RADAR (http://radar.gsa.ac.uk/) is the Glasgow School of Art’s institutional repository, and showcases thousands of research outputs in the fields of art, design and architecture, making details and images of artefacts, exhibitions and performances (as well as books, journal articles and conference papers) available to a global audience. Increasingly, RADAR is also being utilised as an internal tool, and now provides the GSA’s researchers with the ability to create Annual Research Plans (ARPs), helping to maximise the number of high quality submissions to the next REF.

Following on from my 2016 presentation (http://radar.gsa.ac.uk/4686/), I will show what RADAR has done next: building on the capability to house ARPs, we now have a workflow for the peer review of these plans within RADAR. As part of a blind peer review process, reviewers can attach comments to a specific ARP, which are then considered by a wider review panel at a face to face meeting. A panel chair then adds a summary statement to each ARP, which is subsequently released to the researcher, without the peer reviewers’ comments becoming visible.

As outlined in a recent case study, this work has “led to increased user engagement, and […] demonstrated a new use for the repository beyond its scholarly communication function” (http://radar.gsa.ac.uk/5296/). In the conference theme’s spirit of celebrating progress, and exploring trends and challenges, the continued development of (and investment in) RADAR is bearing fruit: as more researchers are using RADAR, more outputs are being added, and visibility and downloads are increasing – enabling the GSA’s research to become more impactful.