Impact for Higher Education
Academia is under growing pressure to do more with less, even as success in impact assessments becomes increasingly vital. hivve offers services, software, and resources to upskill your team and simplify impact capture and reporting.
Everybody is at a different stage of their Impact Journey, whether setting out at Discovery or ready to share their impact with the world at Amplification. The unique pressures facing higher education institutions in managing and demonstrating impact have shaped our development of the Journey framework over more than a decade. We’ve worked with clients globally to improve impact assessment performance, engage diverse research teams, secure funding, and embed impact into institutional strategy.
To support you and your team with these challenges, hivve offers a range of efficient services, tried-and-tested products and expert resources that have been refined over multiple impact assessment cycles (including REF and RAE), giving us an extensive track record in successfully optimising Impact Case Studies (ICS) and improving REF performance. We operate as an extension of your team, letting you focus on reach and significance while we look after the rest.
Progressing your Impact Journey with hivve
IMPROVE IMPACT CASE STUDIES
Our services arm works with your team to analyse, improve and optimise your Impact Case Study (ICS) portfolio, with a track record of driving significantly improved number of 3* and 4* ICS achieved for our clients in assessments
Achieve More with Less
Our software helps academics reduce the time spent collecting impact data and evidence by 80%, while supporting Research Managers by automating key peer review processes such as for environment statements and ICS
Access Expertise on-Demand
With 10+ years of experience, our experts support REF and RAE submissions across all UoAs, helping all sizes of institution achieve 4* success. Our resources equip you to understand, capture, and communicate impact.
Reviews
Gain visibility over your impact submission
Impact submissions often involve inconsistent, non-standardised reviews. We assess your entire portfolio and use ImpactReviewer to deliver consistent, detailed feedback that streamlines preparation and enhances scoring potential.
Our one-to-one impact mapping sessions create a supportive space for academics to explore and articulate their impact, identify next steps, and refine their case studies with confidence.
Drafting
Not sure where to start?
Our expert team has over a decade of experience drafting high-scoring ICS submissions from the ground up.
We follow a proven, efficient process to help you identify your most impactful work, articulate the story behind it, and translate it into a compelling, assessment-ready case study—ready for your review and approval.
Copywriting
Preparing REF-ready narratives
Researchers are often too close to their work to easily translate it into the concise, compelling format required by the REF.
Our impact experts specialise in shaping both case studies and environment statements to meet assessment criteria—refining structure and language to ensure your impact is clearly recognised and effectively communicated for REF 2029.
Copy Editing
Refine your narratives with confidence
We help you polish existing case studies and environment statements—saving you time, ensuring alignment with the latest REF requirements, and boosting the clarity and impact of your submissions.
We work flexibly at multiple levels—supporting Higher Education Institutions, Faculties or Units of Assessment, and individual Impact Case Studies—to tailor our guidance and solutions to your specific needs.
Customers Feeling the Buzz
“The (hivve) team was very thorough and provided lots of context along with examples of successful planning and execution of case studies in the REF, for example. I was able to gain a really clear picture of how to understand and present impact within case studies, including effective formats and methods for including testimonials.
“It was a big learning curve – this was the first time the RAE included impact. But examining in depth the difference between a 4* and 2* case study was invaluable. Furthermore, the session by Vertigo Ventures that introduced impactful research to most of the faculty was extremely useful and we have recommended this training to other departments across the university.
“Overall, VV was instrumental in the development of our Impact Case Studies for RAE 2020 and I found this personally extremely educational and beneficial as well.”
“ImpactReviewer worked really well – it provided consistency across our case studies”
“IR’s review process made for a fairer analysis of case studies”
“The product formalises feedback processes and is therefore accepted better by academics”
hivve Software for Higher Education
ImpactTracker pioneered the software-based approach to capturing and reporting impact. Since launching in 2014, it has been deployed in more than sixty organisations in multiple countries worldwide. Together with ImpactReviewer and EvidenceVault, ImpactTracker enables users to manage their Impact Case Study (ICS) portfolios, securely capture data and evidence on-the-go and rapidly export their impact projects into accessible formats, such as REF-ready ICS templates for UK institutions.
ImpactTracker was a finalist in the 2021 Computing Digital Technology Leaders’ Awards for Best Mid-Sized Project; it was also a runner-up in the 2021 Hidden REF Awards.
hivve Resources for Higher Education
Collecting Research Impact evidence
This report – in conjunction with HEFCE (now part of UKRI) and Digital Science – examines best practice in gathering research impact evidence, with specific reference to the UK’s national assessment, the Research Excellence Framework (REF).
RAE 2020 Research Analysis
We undertook this analysis with partners in Hong Kong, examining various factors and avenues around the sorts of research impact featuring in the Hong Kong universities that were assessed by the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) 2020.
BRUNEL UNIVERSITY CASE STUDY
Discover how Brunel University London prepared 59 Impact Case Studies (ICS) and securely stored more than 500 pieces of evidence in ImpactTracker for the submission to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021.
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