New RoRI project: PATHWAYS – Advancing Research on Research Use to Enhance Positive Impact

RoRI has begun work on a new project, PATHWAYS: Advancing Research on Research Use to Enhance Positive Impact, in partnership with the Impact Funders Forum.

PATHWAYS: Advancing Research on Research Use to Enhance Positive Impact

Project page

Funders around the world increasingly expect the research they support to inform policy, improve practice, and address complex societal challenges. But how exactly does research travel from publication to use, and from use to impact? And what can funders do to support that journey more effectively?

PATHWAYS will build a clearer evidence base about the relationship between research use and positive impact. Rather than treating “impact” as a simple endpoint, the project focuses on the relational pathways – the who, how and why – that connect research production to real-world outcomes across the research and funding lifecycle.

The project brings together partners including the British Academy, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, UK Research and Innovation, Volkswagen Foundation and Health Research BC.

Running from January 2026 to June 2027, PATHWAYS combines two strands of work:

• An evidence synthesis to clarify how research use and impact are defined, conceptualised and measured, and to identify the conditions that enable research use to translate into positive impact.
• A realist-informed multi-case study examining how funders’ policies, strategies and practices shape and incentivise research use across diverse contexts.

By combining evidence synthesis with in-depth case studies of funder practice, PATHWAYS will generate practical, evidence-informed guidance to help funders design policies and programmes that genuinely enhance the chances of research being used, while contributing to a broader global agenda for research engagement and impact.