Master students typically put a lot of work into their master projects and documentation. How can we facilitate this work in a way that it can be usefull and benefit society to a greater degree? It can seem to be a terrible waste that all this work is read and used as little as it often is.
It depends on the research focus and the problem solved on the research.
According to my experience, norms and customs of the Universities frequently do not assess if the research projects of the Master or Doctoral level students are designed considering possible benefits to society. Therefore, many cases turn out to be a mere academic exercise.
One way to promote the inclusion of this perspective would be that one of the institutional criteria for evaluating projects is their possible social impact. Suggestions and advice from research directors and mentors are also convenient.
Another important aspect is diffusion; then, the documentation resulting from the project and the corresponding primary data, after being evaluated, must be deposited in open access repositories, taking all the necessary precautions related to intellectual property, data that could be sensitive, etc.
At a University of Applied Sciences there is in most cases a social impact. We do not evaluate such projects on their social impact, but excellent theses become part of a knowledge base that is fully accessible for everyone. That knowledge base does not include the research data. I like Pedro's idea to think about an open access repository which includes all the primary data of the project. Evaluating this, based on standardized criteria, would be necessary.
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