The iFQ – Institut für Forschungsinformation und Qualitätssicherung (Institute for Research Information and Quality Assurance) is a scientific institution, which is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG – Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) as a "central research facility". 

The institute’s objectives are:

• permanent monitoring and evaluation of the DFG funding activities;
• analysis of general developments in the national and international research field;
• provision of information on the results of research funded by the DFG;
• establishment and networking of information resources.

From these objectives, three major tasks result:

• Research Information: to provide general information about actors, projects, results and success of German research with the aid of data base-supported information systems;
• Monitoring: permanent observation of developments in the field of publicly funded research based on a set of key data and indicators;
• Quality Assurance: the iFQ will use data generated in monitoring processes and special surveys to check the degree to which the goals of funding programmes have been achieved.