When a research council or charity organisation provides funding for academic research its natural that they will want to know about the outcomes, outputs and impact of the ground breaking research they are funding, which could be anything from a published article or book, a change to an existing policy, patenting an invention, or something completely different.

Researchers funded by a UKRI council or independent charity must report on their project outcomes, outputs and impact annually, and for up to five years after the project has closed, by using Researchfish.

When a researcher makes their submission to Researchfish it means the funder can measure the success of the project. It also means that a funder can impose sanctions where a submission has not been made which can impact future funding.

How did we do?

We are pleased to report that of the 175 University of Kent researchers who were expected to report for the 2020-2021 period, from across their 473 grant awarded projects, 98.29% have completed their submission to Researchfish.

Our thanks go out to the research community across Kent for engaging with us throughout the submission.  We understand that this has been a challenging period so we are very pleased to be able to share such good news with you and because of you.

Whilst we recognise that there is a small amount of room for improvement we also acknowledge that we cannot always understand why an individual may have been unable to make their submission.  If you are facing a funder imposed sanction because you were unable to complete your submission for this period then please get in touch so that we can support and discuss this with you.

Planning for the future

We have already been making plans for the next Researchfish submission.  Here is what we’ve been working:

• Training more professional services research support staff to provide expert advice and support to our community of researchers.
• Developing guidance and training materials to support our professional services research support staff.
• Working with Research and Innovation Managers across the Divisions to embed understanding about Researchfish from the start of a project.

If you have any suggestions about how we can better support you to make your  submission in the future, or you just want to find our more about Researchfish, then please get in touch.