This H2020 project developed a model describing the socio-economic impact of research infrastructures and their related financial investments. The framework was developed in a modular manner, adapting it to a broad range of scientific domains and types of infrastructures, including those delivering training and collaborating with higher education institutions/universities.
Among other activities, CSIL’s role included a comprehensive stocktaking exercise and mapping of data gathering needs of the key stakeholder groups, including a survey of RI managers and funders and interviews with policymakers, funding agencies and independent experts. In the final phase of the project, CSIL also assessed innovation pathways arising from experiments carried out at ALBA synchrotron light beamlines by combing different methodologies, including a survey targeting around 3,000 users, in-depth interviews and analysis of publication citation in patent's documents. We assessed innovation pathways arising from experiments carried out at ALBA through a bibliometric analysis of publications and patents documents.
All RIPATHS' results are available online. They include a Modular Impact Assessment Framework and Methodological handbook including KPI system, metrics and assessment methods, and various outreach, dissemination and exploitation activities, and a Research Infrastructures’ Impact Assessment Toolkit. The Toolkit features descriptions of the identified impact pathways leading to key socioeconomic impacts. It also provides guidance on the most common impact areas and presents examples of suitable monitoring and reporting tools, as well as methodologies for impact measurement. There is an option to browse, search and retrieve all frequently used indicators per main impact areas and types of indicators. A Guidebook is available to accompany the Toolkit users. It gives a glimpse into the topic of impact assessment, presents useful examples and helps RI managers, policymakers and funders make important strategic choices.
All the projects deliverables and publications are also available on Zenodo.