Recently social impact of research has got more attention in many countries and not only for educational research, but also for research in other Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH). In many countries research evaluations now put a stronger emphasis on social impact than in earlier years and it is widely expected that social impact will become of even more importance in research funding and evaluation in the coming years. One of the initiatives to make social impact transparent, visible and measurable is the development of the Social Impact Open Repository (SIOR). According to the developers in the European funded project “Evaluating the Impact and outcomes of European Social Sciences and Humanities research (IMPACT-EV)”, through this repository, researchers and research institutions provide evidence of their impact with concrete data from reports, publications, databases, etc. However, one of the most important aspects of SIOR is the aim of providing not only a description of the evidence of social impact, but also to show contributions that may become useful tools for researchers to improve the impact of their current and future studies.

EERA, as one of the founding members of the European Alliance for Social Sciences and Humanities (EASHH) is an actor in the world of SSH and has the responsibility to reflect on initiatives such as SIOR. It has to take a stance in the debate on societal relevance of research and decide on its position towards the development of an instrument such as SIOR and the underlying rationale. Educational research traditionally has been funded quite often because of its presumed impact on the quality of education, help in innovation and improvement of education, but such impact isn’t always clear and might be at odds with another aim, viz. to critically analyse current educational practices.

In this session the main presenter with one or two collaborators will present:

• · Reasons to develop such an evaluation tool
• · The indicators for impact
• · The system for monitoring and evaluating the scientific, political and social impact
• · The tool for displaying, citing and storing the social impact of research results.

The discussants will respond to the presentation and critically reflect on the need for such a repository, the claimed social and political need to assess social impact, the question if there still is room for curiosity driven research, et cetera.