Research evaluation

Like many other funding organisations, we are accountable to our stakeholders, and therefore it is crucial that we monitor the outcomes of the research we fund on a regular basis. It is also important that we can provide our supporters with evidence that the research we fund is translated into advances in the fight against cardiovascular disease. 

We use Researchfish, an online survey database developed from MRC e-Val, to gather information about research outputs and outcomes.

The principle behind Researchfish is simple: to allow researchers to record all their research outputs and outcomes once only, in a format that allows easy submission of the relevant parts to individual funding organisations. In implementing Researchfish, we have worked together with other funders to address the increasing administrative burden faced by researchers due to the many separate initiatives to collect research output data.

We will use the Researchfish system to collect data on outcomes and impacts arising from all our awards (with the exception of BHF Chairs, Infrastructure Grants, Strategic Initiatives and BHF Centres of Research Excellence). We will ask for information on all active (financially open) grants as well as any grant that closed after 1 January 2012.

What you will need to do

We will ask you to enter the relevant information into distinct output types and sections in your Researchfish portfolio. You or a nominated delegate can add, edit and delete entries, which can then be quickly and easily attributed to one or more grant awards you hold with us, or with any of the other funding organisations that use Researchfish.

When to submit

We will ask you to submit BHF-related grant evaluation data once a year, during a defined time period.

After the submission period, you can enter, amend and update information in your portfolio at any time throughout the year. As we begin to understand more about the length of time in which outputs are realised, we will be able to establish a cut-off point, sometime after grant closure, after which we will no longer request updates. We will retain the data submitted to us in Researchfish indefinitely.

Researchfish has organised training sessions in the form of webinars for researchers; a short video also demonstrates how to enter, attribute and submit data for a particular grant. Visit Researchfish for further information and registration. 

Condition of grant

Submitting Researchfish data is a Condition of Grant. You will no longer need to submit a grant Annual Report unless otherwise specified, but you will still need to submit a Final Report within 3 months of the end of your grant in addition to submitting Researchfish data.

For further information about Annual and Final Reports, see Reporting Progress.

We will perform an annual analysis of the outputs from all our awards collected in Researchfish. This will inform internal discussions around our research funding. We will also publish the results of this analysis on our website. We will not draw comparisons between the outputs of individual researchers. We may share results from analyses carried out on the data collected in Researchfish at the level of grant scheme, strategic initiative, or field of research with other funding agencies or research organisations, as part of joint evaluation studies.

The BHF complies with the requirements of the Data Protection Act 1998 with regard to the
collection, storage, processing and disclosure of personal information and is committed to upholding the Act’s core data protection principles.

Queries

Further updates will follow as needed on this website.

Check our list of frequently asked questions to see if your query can be resolved there.

For technical queries please contact the Researchfish support team. For any other queries, please email research@bhf.org.uk.

November 2012