningful real-world change that uniquely positions us to redefine ourselves as an impact-driven next-generation university.
Research impact
Research impact refers to any tangible effect, change or benefit that occurs within or beyond academia, to which academic research has contributed:
- It allows more people to benefit from research, more quickly
- It can involve creating positive outcomes or preventing negative ones
- It goes beyond research outputs to focus instead on real-world outcomes of research activities
- It reflects a fundamental shift in how research is being designed, funded, and assessed
To support our community in maximizing their contributions to science and society, we’re developing Pathways to Impact, an initiative that leverages both existing and enhanced resources, tools and expertise to provide researchers and research institutes/teams with an integrated support service, centered around established impact pathways.
Pathways to Impact recognizes that impact requires institutional support. It must be enabled, facilitated, recognized and rewarded. This means guiding researchers and research institutes/teams through a fragmented landscape of resources and support by offering a seamless integrated support system through a carefully curated web-based platform, launching soon.
Pathways to Impact is a cross-unit collaboration, facilitated by the Office of the Vice President, Research, Innovation, and Impact, that offers researchers a seamless integrated support service for their impact activities.
- Support researchers and research institutes to maximize the societal, environmental and scientific impact of their research, in alignment with the university’s mission and strategic vision.
- Create an integrated support service that offers customized, cross-unit collaboration and coordinated support, leveraging the university’s diverse resources, expertise and services to meet the needs of researchers and their societal partners.
- Encourage diverse pathways to impact that recognize and support all our researchers, regardless of their field or career stage, with tailored support that reflects the unique needs of different types of research.
- Align with broader institutional goals, fostering research activities that advance key commitments and priorities in: EDI, sustainability and SDGs, decolonization and indigenization, anti-black racism, research integrity and ethics, Open Science and Open Scholarship.
- Promote collaboration and enhanced coordination across university units and with external partners to cultivate a system-wide cultural shift that makes achieving research impact easy, normative and rewarding.
- Support the recognition and reward of impact by offering researchers tools and training to bring visibility to their contributions, utilizing diverse forms of evidence and indicators to ensure the full spectrum of research impact is recognized and valued.
Pathways to Impact responds to a major shift currently underway in how research is defined, funded and evaluated. The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), for instance, highlights the need for improved methods of assessing scholarly research outputs.
In response, various tri-agency and FRQ initiatives have adjusted their funding application processes to broaden the scope of recognized outputs beyond published journal articles and to emphasize peer review processes that assess the quality and impact of contributions. For example, refer to the NSERC's Guidelines on the Assessment of Contributions to Research, Training and Mentoring.
Pathways to Impact aims to support researchers in adapting to this changing environment by offering guidance on crafting narrative CVs and providing tools and training on diverse pathways to enhance the impact of their research. Our commitment is to support all forms and pathways of research impact, while upholding the academic freedom and autonomy of our researchers and the rigour of our research.
Pathways to Impact traces its roots to a 2021 proposal from Concordia’s Research Sustainability Stream (Sustainability Action Plan), which initially envisioned an incubator for sustainability research. Over time, through three comprehensive university-wide consultations, this idea evolved into a united commitment to amplify Concordia’s impact.
These pivotal consultations included:
- the Voluntary University Review, reinforced by a collaborative “17-rooms” exercise aligned with Concordia’s commitment to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs);
- Future Concordia, whose recommendations called for “a radical restructuring of the research ecosystem”, urging a fundamental rethink of research, its support structures and a more inclusive approach to people, projects and methods; and
- the Strategic Research Plan 2023-2028 which formalizes the university’s commitment to advancing impact and engagement (Objective 4), as reflected in the renamed Office of the Vice-President, Research, Innovation, and Impact (OVPRII) and in the creation of the Concordia University Research Impact Award (RIA) program.
Impact Pathways
Pathways to Impact offers targeted services, through tools and guidance, across diverse pathways, helping researchers across disciplines create meaningful and far-reaching changes.
1. Academic scholarship: Increase your contributions by adopting open science practices or sharing the significance of your science through impact narratives and narrative CVs.
- Sample services: crafting a compelling narrative CV; Open Science/Open Scholarship best practices; Research Data Management guidance
2. Research creation: Celebrate and elevate experimental artistic and creative practices that prioritize process over product.
- Sample Services: arts for social change initiatives; sustainable practices
3. Community engagement: Maximize your research impact by fostering trust and co-creation with community partners.
- Sample services: building community partnerships; research co-design; and citizen science.
4. Innovation / Entrepreneurship: Transform research ideas into real-world solutions through entrepreneurship and innovative thinking.
- Sample services: fostering an entrepreneurial mindset
5. Business / Commercialization: Leverage research through business partnerships and manage intellectual property effectively.
- Sample services: developing business partnerships; managing IP and agreements.
6. Public policy / Advocacy: Influence societal change by contributing to policy networks and generating policy-relevant outputs.
- Sample services: technical writing; public affairs and government relations support.
7. Communications: Enhance your impact by fostering public scholarship and sharing ideas with broader audiences.
- Sample services: strategic communication, media engagement, public scholarship initiatives
Pathways to Impact is anchored by six key pillars, ensuring that research aligns with Concordia’s core values and commitments:
- Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI): promoting research that is accessible, inclusive and reflective of diverse perspectives.
- Sustainability and SDGs: driving progress towards sustainability across economic, social and environmental dimensions, tacking global challenges.
- Decolonization and Indigenization: supporting the integration of Indigenous knowledge and perspectives in research, thereby creating a more inclusive research environment.
- Research Integrity and Ethics: ensuring that research is conducted responsibly, ethically, and with accountability.
- Anti-Black Racism: dismantling systemic barriers and biases that affect Black communities in academic research.
- Open Science and Open Scholarship: supporting transparency, collaboration, and accessibility.
Contact us
We’re in the early stage of developing this initiative and would love to hear from you. Get in touch by emailing us: impact@concordia.ca. We look forward to collaborating with you!