Engagement & impact

myPublications helps you to record and monitor the impact of your research. Finding, collecting and storing evidence of impact can be an arduous task, especially when the evidence is collected after the fact. Impact can often take years to develop and is created, shaped and driven by those conducting the research. The timely capture of this information will help you to prepare for the next REF, as well as other impact-related activities.

Create a new impact record

There are no scholarly databases for impact, so records must be created and updated manually. Go to My Profile > My Work > Engagement & impact and click the large + button.

Enter as much information as possible.

• • Select a relationship based on whether you are the lead or making a contribution (not displayed if you are an Impact Officer).

  • Give your impact a title. This can be a working title or the title of a case study. Unique titles will be easier to locate and retrieve.

  • Capture significant events of your impact in the narrative. Over time, you can add additional entries to show progress.

  • List individuals who contributed to this impact.

  • Attach evidence in the form of documents, links or contact details.

Be sure to click Save before clicking Done.

View a detailed walkthrough

Update an existing record

Go to My Profile > My Work > Engagement & impact to see your impact list. They can be sorted, filtered, and managed in the exactly the same way as outputs.

• Click on the title of the impact record you would like to update.

• To update the narrative, click the Edit record button in the Data sources section. You can reorder narrative entries by dragging them.

• To attach new evidence, click the Manage evidence button in the Supporting evidence section.

Labels

Labels can be added to help categorise the types of impact. You can add as many as are relevant either at the end of creating a new record or by clicking on the labels tab at the bottom of an existing record. You don't need to edit the record.

Top tips

• Upload evidence as soon as it is obtained so that it is stored securely.

• Add to the narratives as activities occur. By capturing qualitative impact as early as possible you have an ongoing narrative to which you can refer.

• Link the impact to related outputs, grants or professional activities. This helps to build links between research inputs (funding), the activities, as well as the resulting outputs and outcomes.