All UK research councils adopt unified digital platform for capturing research outputs

The UK’s seven research councils are adopting a single research outputs data collection service, Researchfish, to capture the outputs of the £4.5bn of research they fund every year across the UK in a consistent way.

The Arts and Humanities Research Council, Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council, Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council, Economic & Social Research Council, and the Natural Environment Research Council join the Science & Technology Facilities Council and the Medical Research Council, which have already been using Researchfish.

Researchfish works by connecting researchers together with the funding bodies and the universities that support them. Through the service interfaces, funding bodies can capture the outputs from specific research grants, allowing funders to see the value their funding is achieving both now and well beyond the lifetime of the grant; as advances stemming from expired funding can be retrospectively attributed. The system is said to enable simple, consistent and accurate reporting of research outputs and facilitates a single point of data entry for researchers who need to communicate their outputs to multiple agencies.

Frances Buck, director of Researchfish commented: “This is a fantastic step forward for harmonising how research outputs are reported in the UK. We are delighted that all of the research councils will now be using Researchfish to track their researchers outputs and funding. The potential this opens up for cross sector advances and analysis of research funding is huge.'