Download
Description
SEFARI Gateway (Scotland’s Centre of Expertise for Knowledge Exchange and Innovation) drives knowledge exchange and innovation at the science–policy interface, ensuring research addresses Scotland’s urgent climate, biodiversity, and food security challenges. Through specialist advisory groups, fellowships, and cross-sector partnerships, Gateway links research outputs to policy and practice, maximising impact across government priorities. Our projects demonstrate tangible benefits for Net Zero targets, biodiversity protection, public health, land use and communities, and food system resilience, while highlighting lessons on co-design, data access, and systemic thinking.
At SEFARI Gateway, we see impact as a pathway, not just the end-point of research outputs. It's about connecting evidence with the people who can actually use it—policymakers, practitioners, and communities on the ground. We work with researchers and stakeholders to turn research outputs into real-world benefits both now and over the longer term. Our Impact Framework goes beyond what was planned or envisaged—it captures evidence that pathways from outputs to impact actually existed and functioned. We track how this happens across different areas: influencing policy, building environmental resilience, supporting communities, and growing the economy. By mapping these pathways clearly and telling the stories of how evidence gets used in practice, we make impact visible, measurable, and shareable.
We selected three case studies that demonstrate the impact pathways our framework captures. Each case shows evidence of real-world change stemming from research, with clear documentation of stakeholders and beneficiaries, the significance of the impact, the reach of the evidence, and the activities that enabled engagement.