Reviewed: May 2025

There are many different ways to capture information about the impact of funded research. 

Methods include:

• Standard progress monitoring and end of grant reporting
• Bespoke progress reports or surveys
• Phone or in person interviews of award holders
• Mining online data repositories
• Online platforms

It is important to think through what mechanisms might help throughout the grant life cycle and beyond, who to ask and be conscious of the resource requirements for researchers and others in the system to support this. The methods used to capture research impact can depend on different factors:

• The size and breadth of the research portfolio
• Whether impact is being captured retrospectively or prospectively
• Capacity within the team, such as staff availability and budget

Tools to support with collection

There are several tools on the market to support with impact tracking. 

A major one is Researchfish®. This started out as a question set funded by Versus Arthritis (previously known as Arthritis Research Campaign).  This question set and software has been adopted by the majority of major funders in the UK, with an estimated 76% of UK research expenditure in the form of grants and fellowships between 2012-2023 going through the platform.  This includes 90% of 2023 UK research expenditure from AMRC member charities.

Grant holders are asked to annually to report on outputs and outcomes they attribute to their funding.  This data is generally collected for the life of the award and 5 years afterwards, although impacts may be reported after this timeframe. 

Other guidance in this section includes:

• Classifying research impact

• Types of impact evaluation

• Challenges to measuring impact

• Communicating research impact

• Using theory of change to evaluate the impact of funded research

• Research impact