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To report on the 25th Anniversary Charleston Conference held in November 2005.

Reviews the main points from the conference.

Finds that the conference contains much practical advice from publishers and suppliers. Topics covered included Google and copyright, ProQuest and web searching, and journal impact factors. The subject of shared collections was a common theme.

A report of value to information management professionals.

This chapter addresses one of the most challenging aspects of impact, ‘how do I demonstrate that I've had an impact?’ When the topic of impact comes up, researchers want to know how they'll measure it. As not all evidence is a measurement, this chapter describes how researchers can be strategic and intentional about collecting and reporting impact evidence. As discussed in Chapter 1, a narrative approach to reporting on impact is generally used and making a case compelling is achieved with compelling evidence. Drawing on learnings from previous chapters around working with stakeholders and university systems and supports, the chapter challenges the reader to consider how they might build a compelling impact case study and provides a tool to support collecting and communicating the evidence of impact of your research. Case studies are generally utilised to demonstrate different types of evidence from various disciplines, and a template is provided for researchers to begin mapping out their impact evidence plan. Consistent with the approach of the book, it is emphasised that collecting the evidence of impact is not done in isolation or for one project and then forgotten. Rather, it is a whole career approach that is aligned with an individual philosophy of academic responsibility and identity. Being able to use excellent evidence to articulate the impact your research has generated will position the researcher to better attract additional funding to generate bigger impact in the future.

Impact has generated much discussion in higher education in recent years, and it is not abating. This chapter lays the groundwork to build an understanding of what impact is, where it has come from and where it is likely to be going in higher education. The various roles of universities and academics and the value of knowledge generation and dissemination to communities outside of academia are explored. Understanding impact and how it is enacted, monitored, evaluated and reported is essential to position impact within one's academic practice. While various definitions of impact have been adopted in different contexts, the focus is on leveraging those definitions as an academic. The language of impact is important as it determines how some disciplines are privileged and others potentially are disadvantaged. The chapter encourages academics in the latter category of disciplines to be active in helping shape the conversation around impact in their contexts. The final section discusses where impact may be going within higher education, how to get the most out of the book as a researcher and what each chapter contributes to becoming an impactful researcher. There is no one right way to be an academic; the reader is encouraged to use each chapter to help hone and refine their academic trajectory given their own epistemological beliefs.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the ability to researchers of using design of experiments (DoE) as a structured and systematic approach to performing systematic literature reviews. The authors demonstrate a simple case study illustrating the application of DoE in executing a systematic literature review on two popular topics in higher education: academic leadership and Lean Six Sigma.

The methodology involves the systematic literature review of linking academic leadership with terms such as Lean, Six Sigma, Total Quality Management, Maturity Model and Continuous Improvement. The main tool used to structure the systematic literature review is a Taguchi Orthogonal Array design, specifically an L16 grid and the method is verified by conducting another review, replacing the term academic leadership with simply leadership.

The approach identified at first no research papers linking the terms; however, when academic leadership was replaced with university, 19 research papers where discovered. The verification exercise, linking just leadership with the other search string generated over 1,000 results – demonstrating that the tool can find large volumes of articles if they exist, the search was completed for a ten year time frame – 2004 to 2014.

The case study focussed on a field which is known to have little current research and the verification exercise deliberately targeted a known large body of research. The authors will continue to use the approach and refine the technique over time.

This approach would help any researcher despite of their discipline to identify opportunities and gaps in the current literature.

The paper shows how DoE can be used in an academic research-based process. No other literature review approach currently exists which uses Taguchi approach to DoE to filter the search criteria.