Monitoring and evaluating research outputs

Outcome Mapping is a methodology for planning, monitoring and evaluation of projects promoted by the International Development Research Centre. During its ten years of existence, the Latin American Trade Network has been incorporating this methodology gradually, adapting its tools to its own features and procedures. OM provides a series of steps to the stage of planning and project definition, and data collection mechanisms and evaluation of outcomes that allow continuous monitoring and reflection. Those data collection instruments have become the main tool for Monitoring and Evaluation of the Network. Throughout that process, the instruments and steps that the proposed methodology postulates have been adapted to the possibilities and needs of LATN, positioning this regional network as a reference on the subject. This book presents the experience of application of OM in LATN and its ongoing process of adaptation. It resumes the evaluation results of the application of that methodology during the third period of LATN, from 2003 to 2008. As a result, we propose, from our experience, to consider the scope and possibilities of this methodology in research activities.