In this page you can find answers to the following questions:
- How do we think about impact at ARUK?
- What type of outputs do we care about at ARUK?
- Why are we not using Researchfish?
If you want more details about the new reporting method please visit the FAQs page.
How do we think about impact at Alzheimer’s Research UK?
Alzheimer’s Research UK’s vision is a world free from the fear, harm, and heartbreak of dementia. Transforming the lives of people with dementia and their families is the ultimate impact we strive towards.
However, we know that biomedical research is a long and sometimes arduous process. It can take many years to translate vital new knowledge into a positive change to the lives of people with dementia.
We also know that not all projects will deliver the groundbreaking results we, or the research teams, would hope for. In this case, it’s important for us to understand why so that we can learn from it.
That is why Alzheimer’s Research UK thinks about impact at the portfolio-level and has a long-term approach when monitoring and evaluating the results of any given project.
For our annual monitoring, we look at an array of contributions that we know play a role in speeding up the progress of research. These intermediate outputs and outcomes let us know that we are on the right path towards our vision.
What type of outputs do we care about at Alzheimer’s Research UK: our reporting questionnaire.
Our reporting process is carried out via Grant Tracker and we no longer use Researchfish. The report will be a narrative questionnaire divided in three sections.
Knowledge generation
Knowledge generation can take many forms beyond scientific papers: from publishing and sharing datasets, research methods and assays, to the creation of tools that can be helpful for the scientific community. In this section, we ask whether the projects we fund answered the key questions that were asked in the research proposal, and what are the implications of that new knowledge for the wider field.
Community building
There is so much that researchers do that helps sustain the research ecosystem. Every time researchers engage in a collaboration, review a manuscript, sit on a grant board, or mentor another researcher, they are doing valuable work that helps maintain the system that will deliver the treatments and diagnostics that will make our vision possible.
Personal and career development
When our researchers learn new techniques, obtain further funding to investigate key research questions or progress in their careers we are one step closer to achieving our vision.
For more information about why we ask for these reports, and how the process will work please read our dedicated FAQs.
Why are we not using Researchfish?
We listened to the feedback provided by our grant holders and decided to adopt a reporting system that was easier to navigate, and that focused on the types of outputs that are important to us.
Our reporting process will be more narrative and less metric-oriented than Researchfish, allowing researchers to better explain how they are contributing to advances in dementia research.
This is aligned with our work as a medical research charity devoted to improving the lives of people with dementia. It also allows us to take clearer steps towards creating an enabling culture for the next generation of Early Career Researchers .
We hope this change in reporting will have a positive influence on the dementia research community and how you navigate your day-to-day work.
Researchfish has been useful in the past, and we have produced materials such as the Catch of the Year reports, and the Researchfish Outputs dashboard.
Additional means of monitoring and facilitating progress
From time to time, the Research team will visit grant holders (now conducted virtually) to meet our researchers, hear about their progress and see if there is anything we can help with. We also attend the annual scientific meetings hosted by our Research Network Centres, and various other workshops and conferences, where we are always keen to talk to researchers about their work.