A funding acknowledgement statement is a required, specifically formatted sentence in any publication resulting from a funder’s support, naming the funder and the award number and, for many funders, paired with a disclaimer that the funder does not necessarily endorse the findings.
This is a distinct, and separately required, piece of text from a CRediT contribution statement (which describes who did what on the project) or an AI-use disclosure (which describes generative-AI tool use in preparing the manuscript). A single paper can, and often does, need all three as separate elements.
What a funding acknowledgement statement is for
Funders require acknowledgement statements for two overlapping reasons. First, compliance: nearly every major funder’s terms and conditions of award obligate the recipient institution to acknowledge the funder’s support in any resulting publication, and failing to do so is a real, auditable term-of-award violation, not just an etiquette lapse. Second, visibility and impact tracking: funders use the grant number embedded in a publication’s acknowledgement to link that output back to the specific award in their own reporting systems and in bibliographic databases. NIH, for example, explicitly notes that citing an award number in the correct format improves how a paper is captured by NIH’s own information resources, including PubMed, PubMed Central, and RePORTER — the funder’s ability to demonstrate its own return on public investment depends on outputs being traceably linked back to the grants that produced them.
The core elements every acknowledgement statement needs
Formats vary by funder in their exact wording, but nearly all acknowledgement statements are built from the same three components:
- The funder’s name, written out in full (not just an acronym on first use) — e.g., “National Institutes of Health,” “National Science Foundation,” “Wellcome,” “UK Research and Innovation,” or the specific Horizon Europe programme.
- The award or grant number, in the funder’s own preferred format (NIH, for instance, asks for a specific activity-code format such as R01GM123456 rather than an informally abbreviated version).
- A disclaimer clause, where the funder requires one — language clarifying that the views expressed are the authors’ own and do not necessarily represent the funder’s official position. Not every funder requires this in every publication type (see the NSF exception below), so check the specific award’s terms rather than assuming one universal rule.
Where a paper draws on more than one grant, only the grant(s) that actually supported the work described in that specific publication should be cited — funders including NIH are explicit that acknowledging an award that did not contribute to the reported work is itself a compliance problem, not a harmless inclusion.
How requirements vary by funder
The general shape above is consistent, but the exact required wording differs enough between funders that an acknowledgement statement written for one funder’s format will not automatically satisfy another’s. This is drawn from each funder’s own published policy; always confirm against the current version before final submission, since funders do revise this guidance.
NIH (National Institutes of Health)
The NIH Grants Policy Statement sets out both a required acknowledgement sentence and a required disclaimer for federally funded publications. The disclaimer is required regardless of whether the publication also carries a funder-specific acknowledgement sentence. See the illustrative example below for the standard wording pattern. This sits alongside, and is separate from, the NIH Public Access Policy, which governs where and how the resulting manuscript itself must be deposited.
NSF (National Science Foundation)
NSF’s Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) requires a disclaimer on publications and web material based on NSF-supported work, with one notable exception worth knowing: NSF’s own guidance carves out scientific articles or papers appearing in scientific, technical, or professional journals from the disclaimer requirement, while still expecting the underlying award to be acknowledged. In practice, most researchers include the acknowledgement and disclaimer in journal articles anyway, both because journal-specific author guidelines commonly require it independently and because it is the safer default when in doubt.
Wellcome
Wellcome requires that Wellcome and the specific grant number be listed in every research output to which Wellcome funding contributed — not only journal articles, but preprints, datasets, and other outputs covered by its policies. See the related guide on the Wellcome Early-Career Award for how this fits into a specific award’s broader outputs-management obligations.
UKRI (UK Research and Innovation)
UKRI’s guidance follows the same general sentence-plus-grant-number pattern common across UK research councils: the funder written out in full, followed by the grant number, typically in square brackets. Where a paper draws on support from more than one UKRI council or from multiple funders together, UKRI’s guidance specifies how to separate multiple funder citations within a single sentence (by semicolon, with “and” preceding the final funder). See the CASRAI guides on how UK Research and Innovation works and how UKRI’s nine councils and Funding Service fit together for the broader award-administration context this acknowledgement obligation sits within.
Horizon Europe
Horizon Europe’s Model Grant Agreement (Article 17, Communication, Dissemination and Visibility) is more prescriptive than most: since 2021, every recipient of EU funding has a legal obligation, not just a publisher-facing courtesy, to acknowledge that the action received EU funding, generally including a form of the EU emblem alongside the funding statement where the output type calls for it, and a standard disclaimer that the views expressed are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the granting authority. A UKRI-administered Horizon Europe Guarantee award (where a UK-based project is funded through UKRI rather than directly by the European Commission) generally follows UKRI’s own acknowledgement format instead — check which funding route applies to a specific award before assuming either format is correct.
Illustrative example wording
The examples below are illustrative composites written to show the general shape of each funder’s required format — they are not quoted from, or attributed to, any real grant, award number, or publication. Always use the exact wording and current award number required by your own award’s terms and conditions, which take precedence over any general example.
- NIH: “Research reported in this publication was supported by the [Institute/Center name] of the National Institutes of Health under award number [R01XXXXXXXX]. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.”
- NSF: “This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. [XXXXXXX]. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.”
- Wellcome: “This work was supported by Wellcome [grant number XXXXXX].”
- UKRI (single council): “This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [grant number XX/XXXXXX/X].”
- Horizon Europe: “This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No [XXXXXXX]. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the granting authority. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.”
Where it goes, and how it relates to the acknowledgments section
The funding acknowledgement statement is conventionally placed in, or immediately alongside, a manuscript’s acknowledgments section, distinct from the byline and, where a journal or funder requires one, distinct from a separate CRediT contribution statement. It is not a substitute for either. A funder is acknowledged for financial support, not credited as a contributor in the CRediT sense; the CRediT taxonomy’s own Funding Acquisition role (see CASRAI’s Funding Acquisition role page) instead credits the specific person or people who secured the financial support for the project — a related but distinct concept from the funder acknowledgement statement itself, and from an acknowledged contributor who is named for non-authorship work.
Common mistakes and compliance risks
- Omitting the disclaimer clause. Some funders require it on every resulting output, not only journal articles — check before assuming a preprint, dataset, or conference paper is exempt.
- Using an outdated or informally abbreviated award number format. Funders including NIH ask for a specific format because their own indexing systems parse it programmatically; an abbreviated or reformatted number can break that link even though it is still human-readable.
- Acknowledging a grant that did not actually support the work reported in that specific publication. This is a compliance issue in its own right for some funders, not a harmless extra credit.
- Assuming one funder’s format satisfies another’s requirement on a multi-funder, multi-national collaboration — each funder’s acknowledgement and disclaimer language generally needs to be included separately and correctly attributed to the right award.
- Confusing the funding acknowledgement with the CRediT statement or the AI-disclosure statement. All three can appear on the same manuscript; they answer different questions (who paid, who did the work, what AI tools were used) and dropping one because another is present is a common, avoidable error.
Frequently asked questions
Is a funding acknowledgement statement the same as a CRediT statement?
No. A funding acknowledgement statement credits the funder and cites the award number; a CRediT contribution statement describes which named individuals did which specific tasks on the project. Many journals require both, as separate elements of the same manuscript.
Do I need a funding acknowledgement statement for a preprint?
Often yes — several funders, Wellcome among them, require acknowledgement on any research output the funding contributed to, not only the final published journal article. Check the specific funder’s policy rather than assuming preprints are exempt.
What happens if I forget to include a required funder acknowledgement?
It is a real compliance gap against the award’s terms and conditions, not merely a courtesy lapse, and can affect the funder’s own ability to track the output back to the grant. Most institutions’ sponsored-programs or research-office staff can help correct an omitted acknowledgement, including via a published correction where the paper has already appeared.
Do all co-authors’ individual grants need to be acknowledged?
Only the grant(s) that actually supported the specific work reported in that publication should be cited, per guidance from funders including NIH — not every grant a co-author happens to hold.
Where can I find the exact required wording for my specific award?
The award’s own notice of award or grant agreement, together with the funder’s current grants policy guidance (for example, the NIH Grants Policy Statement or NSF’s PAPPG), is the authoritative source — general guidance like this page describes the common pattern, but the specific award’s terms always take precedence.
