Mapping stakeholder engagement in academic research: evidence from Polish impact case studies

Impact Case Studies (ICS) produced for research evaluation exercises offer a unique window into how academic research engages with societal stakeholders. The growing use of these narratives as evidence of research impact makes it possible to uncover patterns of stakeholder involvement, both in terms of who is involved and how these actors engage with academia, that are otherwise difficult to observe and capture systematically. This study provides a comprehensive analysis of stakeholder engagement as represented in 2,661 Impact Case Studies submitted to the Polish national research evaluation system. Drawing on a hybrid text-mining approach, we systematically identify stakeholder organizations, classify them into sectoral categories, and map the roles they play in the research and impact processes described in the cases. Based on this analysis, we develop a typology comprising 63 distinct engagement types. The findings suggest that engagement logics are sector-specific and institutionally shaped, with application-oriented forms of engagement appearing particularly salient in the Polish context. Our study also finds cross-disciplinary differences: while the overall intensity of collaboration does not vary significantly across disciplines, scholars in SSH&A tend to engage with a broader range of sectors and to participate in more collaborative forms of engagement than their STEM counterparts. Our findings have important implications for research evaluation, suggesting that prevailing evidence requirements in performance-based research funding systems may systematically privilege short-term, transactional forms of engagement while underrepresenting co-productive and process-oriented impacts that are more difficult to document.