There are some metrics available for evaluating research and the researchers. Example, publication based metrics - citation, impact factors, h-index, altmetrics, etc... But how one can evaluate a mission based research. They do not publish papers in high impact journals or get citation.
You may wish to look at the UK"s REF exercise. It is not based on bibliometric indicators but rather makes use of peer review with one of the indicators being the social impact of research: http://www.ref.ac.uk/
Mant thanks Prof. Haddawy for alerting the UK's REF excercise. I will read the assessment criteria.
Evaluating mission-oriented research requires a mixed-methods approach. You might want to read up on the literature on evaluating transdisciplinary research, which involves close collaboration with stakeholders and is typically aimed at complex societal problems (e.g. climate change) and is often organised in large-scale mission-oriented programmes (e.g. NOAA RISA in the US, KLIMZUG in the Netherlands, Knowledge for Climate in the Netherlands).
Here are some references:
Klein, J. T. (2008) ‘Evaluation of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research - A literature review’, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 35 (2), S116-S23.
Stokols, Daniel, et al. (2003) ‘Evaluating transdisciplinary science’, Nicotine & Tobacco Research, 5 (Supplement 1), S21-S39.
Wagner, C. S., et al. (2011) ‘Approaches to understanding and measuring interdisciplinary scientific research (IDR): A review of the literature’, Journal of Informetrics, 5 (1), 14-26.
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