The evaluation of the social impact of science achievements funded by the government can be considered as a breakthrough point in the reform of China's science and technology system. Besides, it is also an inevitable step to carry out the strategy of China's innovation-driven development. The lessons drawn from the evaluation activities in western countries can be a useful guidance. The paper focuses on three typical systems, the UK's Research Excellence Framework (REF) for assessing the excellence of researches in higher education institutions, the Standard Evaluation Protocol (SEP), which is used to assess researches conducted by Dutch universities and NWO and academy institutes, and the USA's STAR METRICS for creating a repository of data and tools, that will be useful to assess the impact of federal R&D investments. This paper analyzes the evaluation unit, the processes, and the objectives of the above three systems, as well as their differences, focusing on the indicators that define the social impact and the methods to realize the evaluation. Based on this analysis, it is concluded that the social impact evaluation should be at the core of the performance evaluation of public scientific research institutions in China. Following the experience of the UK's REF system, the national strategies, the differences between institutions and disciplines, as well as the regional divergence should be taken into account when developing the indicators of social impacts and the corresponding measurements in China. To facilitate the system operation, it is necessary to create a searchable database of scientific researches funded by national agencies.

assessment of social impact of science achievements  /  evaluation content  /  evaluation methods