Phase two case study: DARIAH's approach to impact

Owned by Nicole Mc Neilly
Last updated: Aug 17, 2023
3 min read

This case study has been developed based on a presentation by Jennifer Edmond, President of the DARIAH Board of Directors in her presentation ‘Whose impact is it anyway? Designing a systematic impact assessment programme for the DARIAH ERIC’ at the Europeana research and impact symposium ‘New impact horizons’ held in May 2021.

DARIAH is the Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities.  

Influenced by a conversation about Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for all European Research Infrastructure Consortiums (ERIC), DARIAH - in line with the development of their Strategic Plan 2019 - 2026 - set about exploring and developing tools and approaches to document and share their impact.

The approach they took centred on learning from the work of others (including the Europeana Impact Playbook) but finding their own way to express, document and share their impact. They learned a great deal from the qualitative approach taken by the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) Academic research Impact Case Studies and the Impactomatrix developed by the DARIAH working group for impact and success. Nonetheless, they ‘came away with more questions than answers’. There were four key questions. 

By who, for whom? 

Much of DARIAH’s direct impact is experienced by the members of their network - the Prosumer problem - input of their members is as essential to the eventual quality of the services and experiences DARIAH provides as is DARIAH to the services and experiences they partake of.

What is impact, anyway?

Many people define impact differently, but for DARIAH, when they asked themselves key questions like ‘how do they want to be viewed by their stakeholders’ they came up with clear impact areas: fostering research excellence; increasing efficiency; developing networks and collaboration; and promoting innovation. 

Where does impact happen?

DARIAH conceptualises three levels of impact, that align to a great degree with the Europeana Impact Playbook change pathway. Level 1 represents the activities; Level 2 represents the immediate and observable change; and Level 3 asks what happens next and if someone did something different as a result of the activity. The challenge of Level 3 - the focus of their impact approach - is that it's difficult to assess impact ‘when you’re not in the room where change is happening’. 

How to document impact?

From the beginning, and influenced by the REF approach, DARIAH  wanted to use qualitative evidence. Such an approach seemed suitable based on the high-level policy audiences who would be the primary readers. 

 

You can read DARIAH’s  first three Impact Case Studies in their 2020 annual report. 

An extract from DARIAH’s 2020 annual report, used with permission.

In the process of developing these first three Impact Case Studies, they learned that their original scope was too broad. DARIAH now aims to publish three case studies per year.  The next case studies will be more narrow in terms of focus and activity. 

Jennifer summarised DARIAH’s learning as follows: 

  • Be inspired by many sources but you have to decide what impact means for you

  • Mainstreaming data collection is difficult, but you should do it across your activities (enjoy it - it starts good conversations!)

  • Impact is often most evident in the small things, not the big ones

  • Keep the cases readable (two pages max. with a clear structure)