Summary of the impact

The Statistical Cybermetrics Research Group (SCRG) has developed web-based indictors and methods for use in research policy and research evaluation for governmental bodies and non- governmental organisations. The research has impact by providing tools and new types of indicators for policy-relevant evaluations for policy makers and decision makers. The research itself includes (a) the direct production and implementation of new indicators and (b) theoretical research into indicator foundations and tool performance, such as that of the web search engines used for indicator construction. The research has impact on policy making within the United Nations Development Programme by aiding evaluations of its initiatives, and within Oxfam and the BBC World Service Trust. It has impact on policy making at the national and international levels to aid the effective directing of funding to aid knowledge production. It has also has impact on public services by helping Nesta and Jisc to evaluate the success of some of their initiatives.

Summary of the impact

Kennedy's research advanced knowledge and good practice amongst web designers to enable them to include people with intellectual disabilities (ID) amongst their website audiences and thus improve web accessibility for this user group. The research:

1. Raised awareness about techniques for ID web accessibility amongst web designer participants;
2. Changed the practices of web designer participants, enabling them to enhance the ID accessibility of the websites they build;
3. Facilitated web designer participants to undertake ID-targeted web design;
4. Shared ID web accessibility expertise with other relevant organisations;
5. Advanced knowledge/good practice within a wider audience, through a website dedicated to sharing ID accessibility techniques.
6. Raised the confidence of people with ID.

Summary of the impact

Research over two decades at the University of Southampton into the structure and development of the World Wide Web has led to the establishment of a new scientific field, which has earned recognition — and direct funding — from governments and industry around the world. Web Science is the study of the Web as a sociotechnical system. Southampton's work has influenced the Web strategies of the world's biggest companies, including Microsoft, IBM and Google, informed international Web standards and government information policies, led to a network of international laboratories working with industry to advance the Web's development through the provision of highly skilled people taking up specialist roles that draw on their research training.

Summary of the impact

Based in the School of English, the Research and Development Unit for English Studies (RDUES) conducts research in the field of corpus linguistics and develops innovative software tools to allow a wide range of external audiences to locate, annotate and use electronic data more effectively. This case study details work carried out by the RDUES team (Matt Gee, Andrew Kehoe, Antoinette Renouf) in building large-scale corpora of web texts, from which examples of language use have been extracted, analysed, and presented in a form suitable for teaching and research across and beyond HE, including collaboration with commercial partners.