# Tools and Metrics for Comprehensive Impact

### Research Excellence Framework (UK)

### ResearchFish (UK)

ResearchFish is a tool used by many funding bodies in the UK as a way to track outputs and impacts of scientific work. ResearchFish is used almost universally by all public funding bodies in the UK. ResearchFish primarily a data collection tool into which [the scientific investigators enter data about their work and corresponding outputs](https://hyp.is/aqWy9m5SEe2UlLdfYMDduw/rf-downloads.s3.amazonaws.com/Kings+College+Report.pdf) via a fine-grained question set. This information is fed back to the funding bodies. It is based on [early work within the RAND group led by Dr Steven Wooding.](https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rand.org%2Fcontent%2Fdam%2Frand%2Fpubs%2Fmonographs%2F2009%2FRAND_MG862.pdf&group=__world__)

In their [recent report ](http://rf-downloads.s3.amazonaws.com/Kings+College+Report.pdf)([mirror](https://wiki.jamesravey.me/attachments/41)), the authors describe their definition of Impact as being the same as that of REF's.

They use the word output to describe both academic and wider (or [comprehensive](https://wiki.jamesravey.me/books/science-of-science/page/comprehensive-impact "Comprehensive Impact")) impacts of research

[![image.png](https://wiki.jamesravey.me/uploads/images/gallery/2022-11/scaled-1680-/4uCimage.png)](https://wiki.jamesravey.me/uploads/images/gallery/2022-11/4uCimage.png)

Figure 1 From[ "Researchfish: A forward look." ](http://rf-downloads.s3.amazonaws.com/Kings+College+Report.pdf)Hinrichs, Saba, Erin Montague, and Jonathan Grant (2015).

### STAR Metrics (USA)