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Background: The use of research in policy settings is complex, unpredictable and influenced by a range of poorly understood social factors. This makes it difficult to plan for, facilitate and evaluate policy impacts arising from research. Aims and Objectives: 1. Propose and test tools for planning for and facilitating research impact, based on a new logic model combined with a novel approach to public/stakeholder analysis. 2. Propose and test methods for establishing causal links between research and policy impacts. 3. Use case study findings to provide new empirical insights into the social processes that mediate the generation of impact from research. Methods: Social Network Analysis, qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews, and analysis of secondary data were used in a case study of peatland climate change research in Scottish Government policy. Findings: Boundary organisations and centrally-positioned, well-trusted individuals, were crucial to the development of a trusted body of research in which policymakers were sufficiently confident as the basis for policy. Discussion and conclusions: The non-linear social dynamics that characterise science-policy networks can be understood and evaluated. By using the tools described in this paper, researchers and other stakeholders can better plan, facilitate and evaluate research impact.

This paper argues for greater dialogue between critical research and research impact. With demands to demonstrate impact increasingly woven into the funding architectures of higher education, concerns have been raised that the UK Research Excellence Framework's impact agenda could adversely affect critical research, favouring instead research that more easily lends itself to societal uptake. Arguing that the threat to critical research is real but not inevitable, this paper draws from a review of impact case studies submitted to REF2014 to provide a perspective on what impact from critical research could look like, and the support required to encourage critical research within the UKREF Impact Agenda. Building on previous provocations to think about research impact differently, it is argued that impact can be conceptualised in ways that support critical agendas. Specifically, the paper identifies five modes of critical research impact: challenging policy; empowering resistances; platforming voices; nurturing new critical publics; and envisioning alternatives. These five modes signal potential for thinking about research impact in ways that support critical goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]