It was once enough to gauge the success of a research project — even those aiming to influence policy — by counting the number of articles published in peer-reviewed journals, and possibly citations or downloads.
But the scope and scale of policy research projects has broadened — moving away from single research studies toward multicomponent, multipartner and multisector endeavors. These projects often have numerous aims, beyond producing high-quality publications: to have impact beyond academia, engage different external stakeholders and/or build partners’ capacity, to name just a few examples.
Evaluating outputs is no longer enough to assess a project’s impact, since it only captures a small proportion of what these policy research projects aim to achieve.