In general terms, research is performed to answer a question that may fill a need in either society or the world of knowledge. But although every experiment is begun with that purpose, the importance of it has increased with its correlation to the scholar’s reputation.

As the connection between impact and scholarly reputation has escalated, it has caused academic experts to step up and work on designing research experiments that go beyond outcome, bridging theory with impact, to maximize the impact their results have on their target audience and beyond.

Factors That Drive Reputation

A successful scholar builds their career around their reputation. The overall picture of their personal and academic personas can help them to achieve better classroom placements, more lucrative funding from a wider net of sources for their research, and the fast track to tenure, as well as many other benefits. For these reasons, scholars often want to generate the highest research impact possible.

Reputation is made up of a number of factors, including:

●      Getting their work published in reputable journals and electronic publications known for their high-impact articles

●      Making sure these publications combine both books and articles in different subtopics

●      Keeping themselves visible both in the world of publishing and on their campus by performing acts of service, heading departments, chairing fundraising opportunities, and leading change

●      Judging other scholar’s work through avenues like peer review

●      Completing innovative research

●      Staying up-to-date with technology and embracing digital scholarship

●      Teaching with high-impact academic results

All of these factors must be present for a scholar to achieve the highest reputation. Through theory-driven research, most of these are quickly demonstrated.

The Importance of Theory-Driven Research

Theory-driven research has its own type of cycle, in which theories are postulated, the steps to prove them are created, and then the ideas are tested through a systematical means of exploration. These results are then held up to high levels of scrutiny through empirical evidence, adjusted, refined, and repeated.

Without theories behind the research, a fuller understanding of a specific field of scientific knowledge might not be better understood. But the cycle has to be completed, and if one part of it gets stuck, the entire process grinds to a halt until the researcher is able to untangle the complications keeping it from moving forward.

Strategies to Bridge the Gap Between Theory and Impact

To create theory-driven projects and attempt to close the gap as much as possible between the research and its impact, specific approaches are typically used, like:

●      The deductive theory - A working theory is used to develop a hypothesis, which leads the researcher to create steps in the process that try to prove the hypothesis as accurate. Deductively, the conclusion is determined as true or false from the expectations of the research steps.

●      The inductive theory - Inductive strategies of theory-design take the opposite approach as deductives. These require the researcher to look for patterns based on observations and premises, with no set aim for the final results until the patterns are observed and analyzed. The steps aren’t concretely set; rather, each step ends in results that guide the research to the next level of analysis.

●      The abductive theory -  When inductive and deductive aren’t quite right for your research, the abductive approach might work better. This method takes theories and attempts to explain why something works the way it does by using strategic reasoning and logic-based evidence.

Each of these theory-driven approaches to research, when laid out thoroughly and exhaustively processed in transparent action steps, is more likely to result in final outcomes that have higher impacts because the entire project was carefully thought through during each stage.

Add Impactio as Part of Your Strategy

Impactio is an all-in-one platform that gives you a place to sort and store your ideas, condense them into your final thoughts, and turn your citation data into charts, graphs, and tables. From the publication, Impactio follows your work and citation indicators to help you see the powerful impact your research has made, and share your work and ideas with other experts in the Impactio community. It’s everything you could want and more in one simple to use program.