Big-data impact plans under scrutiny

European Commission plans to use big data to monitor the impact of research have raised concerns among lobbyists and former officials.

Speaking in Brussels on 17 November, Keith Sequeira, a senior adviser in the Commission’s research directorate, said that greater use of big data would be the central tenet of the Commission’s plans to improve its approach to impact under Framework 9.

But Peter Fisch, a former head of the Commission’s evaluation unit, said that there were disadvantages to funders using big data to measure impact. “Real societal impact only happens 10-20 years later, so early impact indicators are measuring something different and maybe in the worst cases are even misleading,” he said.“The good part is that the more evidence we can show about research impact, the greater value it is given in political debate.”