FAQs

Anybody with access to Elements (within the university) can create a record, and collaborate on one if they have been made a collaborator on the record. Students and technical specialists can be added as collaborators, as long as they have access to Elements. The intention is for researchers to create their own records, however the impact team in R&IS can certainly provide support by creating records on behalf of researchers. If you would like R&IS to support you with creation of records, please speak to your department’s named contact in the impact team or email research_impact@warwick.ac.uk.

The intention of the record is for all related evidence to be captured in one impact record and for it to function as an evolving document. Users can have more than one record if the impacts (or underpinning research) are substantially different, are unrelated, or if there needs to be a record for a defined purpose or timeframe, or a subset of the evolved record. The record is for organising activities, events and impacts of a project not just for describing a single piece of evidence. Once the record is created events, engagement activities, documents and evidence can be easily added without the need for additional records.

This is best added as a document to the ‘evidence ’section but you can also add to the ‘narrative of events’ section and treat it like the comments section in WICS. The narrative text box doesn’t have a word limit.

You should always act in line with your responsibilities for protecting and processing data in accordance with university policy and any legislation such as GDPR. If the refusal is from an individual, do not add their details to the record. If it is an organisation, and they are not already within our research registry (all organisations within the research registry are searchable in the 'organisation' field in the essential information section of the record) do not add the organisation's details. If they have concerns regarding how their data is going to be processed either for evidencing impact for internal use or the REF, please speak to your named contact in the R&IS impact team, or email research_impact@warwick.ac.uk.Link opens in a new window

Yes. Impact doesn't happen overnight. Usually, it's quite a long, prolonged process. The aim of the system is to be a place where you can store everything related to the impact; it doesn’t matter how long ago it was. If anything, it will be much more useful if you have all the information you've got already there, so that in future, if anything does happen down the line, you can just update it. There's no sort of time limit on when the information that you have should be put into the system.

You may find that when you go back to a record and add a collaborator, their name doesn't become a hyperlink (that allows you to access their Elements profile) immediately. If you refresh the page, or close and re-load, this will become a hyperlink.

When adding a postgraduate researcher who also works as a Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) as a contributor, you may notice that they have both a student account and a staff account. It is only necessary for a contributor to be linked to an impact record through one of these accounts in order to access and collaborate on the record. However, if you would like to ensure seamless access regardless of whether they log in using their staff or student credentials, you can add both accounts to the record.

Please note that profiles for postgraduate researchers are not public-facing and therefore do not appear on profiles.warwick.ac.uk. Profiles for Graduate Teaching Assistants do appear externally on profiles.warwick.ac.uk because this is a research staff role. If you are a PGR and GTA, you will have two profiles in Elements and one on profiles.warwick.ac.uk. We recommend you maintain and update your GTA profile in Elements as this in the one that appears publicly.

You can add this as a password-protected pdf and give the password to those who need it.

Records of impact are, by default, private. They will be visible only to the creator and any co-collaborators they have added, along with colleagues in R&IS and the department’s Director of Impact. The importance of preserving partner details, for example, is being taken into account when configuring the system. For an additional level of privacy, you can upload password-protected pdfs, which are supported by the system; you will need to make sure the right people have the password so they can view the evidence of impact.

While R&IS Impact team staff do have access to edit records, they will not do so without prior agreement with your department. Any changes made are recorded in the audit trail.

You can request access, with your Departmental Impact Director's approval, to records from another department via R&IS. There are labels in place to groups records into UoAs, which the R&IS impact team can use to generate reports for you on request.

In the last REF, in REF 2021, we were supposed to submit all the evidence alongside the case study. There were some exemptions where we could keep the evidence on site and not submit it unless there was an audit. And we had less than three days to deliver that evidence across to Research England when required. In those circumstances, it would be really useful to have something central.

The impact module is a central repository used for storing and managing impact information. We consider REF impact case studies through the UOA Deep Dives, however we expect Elements to be used to manage the REF impact case study evidence and contextual information submission, so the data will need to be stored in Elements anyway in order to be submitted. It is not part of a REF output management system, but the RAS project will introduce a REF output evaluation module in future.

Some researchers used the Warwick Impact Capture System (WICS) to record impact. All WICS records have been moved into Elements. This provides continuity for those who had impact records in WICS, as they can pick up where they left off and continue to develop their records. The research leadership of WBS is currently considering whether the Business School will move from its Impact Capture System to Elements