February 18, 2020

How Wellcome are using Researchfish data to inform what they do

“Researchfish has helped us learn more about types of outputs that can’t be easily found in other data sources, such as medical products, collaborations, and influences in policy and practice”

In 2019 Wellcome joined the Researchfish community and asked some of their grant holders to report their outcomes of funded research across 16 types of activities, including research papers, collaborations, datasets, patents, public engagement and policy influences.

Findings included:

  • 95% of grantholders published research outputs during their grant, with a total of 3,802 unique publications. And it wasn’t just traditional journal articles – there were books, conferences, pre-prints and reports.
  • A third of grantholders reported that their work had an impact on policy and practice; 83% of these impacts had an influence on the area of healthcare. 
  • 67% of grantholders were involved in partnerships or collaborations during their grant, on 4,788 projects based in the UK, the US, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and South Africa. 
  • 31 patents were reported, at least 16 unique products and interventions, including drugs, diagnostic tools and preventive interventions (for example, vaccines) were generated.

Next Steps

“We’d like to combine our aggregated data with that of other funders, to assess the wider research landscape – something that would really make the most of using a common platform for data collection.”

Read the full article on the Wellcome website.

This news was also reported by Research Professional News (requires a subscription to access all the content).