Exhortation does not achieve impact – it requires system design

Universities are among the key brains trusts of our societies: creating knowledge, shaping public understanding, catalysing innovation, and helping societies navigate uncertainty and complexity. Much of this work is publicly funded, and its legitimacy rests not only on academic excellence, but on public trust and public value.

Yet universities today operate within increasingly complex environments shaped by funding constraints, global competition for talent and growing demands for accountability. Students and families turn to rankings. Researchers, meanwhile, navigate systems in which publications, citation counts and prestige indicators shape career progression, funding and institutional reputation. Together, these form tightly interconnected prestige economies. Within such contexts, it is easy to chase misplaced goals, pursuing what is measurable rather than what is important.

These concerns have shaped Singapore Management University’s (SMU) reflections on how universities create and demonstrate value. Here is what we have done, and what we are still finding difficult.

A broader conception of university impact

Embarking on this journey begins with a broader conception of impact. At SMU, we articulate our desired impact in terms of human capital development, knowledge creation, economic development, and strengthening social and community life. These form the focus of our SMU2030 strategic plan. Our focus is not confined only to research.

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Within research, we affirm both academic and societal impact. Academic impact remains vital; rigorous scholarship is the foundation upon which enduring societal contributions are built. At the same time, research may shape policy debates, inform regulatory frameworks, influence business practices, deepen public understanding, support industry innovation and generate broader social or cultural benefits.

Publications and citations, for all their limitations in assessing research, dominate as indicators of academic impact because they are legible; they can be counted, benchmarked and compared. The societal impact of discovery is far more diffuse, collective and long term. It may unfold over many years and through multiple actors. Some forms of contribution are highly visible; others are quieter, no less important but difficult to evidence. Recognising the quieter research outcomes is not a matter of exhortation. It requires people whose work it is to trace the pathways and gather the evidence, which is why we established the Office of Impact.

Measuring what we say we value in university research

If we are to evidence societal impact, it raises questions about measurement. Conventional citation-based metrics remain useful indicators of academic visibility, but they are less effective at capturing broader societal engagement. 

Research may also travel into the documents where regulation and professional practice are formed, and a citation count will not tell you that it has. For example, the expert panel behind a reference document on cell-based food safety intended for national food safety authorities took up, unprompted, a 2022 study on consumer acceptance of cultivated meat. The research was subsequently presented to food agency leaders from 18 countries alongside representatives from the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and Codex Alimentarius Commission. That too is a pathway of impact.

What complementary indicators might be used? Overton allows us to identify references to research within policy documents, legislation and regulatory guidelines. Lens.org links publications to patents and innovation ecosystems. Altmetrics track mentions in news media, policy documents and social media. The Open Syllabus Project, which aggregates millions of university syllabuses internationally, offers something rarer: evidence of how research shapes the way learners think, frame problems and structure understanding.

None of these measures is perfect, nor should any be treated as a substitute for peer review. Alternative metrics carry their own biases and limitations, and care must be taken to avoid reducing impact to simplistic quantitative proxies. Further, an approach that works for law may not work in the same way for economics, computing, social sciences or business. Institutional alignment need not mean institutional uniformity.

Building the capacity to act on excellence

Aspiration alone is insufficient without organisational capacity. The Office of Impact at SMU was established to strengthen institutional coordination, build culture and communities of practice, develop measures, support evidence gathering, and build substantiated impact narratives across the university, not only on the basis of faculty research, but across education, student development, innovation and entrepreneurship and ecosystem development.

Many universities now use this language. Not all have gone beyond rhetoric. SMU is seeking to organise for it rather than simply declare it. Our schools have begun to appoint associate deans with responsibility for impact. Soon, our framework for performance and promotion appraisal will be relaunched as RISE – research, impact, service and education – refreshed to reflect both academic and societal impact. Impact case studies are being written to capture the qualitative value of colleagues’ contributions, from the impact delivered via a distinctive pedagogical approach to a lifetime of research on public housing to 25 years of community service contributions from students.

An institution can broaden what it says it values and leave its appraisal instrument untouched, in which case it has added an expectation without changing a system. This does not mean that every scholar should be expected to excel in every dimension. We need a community of scholars galvanised by how their work could make the world a better place. Some scholars produce foundational theoretical work whose influence unfolds over decades. Others engage directly with policy, industry partnerships or professional communities. Some mentor the next generation. Some convene across disciplines. The remit is to give language and voice to varied successes.

SMU is early in this journey. Like many universities, we continue to grapple with tensions between ranking pressures, disciplinary expectations, external accountability systems and aspirations towards broader societal impact. Some aspects of institutional change are easier to articulate than to operationalise, and open engagement across the institution has not been optional; it has been foundational.

The real challenge is not whether to maintain academic rigour or embrace societal impact. It is how to integrate both responsibly, and to build systems capable of recognising that meaningful scholarly contribution cannot always be reduced to publication counts and citation visibility alone. Prestige economies are not imposed on universities from outside. But that will take more than good intentions to collectively redesign this structure from within. It will take building the systems that recognition actually requires.

Lily Kong is president of Singapore Management University. This article draws on her keynote on research assessment reform, delivered at FORCE2026in Singapore.

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