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Freedom of information (FOI) laws aim to improve the public’s opportunities to access official information from public authorities and hence to increase the level of transparency. Thus, it is important to know whether and to what degree the effects intended by establishing FOI laws are achieved and how their implementation could be improved. In order to answer these questions, FOI laws have to be evaluated. Unfortunately, attempts to evaluate FOI laws are still in their infancy. To promote sound evaluation, this article aims to provide guidance on how comprehensive FOI law evaluations might be designed and conducted.
Measuring societal impacts of research is a challenging task in research evaluation. In this article, we describe several of these challenges with regard to causal inference, time lag, side-effects, operationalization, comparability between disciplines, and availability of required data. We show how different approaches deal with these challenges in evaluation practice and focus on a particular approach named “practice impact” in more detail. This approach includes an improved documentation and is sought to have positive effects on innovation processes and synergies with research and research funding. Moreover, dialogue with different user groups is fostered and serves to make evaluation beyond scientific impact desired, feasible, and efficient.