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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) – RDF Planner

Switching to the new planner offers several advantages for your organisation, and researchers.

Within the new planner, your researchers can engage with the updated RDF designed to better reflect and support professional development needs of researchers from 2025 and beyond. Drivers for the refresh include:

  • integration of the skills and competencies relevant to today’s research landscape (e.g in open research, research integrity, knowledge exchange and research culture)
  • supporting researchers to work across sectors and look to society’s future needs
  • strengthening inclusivity and recognising researchers’ position in working across different research communities
  • incorporation of digital literacy and emerging technologies
  • responding to user feedback for a more streamlined and user-friendly RDF

New resources in the planner include instructional videos and an updated handbook to help users quickly get acclimatised. As a subscriber on the new planner, you will also have access to our ‘Engaging with the RDF Planner’ campaign, which will include downloadable templates to help institutions integrate the planner and encourage researchers to engage with the tool regularly.

There is no additional cost to moving across to the updated Framework planner tool.

Once all our organisational and individual subscribers have moved over to the new planner tool over the next 12-18 months, we will begin to phase out the 2010 version as this draws on the outdated researcher development framework.

If you choose you remain in the 2010 version for the time being, your users will see some design changes. These changes have already been communicated to subscribers, but this should not impact their experience of continuing to use the planner tool.

Organisational admin contacts can see how many users are active within your planner account.

However, we can provide institutional subscribers with additional information/aggregate information on the number of actions they are logging and pieces of evidence they are uploading. As an organisation must take the decision to move across on behalf of users, this will provide a sense of engagement. Please email rdfplannerhelpdesk@vitae.ac.uk to request this further information.

Where organisations choose to be set up on the new planner we will work with you to agree a timeline for moving across.

We are unable to migrate users’ data across as the underpinning framework has been redeveloped, therefore users will need to download their data from the system to retain this and will be given a period of 28 days to download (with guidance on how to do so). Data can be downloaded in various formats, and active users will be used to using the planner in this way for the purposes of CVs and application forms etc.

As the planner draws on the updated framework, RDF 2025, which has been reconfigured, users will want to understand where skills sit in the new streamlined version and make decisions about data they wish to reupload and develop further. Our guidance for new planner users will support this thinking, to help users make the most out of the new tool, without feeling they have an onerous task to move everything across.

The new planner contains new videos, a handbook, and resources to help orientate and engage researchers in using the tool. A new online engagement campaign will also support engagement with the planner in an ongoing basis. We can also offer a supporting workshop for your researchers, for an additional low-cost fee, to support engagement with the planner. Email learning.development@vitae.ac.uk to find out more about this workshop.

Individuals subscribe on a 12-month basis and automatically renew after that period. At your next renewal point, you will be encouraged to download your data and take out a subscription to the new planner tool. Once all our organisational and individual clients have moved over to the new planner tool over the next 12-18 months, we will begin to phase out the 2010 version.

Institutions do not have access to individual RDF Planner user accounts or personal data. Each user continues to manage their own account and content. However, institutions are responsible for making organisational decisions about adopting or transitioning to RDF Planner on behalf of their researcher community.