Beyond the research article: understanding Sheffield's non-traditional research outputs

This lightning talk presented the headline findings from a series of 3 focus groups conducted in July 2025 to understand the diverse forms of non-traditional or non-text research outputs created at the University of Sheffield ‘beyond the research article’. Supported by Research England Enhancing Research Culture funding, the focus groups were held in support of a top-level aim to raise awareness of and develop the University’s support and services for non-traditional research outputs, thus increasing both their internal visibility and external discoverability. The focus groups have laid the foundations for this work by fostering dialogue around the diversity of research outputs, and by surfacing the non-text/non-traditional research outputs created across the University of Sheffield. 27 researchers took part in the focus groups, from disciplines as diverse as creative writing, linguistics, management, politics, clinical medicine, geography, and aerodynamics engineering. Preliminary analysis of the transcripts has found that researchers emphasised the value of non-traditional forms of research as expansive and creative modes of investigation as well as diverse forms of dissemination; and that when asked to define the qualities of ‘excellence’ of non-traditional forms of research, our participants consistently emphasised principles of transparency and ethics, accountability to one’s research participants, and resonance with one’s participants and/or public, by which they meant the presentation of research in a form that was meaningful and comprehensible to different and sometimes non-literate communities; one group suggested that the relevant audience themselves should be the ones to adjudicate ‘excellence’. In terms of barriers, researchers cited the hierarchical, conservative, metrics-based, and risk-averse nature of research institutions as the most significant barrier to the production, dissemination, and recognition of non-traditional forms of research, particularly for early career researchers. However, our researchers felt that the lack of visibility of and recognition for non traditional forms of research was ultimately more of a technological problem than it was an epistemological one, that is, that the infrastructure gap - the current inability of existing repository systems to represent many of these non-traditional forms of research - was more of a challenge than a lack of recognition of these outputs as valid forms of knowledge.