NORFACE delivers a broad spectrum of policy and practice impacts

NORFACE delivered a broad spectrum of policy and practice impacts and the majority of researchers were positive about the coordination activities.

That is the headline of a review carried out for the ESRC by Transforming Evidence and Sealey Associates using methodical assessment of forty sampled projects (2017-23) and stakeholder interviews.

New Opportunities for Research Funding Agency Cooperation in Europe (NORFACE) is a partnership of national research funding agencies in Europe working in social and behavioural sciences.

Key finding include:

• Projects using co-production approaches and that drew upon longstanding partnerships with non-academics tended to be more successful.
• Knowledge exchange activities and their impacts were primarily delivered within the national setting of the individual researchers.
• Networks were extended beyond pre-existing relationships, including some new research relationships with countries with less developed research systems.
• There was a very high publication productivity rate.
• An emphasis on capacity-building had a positive impact on early career development for newer researchers.
• Nearly all the research partnerships continued following the formal end of NORFACE funding.

The full findings of the evaluation can be seen in the report by Rachel Abudu, Prof Kathryn Oliver and Dr Bridget Sealey, NORFACE evaluation for the Economic and Social Research Council.