Gaining insights into a funding portfolio through publication tracking

The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) is the UK's biggest funder for health and social care research, funded by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC). The NIHR infrastructure provides research expertise, specialist facilities, a research delivery workforce and support services, all of which help to support and deliver the research we fund, and research funded by others. The NIHR is committed to maximising the impact of the research we support and fund ¹ and therefore, it is crucial for the organisation to understand the mechanisms for the movement of research between these different pieces of research infrastructure and pathways to impact on the health and wealth of the nation. The aim of this article is to share our approach to developing an understanding of pathways to impact, enablers and barriers and lessons learnt.

We used publications reported to us by our infrastructure as receiving infrastructure support and forward and backward citation analysis to trace infrastructure support for REF 2021 impact case studies and research that has had an impact on policy. We used these data to develop impact case studies for NIHR infrastructure.

Of the 6,361 REF impact case studies that are publicly available, the NIHR infrastructure has supported 327 of which 59 are supported by more than one scheme. Through our forward and backward citation analysis we have also developed impact case studies in the following NIHR priority areas:Reducing health inequalitiesDigital healthArtificial intelligenceWorkforce resilience.

The use of forward and backward citation analysis can also help research funders to understand how research is moving between different parts of their funding portfolios, pathways to impact and any gaps and opportunities. However, this comes with some challenges which need mitigation.