Expected impacts

The HERD project will have impact on various stakeholders:
On individual level:
Through introducing the research management online platform, the HERD project will have impact on university academic personnel willing to undertake the research projects. The platform will help them on all stages of the project implementation, starting from proposal development through actual project management and reporting. Through different modules incorporated in the system, the individual researchers will be able to monitor the major milestones and benchmarks of their projects, financial management of projects, and draft interim and final reports for their donors. In addition, the RM platform will have a special module displaying the individual profiles of the scholars with the possibility to upload all the necessary information, such as list of publications, patents, conferences, and citation indices, as the platform will generate the latter from the international databases.

On institutional level:
The HERD participant universities will get an online platform fully equipped to help them plan and monitor the research projects, overview the activities of their research staff, manage the project financially and provide reporting. In addition, the universities will be able to track their key performance indicators and draft strategic development plans based on the institutional data analysis. The workshops organized within the project will train the university staff to work with the platform, analyse data and use them for forecasting and strategic planning. As a result of the project, the R&D units within the Georgian HERD partner universities will be upgraded and in overall, their research capacity will be largely raised.  
In addition, the university personnel will be trained in how to introduce R&I spin-offs at the university level and have stronger links with the industry, provide market with innovative products and generate income based on this collaboration.

On national level:
Since the HERD consortium covers the major state and private universities located in Tbilisi and the regions of Georgia, the project will largely contribute to their close collaboration with each other. The joint research management platform will enhance the future collaboration of the HERD partners in respect to research funded by EU and other international and local donors. In addition, online Georgian research  portal that will be also created within the project will display the state-of-the-art information on infrastructural and human capacity of all higher education institutions in Georgia that will support the inter- and intra- university collaboration.

On international/European level:
The project will also have an impact on international level through the online Georgian research portal, as the information on the portal will help international HEIs to easily identify potential Georgian partners, map the infrastructure and the capacity of the universities and create grounds for future collaboration.