Making the most of your research project

Lessons learnt

At the end of the project, or rather a few weeks (or months) after the end date of the project the finances will have been balanced. Your expenditure will have been matched by the income from the funder and all will be well.  Now is the time to reflect:

• Did you under spend or over spend?
• What might you have done differently to better use the resources?
• How would you change things for the next project?
• Indeed, would you have costed things differently?

Take this experience not only into your next project but also your next project proposal.

Having an impact

Even after the project has finished it is not over. You will perhaps have some research outputs that were attributable to the project but have not yet been published.

Increasingly, funders want to know the impact of their funding. Many now want post-project reports of outputs from their funding. Similarly, funders and institutions are becoming more interested in non-academic outputs from projects. Did your work have an impact on government policy? Has your discovery led to the development of a new medical treatment? It may be that your institution will, in say 15 years time, want some evidence that your project led to that publication which in turn influenced a particular policy. Your institution may have a method of attributing research outputs and indeed impact to projects - you should use this.

Visit the pages on publications, knowledge exchange and  on demonstrating research impact for more information.