Paul Benneworth, Senior Researcher, Center for Higher Education Policy Studies, University of Twente, the Netherlands

My starting point is to welcome the recently published Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences report, Approaches to assessing impact in the Humanities and Social Sciences as a valuable addition to a growing policy understanding of the diversity of ways in which humanities and social sciences research (HSS) creates societal impact. It matches what has been found elsewhere by the British Academy in the UK, the AWTI in the Netherlands...

Jack Spaapen, senior policy advisor, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences

Since the 1990s, policy makers progressively became interested in assessing scientific research not only on its merits for the scientific community, but also for society at large. However, we still do not have a widely accepted, systematic way to assess scientific impact. So why is it so difficult to assess impact of research?

The main reason is that there are so many different kinds of impact, depending on the societal context. Clearly, this goes for researchers working in, say, medical fields compared to those working in agriculture or ICT. But it goes a fortiori for researchers working in the broad array of humanities and social science (HSS) fields. Researchers who work in language departments and want to have an impact on the language curriculum of high schools have to deal with legal and governmental departments, with school boards, with student...

In this era of the 24-hour news cycle, alternative facts and the proliferation of hard-to-verify sources, the online magazine Salons reminds us that research in the humanities and social sciences plays a key role in helping us analyze and understand society.

Salons invites the public to reflect on various societal issues as we read and review various articles published over the years in scholarly journals. This is a way for the magazine to showcase the abundance and importance of reputable and rigorously developed research. It also demonstrates the value of easy access to this information, as the articles and other resources featured in Salons are freely available to all.

Instead of offering frenetic commentary and instant...

Jean-Pierre Morin, Adjunct Research Professor and Public Servant-in-Residence, Department of History, Carleton University

Since the age of 12, I have had only one career goal: to be an historian working in the federal government. Yes, this is a rather strange life goal for a kid, but everyone has their dreams. I set out to study history and after completing my graduate studies, I joined the federal department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (now Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada) in 1999. Throughout my studies, I never had any intention of working in academia – I wanted to be a career public servant and I was very happy being the “departmental historian” at Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada.

In the winter of 2014, however, a stray hyperlink at the bottom of a government of Canada web page got me thinking about something else. After 15 years with the “Feds,” I was looking for new opportunities as an historian and public servant....