Recording your Research Outcomes for UKRI

Guidance for the 2023 submission

All PIs on UKRI funded grants are required to feedback the outcomes of their projects to the Research Funding Council via Researchfish. If you hold a grant from a charitable organisation you may also be required to feedback the outcomes from your grant to Researchfish.  A complete list of funders using Researchfish for outcomes collection can be found at: https://www.researchfish.net/members

UKRI funded students are now also able to record outcomes in Researchfish.

The submission period for 2023 will start on Monday 6 February 2023 and finish on Thursday 16 March 2023. 

• What is Researchfish
• How to access Researchfish
• Pure and Researchfish
  
• Responsibility and Compliance
• Support for Researchfish
• Making a Submission

 

Researchfish

What is Researchfish?

Researchfish is an online facility used by research funders and Research Organisations, including UKRI, to track the outcomes from their investments. PIs who have received funding are asked to log the outputs, outcomes and impacts of their work in the system. 

For more details visit:  https://www.ukri.org/funding/information-for-award-holders/research-outcomes/ 

How do I access Researchfish?

All PIs with eligible grants should have received an email from the Researchfish team with guidance on how to set up an account. You can login at: https://app.researchfish.com/user/login.  Any access issues or account requests should be directed to support@researchfish.com

I’ve already entered my data in Pure, do I need to complete Researchfish too?

Interoperability - Pure to Researchfish

Prior to the submission period Pure publication data which is: published, publicly available, has either a DOI or Pubmed ID, and is linked to a relevant UKRI grant, is uploaded to Researchfish (to be included all relevant information must be in the publication by Thursday 26 of January 2023).  The University of St Andrews is taking part in an interoperability pilot study to also enable transfer of Datasets from Pure, an upload will cover datasets entered in Pure by mid-December.

Staff:  To include your publications, ensure your Pure profile is up to date and all the publicly available publications are linked to your grant funding. By completing these links in Pure your publication data can be uploaded to Researchfish centrally reducing the reporting burden on you. 

To make a link to your grant in Pure:

• Make sure the publication DOI (or Pubmed ID, if relevant) is recorded
• Create a link to the project funding source
• In the publication template, scroll to the relations section and click the project button
• Search for the title of your funded project and select it, if your publication has more than one funding source you can keep adding as many relations as you need
• Save the changes you have made by clicking the blue 'Save' button

UKRI Funded Students:  You may find that some publications have already been added to researchfish for you. This is usually the case where you have published with a current member of St Andrews staff. To include your publications going forward all you have to do is enter them into Pure. Your publications will be included in the uploads if they meet the following criteria: 

• the publication has a DOI (or Pubmed ID, if relevant)
• the publication is published and publicly available
• the publication is within or after the period of your studentship

All:  Your relevant publication data will be uploaded to Researchfish from Pure on Thursday 26 of January 2023.

You will still be required to login to Researchfish during the submission period (6 Feb – 16 March 2023) to add additional non-publication outputs but you should not have to re-enter the publication data already provided from Pure. It is important that you continue to add non-publication outputs into Researchfish directly.

Delegate and team member accounts can be created against an award to allow other users to enter content against your grants, see help, training and guidance for more details.

Pure to ORCID to Researchfish

It is also possible to upload your publication data from Pure by linking it to your ORCID profile and then linking your ORCID profile to your Researchfish account. 

Guidance on creating an ORCID and linking it to your Researchfish profile can be found at:  Linking Pure to ORCID

Staff:  Please note ORCID does not have a concept of your grant funding information so publications uploaded to Researchfish via this method will still need to be linked to the correct grant directly in Researchfish.

Responsibility and Compliance

Who should record outcomes

PIs are required to complete a submission to Researchfish as part of the terms and conditions of holding a grant from UKRI. Some charitable organisations also require submission via Researchfish.

Please note students are asked to use Researchfish to submit details of the outcomes of each award annually from the 3^rd year of their funding, during the lifetime of the award, and usually for up to three years after the end of the award. The details of students related to UKRI grants have been taken from the Je-S student data portal. Students are asked to complete their return themselves as it is their data and they will therefore need to submit it themselves. However, please note a sanctions policy for students has not been agreed and no sanctions will be applied to students this year.

Students and their primary supervisors should receive an email explaining Researchfish, and students should also expect to receive invitation link emails directly from Researchfish in January.

Why record your outcomes

As a PI, a researcher has a responsibility to demonstrate they have delivered value for money from public investment. The data provided to Researchfish will be used to inform future investment and published on the Gateway to Research portal.   https://gtr.ukri.org

Sanctions Policy

All councils will apply sanctions for non-compliant awards, where no Researchfish submission has been completed during the submission period.

Non-compliant researchers will:

• lose eligibility to be either a PI or Co-I on further awards from any UKRI Council
• and any current awards will have their payments withheld until such time as the PI becomes compliant

Please note:  This does not apply to students, though overall institutional compliance may be considered in making future doctoral training awards.

Further details and exceptions can be found at Sanctions Policy

Support for Researchfish

Help, Training and Guidance

Researchfish provide online technical support including instructional videos, regular webinars, FAQs and a real time chat facility at https://eval.researchfish.com/helpwiz

If your query relates to the grant itself, please contact the appropriate funding council directly.

What data needs to be returned?

The Common Question Set

A Common Question Set has been agreed across all the Researchfish Funders. You will be asked to provide data on a range of outcomes including:  Publications, Collaborations, Engagement activities etc. A full list of the common questions can be found at:  https://app.researchfish.com/questions 

Funder specific question sets

Each individual council has a number of specific questions that must be completed prior to the submission for each grant. Unlike the common question set these additional questions are mandatory. If there is no information to submit for these sections, use “not applicable this year”.

Before submission   

• Ensure that outcomes are properly attributed to awards.
• Check that the information to be submitted is NOT sensitive or confidential.

Data provided to Researchfish should be: As complete as possible, accurate and Non-confidential. 

Can I get support for entering data?

You have the option to add a delegate or research team member user to your Researchfish account to support entry of outcomes. 

A delegate enables a 3rd party to access your account to assist in adding data into your portfolio, e.g. a personal assistant.

A research team member has their own portfolio in researchfish but can be given sight of your awards, which enables them to assign data from their own portfolio to the shared award, e.g. a co-investigator.

Adding a delegate/team member user to your Researchfish return:

1. Log into Researchfish (https://app.researchfish.com/user/login)
2. Once logged in, click on the award you'd like to add a delegate for
3. On the right hand side under Research Team click the button 'Add delegate or research team member'
4. Fill in the invitee details. Once Invite User is clicked an email will be sent to the person you have added
5. When they have accepted the invitation they will be listed in your network

• Please note, only the PI can make the final submission, delegates/team members are not eligible to submit. 

If you require central support please contact purelive@st-andrews.ac.uk

Submitting to ResearchFish

Making a Submission

Although PIs can use Researchfish to add and edit outcomes throughout the year the submission period does not run throughout the year. PIs will receive reminder emails from Researchfish as the submission period approaches. Researchers (including students) will need to log on to Researchfish and submit a return during the submission period (6 Feb – 16 March 2023) to confirm that their information is accurate and complete at that time.  

The 2023 submission period is from Monday 6 February to Thursday 16 March, 2023.

Researchers must ensure that information they submit is NOT sensitive or confidential and may be safely released into the public domain. The lead PI must submit the data to confirm acceptance of the Principles of Use:  https://www.ukri.org/publications/principles-of-use-for-research-outcomes-collected-in-researchfish/

Submitting Data

During the submission period, you will see something similar to the screenshot below, with award(s) where a mandatory submission is expected highlighted red, and those with a non-mandatory submission highlighted orange. These will be grouped by funder. You can find guidance on answering the Mandatory Additional Questions on the UKRI website. Once you have completed the MAQs for each award, you must submit each individually, remembering to complete the full process for all funders. A checkbox to indicate that The Principles Of Use have been read will also be presented before submitting (there may also be an additional checkbox if data has not been entered in every section to indicate that this omission is intentional).

Successful submissions will be confirmed by email, and the successfully submitted awards will show highlighted green. If they don't show in the green highlighted section or you don't get an email, submission is not complete, and you should go back to the award to check and complete the process.

Nil Returns

PIs should still make a submission for their grants even if they have no outcomes to report. Only the PI is able to make a nil submission

To make a nil submission the PI must add “not applicable this year” for all the mandatory questions required by their funders on each grant, and then submitting. The Researchfish system will prevent submission from taking place until the mandatory questions have been answered.