Product Overview of Researchfish
What is Researchfish?
Researchfish is an online platform designed to facilitate the reporting, tracking, and management of research outcomes and impacts. It is widely used by researchers, universities, and funding organizations globally to streamline the process of submitting and analyzing research outputs.
Key Features and Functionality
Multi-Funder Reporting
Researchfish allows researchers to report their outcomes once across multiple funders, eliminating the need for duplicate submissions. This feature enables researchers to reuse their data for their own purposes and maintain control over who can access their information.
Comprehensive Data Entry and Validation
The platform uses a simple, one-click environment for adding research outcomes, which are categorized into thirteen easily recognized types. Researchers or their delegates can add, edit, and delete entries, and attribute them to specific awards or their CVs. The system employs drop-down lists, radio buttons, and field-level validation to ensure quick and accurate data entry. Autocomplete and prepopulated list data are also utilized to capture associated meta-data without requiring manual input from researchers.
Lookup and Search Functions
Researchfish integrates various lookup and search functions to save time and improve data quality. These include lookups in databases such as PubMed, Crossref, Web of Science, and others for publications, intellectual property, datasets, and further funding. For example, researchers can use IDs to populate multiple fields for publications, patents, and other outputs, reducing the need for manual entry.
Outcome Sections
- Publications: Allows direct lookups to databases like PubMed and bulk upload capabilities for books, book chapters, monographs, policy briefings, journal articles, and conference proceedings.
- Collaborations and Partnerships: Enables recording of new collaborations with other organizations, including pre-populated lists of organizations and associated meta-data.
- Further Funding: Allows linking one award with another and manual entry of further funding with autolookup fields for funding organizations.
- Development of Products and Interventions: Simplifies the entry of outcomes related to new products and interventions, including development stages, clinical trial stages, and impacts.
Profile and Notification Management
Researchers can manage their personal details, passwords, and subscriptions within the Profile section. The Notices tab allows researchers to see, subscribe to, and receive notifications from their funding organizations or other organizations tracking outcomes in Researchfish.
Delegation and Verification
Researchers can invite delegates to complete outcomes on their behalf, with the requirement that the researcher must verify the accuracy of the data entered by their delegates before final submission.
Reporting and Analytics
The e-Val interface, used by funding organizations, provides a permissions-based system with comprehensive reporting capabilities. It allows for real-time reporting, data retrieval in various formats (e.g., Excel, CSV), and graphical representation of data. This significantly reduces administrative time and the need for extensive data cleaning and analysis, potentially reducing paperwork by up to 80% for End of Grant reports.
Compliance and Impact Assessment
Researchfish is crucial for compliance with funding requirements, as failure to submit a full report can result in sanctions from funders such as UK Research Councils. The platform helps funders and researchers demonstrate the value and impact of publicly funded research, enabling better assessment and communication of research outcomes.
Conclusion
In summary, Researchfish is a powerful tool that simplifies the reporting and management of research outcomes, enhances data accuracy, and provides robust reporting and analytics capabilities, making it an essential resource for researchers, universities, and funding organizations worldwide.