Graphic novel: The superhero of research dissemination?

When the main output from a research project is essentially a report and a few lofty journal articles what does this mean for impact? Well, as researchers, we hope it means quite a lot. We hope that key policy makers and practitioners will read our work, understand what we found and act on our recommendations and conclusions to change or improve things. This is certainly something which happens, but possibly more rarely than we care to admit to ourselves. A cynic might say that churning out final research reports merely conforms to the well rehearsed process endemic within the research profession of telling people (anyone who will listen) how clever, unique, interesting our research has been. In reality, for the most part, we often speak to the ‘usual suspects’ add to a growing body of similar research reports and ‘impact’ is incremental as opposed to dramatic (sighs).