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Adding and updating Activity and Impact data in RRE

Please note, this page refers to pre-2021 Research Review Excersises. For 2024 RRE guidence, please refer to your faculty guidence for Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health or Faculty of Humanities

FSE are not running an RRE in 2024.  

There are a number of benefits to ensuring that information on your activities and examples of impact are up to date in Pure, e.g.:

  • You can choose to showcase your activities and impact on your Research Explorer profile, increasingly the visibility of all your work, and including this data when creating CVs in Pure
  • At the local level this information can be valuable in helping to develop REF Environment Statements and/or impact case studies. 
  • Faculties would like to identify colleagues who are members of funding bodies committees or peer review panels
  • Faculty Knowledge Exchange and Impact Officers can follow up and signpost to relevant resources and support
  • If the university is negotiating a new strategic partnership with a company, we can contact all those who have collaborated with them previously
  • Funders and government ask us for evidence of engagement or impact activity related to particular topic, and this information will help make the case for further investment in research

 

What is the difference between an Activity record and an Impact record?

The Activities section in Pure can be used for recording esteem-related data and other academic and non-academic interactions such as invited talks, conference participation, exhibitions, editorial work, spin-outs, membership of professional associations etc. These are often referred to as ‘Pathways to Impact’ as over time these activities may eventually lead to societal or economic impacts. Pure allows you to add links and documents to records, ensuring all the related information can be gathered in one place.

An ‘Impact’ record should have clear beneficiaries and evidence of change, effect or influence on a non-academic beneficiary. Examples of impact might be bringing about change to public policy, evidence of improved cost-effectiveness, improving patient outcomes, or changing public understanding. These impacts may occur over a long timeframe and result from a number of engagement activities and research publications. You can link your impact to other impacts, to activities and to other Pure content (publications, projects, etc.)

See detailed user guides on:

Recording Activities in Pure

Recording Impact in Pure

Is it necessary to record all my Activities on Pure?

No. You may not want to record every activity you’re involved in, but select those which you consider most significant or that could be valuable for colleagues to be aware of (e.g. Research Council panel membership). This information is incredibly valuable for the university and we particularly appreciate your time spent recording it.
You can also choose to make this information public, making sure that your external profile reflects your full research career. It is recognised that some staff will have little or nothing to report in this section, depending on the type of focus and stage of their research.

Adding Activities in Pure

Log into Pure, and click on the plus sign beside 'Activities' to create a new record. Select the most appropriate category and sub-category, e.g. Talk or presentation>> Invited talk.

The Activities section in Pure can be used for recording information on both academic and non-academic interactions such as organising and participating in events, editorial work, committee membership, secondments & external visiting position, contributions to exhibitions, etc.

Once you have created and saved an Activity record there is a handy ‘copy’ button which appears at the bottom right of the record, which can save time in re-entering data if you have a number of similar records to create.

Activities can be linked to each other and to other content types in Pure such as Projects or Research outputs, which will help build relationships between your key entries.

Data provided to the RRE exercise in previous years (pre2016) has been migrated to Pure and placed in a corresponding Activity sub-category as far as possible. This information has been set to ‘Back End’ visibility meaning that it does not show automatically on external Researcher Profiles. Individual researchers can change the visibility settings of their records and edit all of this information directly.

More guidance is available in the User guide for Recording Activities in Pure

 

 

Adding Impacts in Pure

Log into Pure, and click on the plus sign beside 'Impacts' to create a new record.

An Impact should describe a change, effect or influence on a non-academic beneficiary.

Before creating a new Impact record in Pure, consider whether you can describe the evidence of change/improvement resulting from the research and activities and can specify who or what has benefitted. An impact record will often evolve over time, possibly linked to one or more underpinning pieces of research, or funded projects, and probably involving several activities. You may also be collecting together several pieces of ‘evidence’ – documents and testimonies of various types. Once you feel that you would like to start recording details of your impact, create an Impact record in Pure.

You may wish to consult relevant colleagues about your Impact and how you are recording it.

More guidance is available in the User guide Recording Impact in Pure.