A contribution to knowledge is more like dictionary definition, your research and/or writing helps to advance understanding about a particular topic.
People know a little or a lot more about a topic because they’ve engaged with your work, read what you’ve written and you’ve been able to explain to readers, then that the work adds up to a contribution – it takes the field somewhere – through
- a defensible and well-designed inquiry, investigation, exploration, interrogation, deconstruction, experimentation, testing out, bringing things together that were previously apart and so on
- a thorough analysis which is explained and available for scrutiny
- the development of a credible and clearly ordered argument that explains the results, which leads to
- a conclusion about the specific place of the results within the existing research on the topic – and how it complements, contradicts, adds something new, challenges, questions, confirms, reframes etc what is already known.
- pointers for further development in policy or practice or further research.
Claim
A claim is a statement or action geared to get something to happen.
Now in research, claims have quite a specific meaning. A claim has to backed by evidence and argument, and we researchers understand that a claim is always subject to interpretation. However, in some disciplines, a claim might also be a truth claim, well certainly of the this-is-the-best-version-of-truth-we-have-now-but-it-is-always-up-for-change variety.