When PI’s access their award, there are 15 “Common Outcome” categories that allow them to input any outcomes that have arisen as a result of their award. These outcome categories are comprised of Publications, Collaborations & Partnerships, Engagement Activities, etc. It is up to PI’s to use their judgement as to which outcome categories they need to access and complete. However, your organisation may wish to collect specific information from PI’s that does not fall into one of the outcome categories. You may even wish to make this mandatory, preventing PI’s from submitting unless they have provided this information. Additional Questions allow your organisation to do this. Your organisation can create a question form that asks PI’s anything you like, and these question forms can be tailored however you wish. For example, you may wish to ask your PI’s a series of questions in which the PI’s must select their answer from a pre-determined list of answers. Or you may wish to ask your PI’s to type in their answers. You may wish to make certain questions conditional, only appearing if the PI gave a specific answer to a previous question. A single question form is called an “Additional Question” section. You are free to create multiple Additional Question sections, and you may choose which awards to assign them to. There is no limit to the amount of awards an Additional Question section may be assigned to, nor is there a limit on how many Additional Question sections may be assigned to a single award.

Because Additional Questions are bespoke, the creation of a new one requires development time and resources. For this reason, there is an additional cost for the creation of an Additional Question section (in addition to the standard Researchfish subscription cost). This cost can vary depending on several factors, such as the complexity of the section, how many sections you want to be created, if you wish to use/amend an existing additional question section used by another funding organisation (with their permission). If you would like to discuss creating an additional question section, and the cost involved, please contact rfclientsupport@elsevier.com, and a member of our Customer Relations Team will be happy to assist you.

Once an Additional Question section has been created for your organisation, you or another administrator for your organisation are free to assign it to any awards you wish. To do so, go to e-Val > Awards, search for any relevant awards, and when the results are listed, use the checkboxes to the left of each award (highlighted in red in the below screenshot) to choose which awards you want to assign an Additional Question section to. Then click on the “Choose Action” drop-down list at the bottom of the page (highlighted in green) and choose “Assign Additional Question.” Then choose the desired Additional Question section (highlighted in blue).

• If you then click on the “Save” button, the specified Additional Question will then be assigned to the chosen awards. 
• If you wish to remove an Additional Question section from an award, simply repeat this process, however instead of “Assign Additional Question” in the drop-down list, select “Remove Additional Question.” 
• Alternatively, when uploading an RHT via the “Award Details Uploader,” there is a column in the spreadsheet for each Additional Question section that your funding organisation uses that allows you to specify if it should be assigned to each award. Additional guidance can be found within the RHT template itself.

Once Additional Questions have been assigned to awards, you can control things such as whether or not they are “active," whether they are mandatory for PI’s to complete, and whether PI’s are required to answer them from scratch for each submission period or whether previous answers can be resubmitted. To do this, go to the left-hand navigation, scroll down to “Section Management.” Then select “Sections”.

The following page will show each of the Additional Question sections used by your organisation, and for each one will show if it is required, enabled, or shared, and the clearing policy will be displayed.

These can be edited by clicking the “Edit” button to the right of one of the Additional Question you wish to amend. This will take you to a page where you can adjust each setting.

If an award has at least one Additional Question section assigned to it, when PI’s access their award in Researchfish, they will see these on the “Award Details” page, listed under “Additional Funder Questions” beneath the list of Common Outcomes.

To the right of each Additional Question section is a red or green ! or tick icon. These identify if the PI has completed/updated the Additional Question section for the current submission period, and if the PI is required to do so.

• A red ! icon indicates that the PI is required to (and has yet to) enter the Additional Question section and complete it (this entails either answering all questions from scratch, or confirming/updating their previous answers from a past submission period).The PI will be unable to submit the award until they do this.
• A green ! icon indicates that the PI has not completed the Additional Question section (this entails either answering all questions from scratch, or confirming/updating their previous answers from a past submission period), but they are not required to do so. They will be able to submit the award regardless.
• A green tick icon indicates that the PI has already accessed the Additional Question section and completed/updated it since the award was last submitted. They will be able to submit the award.

Additional Question sections with a red ! icon (ones that require action) will always appear above any with a green icon (ones that do not require action). When a PI accesses an Additional Question section, they will be presented with a question form that looks like the following screenshot (though the questions will differ):

PI’s can simply answer the questions, and then click the “Save” button at the bottom of the page.

If you have any questions regarding Additional Question functionality, please feel free to get in touch with our support team via rfclientsupport@elsevier.com, and a member of our Support Team will be happy to assist you.