How lovely that several unexpected benefits have emerged over four years working as Editor‐in‐Chief of Geographical Research on behalf of the Institute of Australian Geographers. High on the short‐list would be the annual day for publishers and editors that Wiley organises, the last of which was on Wednesday 30 October 2019 at the University of Melbourne. On that occasion, the day was focused on one of those useful how questions: Evolving impact: how do we measure the impact of research?

How is a crisp adverb that labours hard on our behalf by inviting us to stay grounded and present. We could, of course, ask why we measure the impact of research and doubtless that question is important. Yet why can divert our attention to consider teleological arguments—that is, to discussions about so‐called first causes. The fact is that we do measure the impact of research and the likelihood of that changing any time soon is remote.

So how we measure the effects and effectiveness of research becomes a question critically important to ask because doing so helps researchers and those who support our work to hold ourselves to account; explain our work to others; challenge the worst shortcomings in existing systems of measures; and provide solutions for those shortcomings. One can also hope that the last of these efforts—a focus on refinement and improvement to measurement systems and processes—results in more robust and well‐rounded understandings of how (and, yes, why) research matters.

Research does matter, not least for flourishing communities—that is, for us as individuals and groups with common and disparate interests in place and on the move. Indeed, according to the Australian Research Council (2015), research impact ‘is the contribution that research makes to the economy, society, environment or culture, beyond the contribution to academic research’. One finds in that description several foundational ideas that I think tend get lost—and to which I return below.

But, first, I indulge in a little speculation about a collective tendency to fixate, perhaps, not on why and on how but on what. So: What is your or my h‐index? What kinds of journals are ranked in the top quartile internationally and what likelihood is there that your or my research will be published in them? What effects on the creative arts, humanities, and social sciences have measuring systems originating in the sciences and health and medicine? What is the relationship of citation to university rankings? What effect will your or my growing/stable/stalled/declining research impact have on our chances for promotion or tenure or a book contract?

These concerns are real, and they matter in philosophical, strategic and tactical, and embodied ways; they affect how we as researchers conduct our professional and personal lives, how we work, how we focus on this or that and not something else, and how we thrive or flounder. Our responses to those concerns, and the responses others have to how our claims for impact are made also shape what research is done and what goes begging.

As I suggested at above, what also goes begging here are those foundational ideas underpinning the impetus to measure impact that I think worth revisiting—and that were strongly in evidence at the Wiley Research Day in 2019.

We measure the impact of research because, at least in some ways, ethically and morally it seems right to be accountable. Yet at this stage, I could also offer some pointed comments about the perverse effects on our practices that arise from changes to funding for higher education over time (Figure 1) but will resist the urge on the grounds that the situation does not obviate the need to hold ourselves to account for the impact of the work we do.

I could also (but will not) wax on about neoliberal “imperatives” in relation to research impact measures, and about the ways in which that relationship can marginalise the intrinsic worth of knowledge. Instead, I want to revisit the idea that recognition is not simply about individual or institutional egoic impulses. It is a term that invites us to know again—to re‐cognise and recall to mind, examine, and certify and formally approve. So, recognising the impact of research summons the need to stay faithful to the idea of excellence. Here, again, I am not seeking to underline the egoic; my intention is to etch the importance of learning to be remarkable in one's field. At the same time, I am compelled to suggest that task takes a lifetime; the term career, after all, means to run the full course.

Arguably, to move from competency to proficiency to pre‐eminence is to follow a discipline and to be given the opportunity to do so mindful of context—a researcher's place on the life‐course, institution, locality, and the cultural and societal mores that underpin the higher education system in which they work. Yet, research impact measures are oriented to the near term. Let me get autobiographical here. Just two weeks ago I received an email that read something like this [redactions to respect privacy]:

I just read your article in the UTAS alumni magazine about the move of the campus downtown. I was an RA for you back in 19xx in the final year of my xxx degree at UTAS. You may not remember me, but I definitely recall the opportunity to get involved in research and learn from you. I went on from that to medical school at the University of xxx and I am now a xxx and researcher at xxx in xxx having completed my PhD at xxx University in 20xx.

How we measure research impact is also aligned to other, specific ideas about reward that are often oriented to compensation and incentive. I have nothing against those; my concern is with rivalrous forms of competition rather than those predicated on the idea of struggling together (which is one of the roots of the term compete)—for example to transform individual and collective conditions for the better.

Such thoughts were forming before and have coalesced since the Wiley Research Seminar, during which I was intrigued by thoughtful and provocative conversations for the whole of the day. Several questions emerge; I am not sure if they are apt, but offer them in any case:

• What will be the effects of the ongoing digital (r)evolution?
• How can balance be designed into systems that presently depend on profit or self‐funding such that access, equity, and knowledge justice are served?
• How can we bring generations of researchers on journeys for which neither map or territory yet exist?
• What can we learn from deep and collaborative engagement with others traditionally in those aforementioned rivalrous positions?
• What can we learn from systems in other polities? From other knowledge systems? Other ways of knowing and valuing?
• How do we persuade ourselves and each other to eschew the egoic?
• Is there room for compassion in measuring systems and, if not, what does that reveal about our collective priorities?

In this issue, and in keeping with our remit, we have also created a space in which important research can start to have impact. Three papers address different and highly challenging issues important in Australia that have wider resonance. Connor Jolley and Lauren Rickards first consider the contestation arising in relation to coal and climate change in the Adani mine controversy. Stephen Schweinsberg and Phil McManus next provide an interesting case‐study on coal seam gas and its spatial analysis. Ilisapeci Lyons and colleagues then think about what it means to “protect what is left” after colonisation when seeking to embed climate adaptation planning in Traditional Owner narratives in the Great Barrier Reef.

Thereafter, three internationally‐oriented papers are presented. That by Sarah Rogers and colleagues reports on a complex integrated assessment of the South‐North Water Transfer Project in China. Then, Cooper Schouten reports on the role of honey hunting among Sumbawan communities in Indonesia. Last, Chen Yang and colleagues provide a comprehensive discussion about capturing rural landscapes' spatial patterns using point cloud.

These diverse papers are followed by our second book panel paper led by Alan Latham and focused on David Bissell's terrific new book, Transit Life. Richie Howitt then presents an extended invited review of two books on “new Indigenous geographies”, entitled Barddabardda Wodjenangorddee: We're Telling All of You, and Songspirals: Sharing Women's Wisdom of Country. Finally, Nick Harvey, Jennifer Dean, and Jennifer Carter have provided reviews of three very different books that we know readers will also be interested in pursuing.

Note

A shorter version of most of this editorial was published on 15 January 2020 on the Wiley Network's Society Leaders blog at https://www.wiley.com/network/societyleaders/research‐impact/why‐do‐we‐measure‐the‐impact‐of‐research.