How do you measure the real-world impact of research?

Citations and altmetrics mostly measure academic attention, which is a narrow and lagging slice of impact; the returns that matter — social, clinical, economic, policy — are only partly visible in reference lists (Bornmann 2013). Even large national exercises struggle to capture wider impact with metrics: reviews of the evidence find only a couple of quantitative signals (like patent and clinical-guideline citations) that plausibly reflect societal benefit, and warn against over-relying on any of them (Wilsdon et al. 2015; Hicks et al. 2015). Nabu reports Readiness instead: one position on a five-stop ladder running from an initial observation to something operationally usable — not a number, and not a forecast of citations. Three further judgements sit beside it as context: Relevance (is there real demand and uptake?), Generalizability (does it hold beyond its original setting?), and Trajectory (does it build on and feed a durable line of work?). Crucially, Readiness is kept separate from quality, because a paper can matter enormously and still be flawed. See the methodology for the ladder and its stops.