Has anyone had research evidence published after a parliamentary submission?

[wigletswiglet]

Has anyone successfully had evidence published following a parliamentary call for evidence? I didn't know anyone who had already been through the process and the guidelines were pretty vague so I just took a wild stab at it! I was under pressure to submit at quite short notice so it's in now but not sure it'll get published. My research is qualitative-based so I'm not sure if they'll discount it because I used quotes from my interviews...

Curious if anyone has successfully submitted evidence if you have any tips for the next time!

I'm not an academic but work at Parliament for a Select Committee so dealing with evidence submissions is a regular part of my job. As a rule, if what you have met follows the guidelines it will be published. In my experience evidence from academics is sometimes rejected because they submit previously written papers - evidence for Committees must be original, which doesn't mean you can't summarise or draw on your previous work but we won't republish it as originally produced. In your case it's possible they might query the quotes if there's any chance of someone being identified.

Usually if evidence doesn't meet the guidelines we will go back and ask the author if they'd like to rework and resubmit rather than just outright rejecting it. It's not unusual for evidence to be received after the deadline and we will still accept and publish if we can as long as the inquiry is still live.

As far as tips go, remember you are aiming your work at politicians and not experts, so keep it simple, no need for extensive referencing, try to clearly address the terms of reference (you don't need to cover all of them, just the ones relevant to you). If you are making an argument rather than just presenting your evidence then try to include snappy and quotable sentences or phrases that get your point across. Someone like me will read all the evidence and then summarise the most relevant and interesting bits in a written briefing for MPs, so evidence that is clear, relevant and quotable is more likely to make the cut.

@Hover thank you, this is really helpful advice and it's interesting to know more about the process behind it all - I've often wondered how these calls for evidence work! And what a cool job! How did you get into it?

And it's all quite exciting as papers are usually written for other academics so it's nice to think the evidence might make an impact on real lives and policy if accepted. Do you know roughly how long it usually takes to hear back after the deadline if your evidence has been accepted?

Yes it's a great job (most of the time). I was recruited via an open competition, my background was in policy and law. We do get a few academics coming in as a career change as well.

On my Committee we'd usually publish evidence within a week or two of receipt but I'm not sure whether that's a standard practice across all Committees. We don't wait for the evidence deadline and just publish as it comes in, but there are some administrative and procedural steps it goes through first. The Committee also has to formally agree to publish it at a meeting, which is almost always a technicality but does mean that Parliament needs to be sitting.