Assessing the Impact of Humanities, Science and Technology: How to Fill the Gap?

Impact assessment has gained momentum in the last ten years because policy makers need evidence about the contribution that the investment in research, develop- ment and innovation produces on science and society. The aforementioned policy drift is having a powerful effect on academic research and on Higher Education Institu- tions, pushing individuals and organizations involved in R&D&I activities to go beyond the search for quality to also consider the effects generated by their efforts on society. However, both finding a comprehensive definition of what impact is, and how it can be represented through sound and reliable assessment instruments are not easy tasks. The aforementioned problems are more important in certain fields of science, Humanities first and fore- most, because it is hard to disentangle their contribution to science and society using measurements of scientific results (e.g. citations) or economic advancements (e.g. patenting activities) from an input/output approach. The difficulties to justify the utility of investment in Humanities produced on the one hand, a new prioritization of areas of knowledge within universities, and a tendency to margin- alize Humanities in favor of other areas that are supposedly more productive and useful. On the other hand, Human- ities scholars often adopt a defensive behavior vis-à-vis impact assessment, which tends to isolate them. The paper seeks to shed light on how impact can become an important means for improving the understanding of the social value of Humanities, and how Humanities are an essential instrument to complement knowledge pro- duced by STEM (science, technology engineering and mathematical) research. Using advancements produced by the literature and results derived from field research, it seeks to answer the following questions: how far can the impact of Humanities be assessed using methods and tools of other fields, namely the STEM ones? What kind of approach might improve the integration of knowledge produced in different disciplinary areas and the genera- tion of effects on science and society? How can we fill the gap between Humanities and Science Technology?