User Benefits

Is the RFI
for you?

The internal process to collect data and analyse your own government’s or organisation’s policies and practices towards research collaborations will show up key areas for improvement.

Does your institution use an internationally accepted accounting standard?

If not, the RFI tool is for you. It may take time to change but it will pay off: by introducing an international accounting standard as institutional practice, your institution suddenly becomes more attractive to foreign research investors.

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The same applies to governments

Is there a policy which requires all research bodies – private or public – who receive public funds to adopt an internationally accepted accounting standard, or hire such expertise?

A major advantage for donors, financing partners and research funders is being able to refer to the RFI Report as an external requirement for funding. In this way, all funding recipients will have to be explicit on how accounting of funds will be done.
Being able to read (and question) the annual RFI reports of institutions, business or governments will make the selection and engagement in partnerships more explicit.

Any institution in a low- and middle-income country will greatly prefer to collaborate with a high-income country partner that is committed to fairly sharing intellectual property rights.

Even if data, IP or financial benefit sharing is not ‘optimal’ from the partner’s point of view, access to the RFI report makes this clear at the start of research and encourages a priori negotiation rather than post-hoc conflict.