Does intent matter more than impact?

In academia, knowledge does not gain influence solely because it is rigorous. Who gets heard, whose research is visible, and where that research circulates also shapes what counts as knowledge. This is particularly important in African scholarship, where valuable local and community-based knowledge can remain marginalised when it is not visible within dominant academic and policy spaces

I think it did—but its impact may not have travelled beyond academia.

Publishing is only one part of the research journey. If findings never reach policymakers, practitioners, communities, or the people who could actually use them, we may be missing a huge part of their value.

For me, the goal should be “publish and translate”—turning research into policy briefs, community-friendly content, presentations, media conversations, or practical tools.

Sometimes the question shouldn’t just be “Where will this be published?” but “Who needs to know this, and how do we make sure they can use it?”

Hi Rhoda, I think this question gets to the heart of why we do research in the first place.

For me, a study can certainly “happen” when it is published, but publication should be viewed as a milestone rather than the destination. A paper may be methodologically rigorous and contribute to the academic literature, yet its broader public health value remains limited if the evidence never reaches the people, programmes or decisions it was intended to inform.

I particularly appreciate Fortunate’s point about visibility and the structural barriers facing African scholarship. Impact should therefore not be judged only by citations, journal rankings, or whether research receives recognition within academic institutions. Those measures are useful, but they capture only a fraction of what research can achieve.

I would define meaningful impact more broadly as evidence creating a positive change in understanding, decisions, practice, policy, systems or people's lives.

Sometimes impact may be a national policy change or a programme being redesigned. At other times, it may be much smaller but equally meaningful: a health worker changing practice because of evidence, a community understanding an issue differently, a policymaker using local data to allocate resources, a programme identifying an underserved population, or young people using research findings to advocate for themselves.

This is why I strongly support the idea of “publish and translate.” Open access, policy briefs, stakeholder dialogues, community dissemination, local-language communication, dashboards, implementation tools and engagement with policymakers and practitioners can help research travel beyond the journal.

But I also think we need to go one step further: “publish, translate and track.” We should ask what happened after dissemination. Was the evidence considered? Was a programme modified? Did practice change? Did it influence resource allocation? Did communities benefit? If not, what prevented the evidence from being taken up?

From my perspective as an epidemiologist, the pathway should not end at:

Data → analysis → manuscript → publication.

It should ideally extend to:

Data → evidence → translation → engagement → decision → implementation → measurable change.

And perhaps this is where African researchers have an especially important opportunity. We should not wait for traditional academic systems to determine whether our work has value. We can build alternative pathways of visibility and impact that connect rigorous research with African policymakers, practitioners, communities and lived realities.

So, is naming the problem enough? I don't think so. Naming it is important because it makes structural barriers visible. But building alternatives—while simultaneously advocating for fairer systems—is where research can become genuinely transformative.

Ultimately, I would rather have a study that changes one important decision, improves one programme, strengthens one health system, or meaningfully improves people's lives than one that accumulates citations while remaining disconnected from the population it studied.

Research should not only be visible. It should be usable, accessible, accountable and capable of making a difference.

#ResearchImpact #AfricanScholarship #KnowledgeTranslation #OpenScience #PublicHealth