Event

This is the first out of two conferences on the (societal) impact of science. The discussion at the international level, especially at the EU-level, was much more vibrant in the past decade than in Germany. This first conference therefore aims at picking up this discussion and to benefit from academic as well as practical experiences at the international level as well as to start a vivid national discussion and conceptualisation in Germany.

In order to be able to measure and evaluate the impact of science, even on a systemic level, new theoretical and empirical approaches have to be developed. If science and innovation policy also intends to design political interventions that increase the impact, then a perspective that differs from the previous one must be adopted. At the same time it is essential to expand the conceptual and methodological basis for understanding and measuring impact of the science system. The relevant actors in the German science system in general and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research in particular, should aim to establish a basis for how the science system and its contributions must and can be understood and evaluated in the light of global challenges and increasing request to fulfil the "new social contract for research". Recourse to old concepts and metrics, as important as they remain in detail, is no longer sufficient.

The conference aims to discuss the most recent national and international conceptual as well as empirical state of affairs and to draw conclusions for the BMBF's further handling of the topic how the impact of science can be reasonably understood, measured and evaluated.