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Research impact and evaluation

Objectively pinpoint strengths, measure influence and deliver trustworthy information to help strengthen and elevate the reach of research recognition

Supporting research impact and evaluation

As the demand to showcase the value of academic research intensifies, our data and solutions enable you to objectively measure and demonstrate academic, societal, and economic impact.

How can I assess the quality of research to support assessments such as the REF?

There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to the REF, and different institutions take a different approach to gathering information for submission. Symplectic Elements is a highly configurable research information management (RIM) with specialist support for the REF. Our highly configurable data model makes it easy to collate specialised metadata on both traditional and non-traditional research outputs.

In 2021, we submitted just over 700 FTEs in 17 Units of Assessment, 1678 outputs and 67 impact case studies. If we tried to do that using the old method. I dread to think what would have happened, so Elements was really invaluable in getting our REF submission in.

Phineas Wenlock | Research Systems Manager | University of Essex

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“Altmetric’s data and reporting functionality provided enable us to track the influence of our work on public policy. This is incredibly useful insight into the real world application and value of our research outputs.”

University of Cambridge

How can I track research influence?

Traditional bibliometrics only tell half the story. Broaden your understanding of research influence and track thousands of online conversations across news outlets, websites, blogs and social media to uncover societal impact and boost future funding applications

How can we gather evidence of the wider societal impact of your work?

Impact doesn’t happen overnight, Symplectic Elements Impact Module allows researchers (or their proxies) to build up their impact records over time, adding narrative fields to capture events as they happen as well as adding associated files, links and references.

Elements helps you to build collection of structured, reusable impact records, ready to be curated into case studies, developed into news stories or included in reports to funders.

How can I gain wider insight into research’s most influential articles?

Altmetric 500 digs into the context of research output and the detailed measures of attention per source. Built using the Altmetric on Google’s BigQuery (GBQ), the data can be tweaked or customised to give an understanding of how, where and by whom published content is being shared across numerous different channels.

How can I demonstrate societal impact?

Symplectic Elements blends both quantitative and qualitative data, allowing you to easily build reports and track progress against your institutional goals.

Impact doesn’t happen overnight, so our dedicated built-in Impact Module allows researchers (or their proxies) to build up their impact records over time, adding narrative fields to capture events as they happen as well as adding associated files, links and references.

How can I showcase our successes and grow our reputation?

Implement an institutional repository solution that expertly handles all types of research output, alongside the provision of key usage metrics.

Make your researchers and their expertise as discoverable as possible by repurposing research information data to populate fully-rounded profiles including biographical information as well as publications, grants and professional & teaching activities.  To help your research go even further, you can also provide profile visitors with direct links to open access copies of your publications.

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Research Transformation: navigating change together

4th March 2025 | Australia
Digital Science hosted event

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