CASRAI Dictionary

Category: Guides & Explainers

Practical how-to guides, templates, checklists, and career pathways for research administrators, authors, and institutional teams.

  • Research Data Steward Job Description and Skills

    A research data steward is the named individual within a university, institute, or funded project who takes operational responsibility for the quality, FAIR compliance, documentation, and lifecycle management of a defined set of research datasets — distinct from the data owner, who holds accountability and sign-off authority, and the data custodian, who runs the technical storage infrastructure. The role sits inside the institutional research data management (RDM) team, typically reporting through the research office or library, and exists specifically because generic corporate data-steward job descriptions do not map cleanly onto grant-funded, multi-investigator, publicly scrutinised research data.

    Corporate data stewardship (the model most job-description templates online describe) is built around commercial master data, customer records, and regulatory compliance such as GDPR. Research data stewardship is built around a different set of pressures: funder-mandated Data Management Plans (DMPs), the FAIR Guiding Principles, discipline-specific repositories, and long-term reuse by researchers who were not part of the original project. This article defines the research-specific version of the role, maps it against the data owner and data custodian, and shows exactly where it sits in an institutional RDM structure.

    What Does a Research Data Steward Do?

    A research data steward manages the day-to-day quality, description, and reuse-readiness of research datasets on behalf of a principal investigator, department, or institutional repository. The role is operational, not accountable: a data steward implements policy, while a data owner sets it.

    Core duties typically include:

    • Reviewing datasets against the FAIR Guiding Principles — Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable — before deposit in a repository.
    • Writing and maintaining metadata, codebooks, and data dictionaries so a dataset is comprehensible to someone outside the original research team.
    • Advising researchers on Data Management Plan (DMP) compliance during grant applications and at project milestones.
    • Coordinating with disciplinary or institutional repositories on deposit, embargo periods, and licence selection.
    • Liaising with the data custodian (IT/systems) on storage, backup, and access-control implementation.
    • Flagging data quality issues — missing consent documentation, inconsistent variable coding, broken file formats — before they reach publication or reuse.

    UKRI’s Concordat on Open Research Data (2016) states that institutions are expected to have “clearly assigned responsibilities for the management of research data,” which is the direct policy basis most UK universities cite when creating dedicated data steward posts inside RDM or library services.

    Research Data Steward vs Data Owner vs Data Custodian

    These three roles are frequently conflated in generic data-governance content, but in a research setting they map to distinct, complementary functions. The data owner holds accountability; the data steward holds operational responsibility; the data custodian holds technical infrastructure responsibility.

    Role Primary focus in RDM Typical post-holder Accountable for
    Data owner Accountability and sign-off Principal Investigator or Head of Department Decisions on access, sharing, and retention of a specific dataset
    Data steward Operational quality and FAIR compliance Research data steward / RDM officer, often in the library or research office Metadata, documentation, DMP compliance, deposit readiness
    Data custodian Technical storage and access control Research IT / systems administrator Backup, encryption, storage infrastructure, access provisioning

    A single dataset can pass through all three roles: the PI (owner) approves that a dataset can be shared, the data steward prepares it to FAIR standard and selects the repository and licence, and the data custodian executes the technical transfer and sets the access permissions.

    What Skills and Qualifications Does the Role Require?

    Research data stewards need a blend of technical data-management skills and subject-domain fluency that generic corporate data-steward job descriptions rarely specify. Institutions increasingly treat this as a distinct career pathway rather than an IT-adjacent generalist role.

    • Working knowledge of the FAIR principles and metadata standards (Dublin Core, DDI, discipline-specific schemas).
    • Familiarity with persistent identifier infrastructure — DOIs assigned via DataCite, and researcher identifiers via ORCID — for correctly attributing and citing datasets.
    • Understanding of funder DMP requirements, including Horizon Europe’s and cOAlition S’s expectation that funded research data be FAIR by default.
    • Basic data-cleaning and documentation skills (spreadsheet/database literacy, controlled vocabularies, version control).
    • Communication skills sufficient to negotiate data-sharing terms between researchers, ethics committees, and repository managers.

    Professional bodies including ARMA (Association of Research Managers and Administrators) and INORMS now track research data stewardship as a recognised strand within the broader research-administration career pathway, reflecting its growing separation from generic corporate data governance.

    How Does This Differ from the CRediT “Data Curation” Role?

    The ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022 CRediT taxonomy — originated by CASRAI in 2014 and now stewarded by NISO — includes “Data Curation” as one of fourteen contributor roles credited on a published paper. This is a per-publication authorship credit, not a job title or institutional post. A research data steward, by contrast, is an ongoing operational role that may perform data-curation work across many projects and papers, only some of which will formally credit them under the CRediT taxonomy. Conflating the two is a common error in job-description drafting.

    Where Does the Role Sit in the Institutional RDM Team?

    Research data stewards typically sit within one of three institutional homes: the library/research-data-services team, the central research office, or a departmental/faculty RDM function. Reporting lines vary, but the steward almost always works across, not inside, individual research groups.

    • Library-based model: data steward reports into research data services alongside repository managers and scholarly-communications staff — common where the institution treats RDM as an extension of open-access infrastructure.
    • Research-office model: data steward sits alongside grants and ethics administrators, closer to the DMP-compliance and funder-reporting workflow.
    • Departmental model: larger science faculties sometimes embed a data steward within a department, working directly with PIs on discipline-specific formats and repositories.

    In all three models, the data steward reports functionally to institutional data governance policy (set by data owners at PI or departmental-head level) while collaborating operationally with IT-based data custodians on infrastructure. The four core stewardship areas identified in institutional data-governance models — operational oversight, data quality, privacy/security/risk management, and policies and procedures — apply directly to this reporting structure.

    Answer-First Q&A

    What skills do you need to be a data steward?

    A data steward needs both technical and business-facing skills: metadata and data-modelling literacy, familiarity with data-quality tooling, and strong communication skills to translate governance policy into day-to-day research practice. In a research context, this also requires knowledge of FAIR principles, funder DMP requirements, and discipline-specific repository standards.

    What are the four main roles of an effective data stewardship model?

    An effective stewardship model groups responsibilities into four areas: operational oversight, data quality, privacy, security and risk management, and policies and procedures. Research data stewards typically own operational oversight and data quality directly, while collaborating with data owners and custodians on the remaining two areas.

    What makes a good data steward?

    A good data steward combines subject-domain credibility with disciplined documentation habits — able to identify data-quality problems early, communicate clearly with both researchers and technical staff, and apply governance rules consistently. In research settings, respect from the researcher community is essential, since the steward has no direct authority over the data owner.

    What is another title for a data steward?

    Common alternative titles include research data manager, data curator, RDM officer, and domain data steward. Institutions vary in naming, but the underlying responsibilities — FAIR compliance, metadata quality, and DMP support — remain consistent across these titles.

    Implications for Research Institutions

    As funders including UKRI, Horizon Europe, and cOAlition S tighten FAIR data requirements within grant conditions, institutions without a clearly defined research data steward role risk inconsistent DMP compliance and poor dataset discoverability after project closure. Writing a job description that borrows directly from generic corporate data-governance templates will under-specify the FAIR, DMP, and repository-liaison duties that make the research variant of the role effective.

    Institutions building or revising this post should draft the job description around the three-way split set out above — owner accountability, steward operations, custodian infrastructure — rather than treating “data steward” as a single undifferentiated data-governance title.

  • NERC Large Grants vs Standard Grant Eligibility

    NERC Large Grants fund £1.12 million–£3.45 million environmental-science projects through a two-stage, panel-gated review with no organisational demand-management cap — a materially different route from a generic “UKRI Standard Grant,” since each UKRI council runs its own standard/responsive-mode scheme with a different funding ceiling, eligibility rule and review structure.

    NERC Large Grants are a competitively assessed, two-stage funding scheme within the Natural Environment Research Council’s (NERC) Discovery Science portfolio, supporting large-scale, multidisciplinary environmental science research lasting up to five years. Research offices comparing this scheme against a “standard grant” need to understand one thing first: UKRI does not operate a single, unified Standard Grant product. Each of UKRI’s nine councils — NERC included — runs its own version, with its own rules. This guide sets out exactly how NERC’s Large Grant scheme is built, who can apply, how it is assessed, and where it genuinely diverges from the responsive-mode/standard routes offered elsewhere in UKRI.

    What are NERC Large Grants?

    NERC Large Grants fund researchers tackling major, often multidisciplinary environmental science questions that a single-investigator project cannot address. Under the current call structure, NERC funds between £1.12 million and £3.45 million per award, calculated at 100% full economic cost (FEC), of which NERC pays 80% FEC — the standard UKRI cost-sharing rate applied across the councils. Awards can run for up to five years, longer than most responsive-mode grants elsewhere in UKRI.

    Large Grants sit alongside two other NERC applicant-led routes: Pushing the Frontiers (curiosity-driven, no deadline, up to £950,000) and Urgency Funding (fast-track, up to £100,000, for time-critical environmental events). All three, including Large Grants, are explicitly exempt from NERC’s organisational demand-management quota system — a distinction that matters operationally and is detailed below.

    Who is eligible to apply for a NERC Large Grant?

    Eligibility for NERC Large Grants follows the standard UKRI organisational-eligibility framework: the lead applicant must be based at a UK research organisation recognised as eligible for NERC funding, and the proposed research must fit predominantly within NERC’s remit, though it can legitimately cross into other research council areas given the scale and multidisciplinary nature of these projects.

    Because Large Grants exist to fund large-scale, complex, often multi-institutional consortia, research offices should treat the eligibility bar as functionally higher than for a standard responsive-mode grant, even though the formal organisational rules are the same. In practice this means:

    • Co-investigators are typically drawn from multiple departments or institutions to justify the scale of funding requested.
    • Proposals must demonstrate the project cannot be delivered through NERC’s smaller Discovery Science or Pushing the Frontiers routes.
    • There is no organisational demand-management cap restricting how many Large Grant outlines an institution can submit — unlike some of NERC’s other responsive-mode schemes, where a quota system can apply if an institution’s success rate falls below a threshold.

    How does the NERC Large Grant peer-review process work?

    NERC Large Grants use a two-stage application and assessment process, distinct from the single-stage review used by most standard/responsive-mode grants elsewhere in UKRI. Outline applications are submitted first and assessed by a dedicated assessment panel; only applicants invited on the strength of their outline may submit a full proposal, which then undergoes expert (external) review followed by assessment from a moderating panel.

    For the current cycle, the British Antarctic Survey’s official funder guidance records outline proposals closing around 26 February 2026, with invited full proposals due around 5 November 2026 — a roughly eight-month gap between stages that research offices must plan resourcing around, since full proposals require substantially more development time than a standard single-stage grant.

    This gated, two-tier structure exists specifically to protect reviewer capacity: because each Large Grant represents a multi-million-pound, multi-year commitment, NERC screens ambition and fit at outline stage before committing full peer-review resource to detailed technical and financial scrutiny.

    NERC Large Grants vs UKRI Standard Grant: what’s different?

    This is the comparison research offices most often get wrong, because “UKRI Standard Grant” is not a single scheme name — it is shorthand researchers use for whichever council’s own responsive-mode grant applies to their discipline. EPSRC, for example, runs a route it calls “Standard Research,” for which official UKRI guidance states plainly that “there is no limit on the value of the grant or length of the project.” That is the opposite design choice to NERC Large Grants, which impose a fixed £1.12m–£3.45m ceiling and a hard five-year cap.

    Feature NERC Large Grants EPSRC Standard Research (typical “standard grant” comparator)
    Funding ceiling £1.12m–£3.45m at 100% FEC (fixed band) No upper value limit
    Project duration Up to 5 years (fixed cap) No fixed length limit
    Application stages Two-stage: outline, then invited full proposal Single-stage: full proposal submitted directly
    Assessment Assessment panel (outline), then expert review plus moderating panel (full) Expert reviewers, applicant response, then funding panel
    Submission timing Fixed annual deadlines (outline ~Feb, full ~Nov) Can be submitted at any time
    Demand management Explicitly exempt Varies; not scheme-specific in the same way

    The same pattern holds across UKRI more broadly: the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) each run their own standard/responsive-mode research grants with separate eligibility text, funding ceilings and panel timetables. Researchers searching for “EPSRC small grants” are usually looking for the lower end of EPSRC’s uncapped Standard Research route, since EPSRC does not brand a separate small-grant tier the way NERC brands Large Grants, Pushing the Frontiers and Urgency Funding as distinct named products. Treating “UKRI Standard Grant” as one comparator, rather than nine council-specific routes, is the single most common eligibility-mapping error research offices make.

    Frequently asked questions

    What is NERC funding?

    NERC funding is grant support from the Natural Environment Research Council, one of UKRI’s nine councils, for environmental science research spanning earth, biological, atmospheric, ocean and polar sciences. It includes responsive-mode Discovery Science routes, Large Grants, Pushing the Frontiers, and Urgency Funding, alongside strategic and directed programmes.

    What is NERC in the UK?

    NERC is a UK public funding body that sits within UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), alongside councils such as EPSRC, MRC, ESRC, AHRC and BBSRC. It funds and coordinates independent research and training in the environmental sciences at UK research organisations and its own research centres, including the British Antarctic Survey.

    What is the success rate of the NERC grant?

    Historical reporting from Research Professional News found NERC’s overall responsive-mode success rate was around 24% in one funding round, down from 28% the year before — illustrating how competitive standard NERC schemes are even before reaching Large Grants, where the multi-million-pound threshold narrows the field further to a small number of full proposals each year.

    What are the odds of winning a grant?

    Odds vary by scheme, institution and round, but NERC’s demand-management policy is a useful signal: institutions whose success rate falls below a set threshold can be subject to a submission-quota system on affected schemes. Large Grants, Pushing the Frontiers and Urgency Funding are explicitly exempt from that quota system, so institutional track record does not restrict how many outlines a research office can submit to these three routes.

    What this means for research offices

    Research offices supporting environmental-science principal investigators should map funding options by scheme name, not by the generic label “standard grant.” NERC Large Grants demand early, resource-intensive outline development, a realistic assessment of whether a project is genuinely large-scale enough to justify the £1.12m–£3.45m band, and a long lead time between outline and invited full proposal. By contrast, a council running an uncapped, single-stage responsive-mode route rewards a faster, more opportunistic submission strategy.

    Because Large Grants sit outside NERC’s demand-management quota system, institutions with weaker recent success rates on other NERC schemes are not penalised here — a fact worth flagging explicitly to research administration teams building internal triage rules for which NERC route a given proposal should target. As UKRI continues to differentiate its councils’ funding architectures rather than converge on a single model, treating each council’s “standard” route as a distinct product, with its own ceiling, timetable and review structure, will remain the more accurate planning assumption for institutions across the sector.

  • BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants: Field Guide

    BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants are a British Academy/Leverhulme Trust funding scheme offering up to £10,000 over one to 24 months to postdoctoral scholars, including independent scholars, ordinarily resident in the UK. Unlike most UKRI council grants, the scheme sits outside the Full Economic Costing (fEC) regime and is administered through the British Academy’s own Flexi-Grant portal, not the UKRI Funding Service.

    The British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grants scheme is one of the British Academy’s highest-volume programmes, making awards to academics working at around 100 institutions across the UK. It is funded as a public-private partnership between the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), the Leverhulme Trust and the Wellcome Trust, alongside several named Special Funds. For humanities and social science researchers who sit outside the large UKRI research councils, it is one of the few nationally competitive routes to discrete, project-defined funding.

    This guide sets out who can apply, what the money can and cannot be spent on, how reporting works, and — critically — how the scheme’s rules diverge from EPSRC, MRC and the wider UKRI funding architecture.

    What are the BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants?

    The BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants scheme is a competitive award covering the direct expenses of a clearly defined humanities or social science research project. Awards are worth up to £10,000 and are tenable for between one and 24 months, with a minimum award of £500 for a discrete, identifiable piece of work.

    According to the British Academy’s own scheme guidance, funding is intended to cover initial project planning and development, direct research costs such as travel, subsistence and specialist research assistance, and the advancement of research through workshops, conferences or visits to and from partner scholars. It is explicitly not a personal fellowship or salary-replacement scheme.

    Who is eligible to apply?

    Eligibility is narrower than many applicants assume, but it is also more open in one important respect: independent scholars are welcome.

    • Applicants must be postdoctoral scholars or equivalent and ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom.
    • Applications need the approval of the applicant’s employing institution where one exists, but are not restricted to a particular grade (Lecturer, Professor or otherwise).
    • Independent scholars without an institutional affiliation may apply directly, selecting “independent scholar” in the Flexi-Grant portal.
    • Co-applicants may be based anywhere in the world, provided the Principal Applicant is ordinarily resident in the UK.
    • Postgraduate students are not eligible — this is a postdoctoral-and-above scheme.

    From the 2026 application round, the British Academy introduced a distinct submission window for independent scholars, who must now submit at least five working days before the round closing date; late submissions in this category are not processed. This is a genuine procedural detail that trips up first-time independent applicants, who often assume the standard deadline applies to them.

    What can the budget cover — and what is excluded?

    Because the scheme sits outside UKRI’s Full Economic Costing framework, the budget rules are simpler than a typical research council application, but also more restrictive in specific ways.

    Allowed Not allowed
    Travel and subsistence for fieldwork or archive visits Replacement teaching costs
    Specialist research assistance Payment in lieu of salary
    Workshop, conference and collaboration costs tied to the funded project Computer equipment/hardware
    Project planning and development costs Attendance-only conference fees with no defined research objective

    Applications purely to organise or attend a third-party conference — the kind of activity once covered by the Academy’s discontinued Conference Support Grant and Overseas Conference Grant schemes — will not be considered unless directly tied to disseminating results from the funded project. Grants are also not intended to fund UK–overseas scholarly interchange where there is no defined programme of activity behind it.

    How does reporting and compliance work?

    Reporting obligations scale with the size and simplicity of the award rather than mirroring the multi-year monitoring cycle of a UKRI standard grant. Award-holders submit progress and financial reporting through Flexi-Grant, and extensions to the tenure of an award (up to the 24-month ceiling) can be requested for a defined set of reasons set out in the British Academy’s current guidance for grant-holders.

    Because the £10,000 ceiling is a direct-cost allocation to the award-holder rather than an institutional fEC award, host institutions typically have a lighter administrative burden than for a UKRI grant — there is no 20% institutional contribution to manage, and no Je-S or UKRI Funding Service record to maintain. This is a material difference for research administration teams that otherwise triage every award through the same fEC costing workflow.

    How does this compare with EPSRC, MRC and the UKRI new funding model?

    Researchers moving between disciplines often assume every UK grant sits inside the same UKRI application and costing system. BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants are a useful case study in why that assumption fails.

    Feature BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants EPSRC (UKRI) MRC (UKRI)
    Administering body British Academy (with Leverhulme Trust, DSIT, Wellcome Trust) UK Research and Innovation UK Research and Innovation
    Application portal Flexi-Grant (British Academy’s own system) UKRI Funding Service UKRI Funding Service
    Typical award scale Up to £10,000, direct costs only Responsive-mode/standard grants, typically far larger Responsive-mode/standard grants, typically far larger
    Full Economic Costing (fEC) Not covered by fEC — award is direct-cost only fEC applies; UKRI funds 80% of the Full Economic Cost, institution covers the remainder fEC applies; UKRI funds 80% of the Full Economic Cost, institution covers the remainder
    Independent scholar eligible Yes, with a dedicated submission window Generally requires an eligible host institution Generally requires an eligible host institution

    UKRI’s own reform programme — often referred to informally as the UKRI new funding model — has spent recent years consolidating research council applications onto the single UKRI Funding Service (replacing the legacy Joint Electronic Submission, or Je-S, system) and harmonising grant terms and conditions across councils. BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants sit deliberately outside this consolidation: they are not migrating to the UKRI Funding Service, and they retain the Academy’s own Flexi-Grant portal and a distinct, non-fEC costing model. For research administrators building a single institutional workflow across funders, that is the single most consequential operational fact in this comparison.

    Answer-first Q&A

    How much can a BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grant cover?

    Awards run from a minimum of £500 up to a maximum of £10,000, tenable for between one and 24 months. The award funds a single, clearly defined piece of research with an identifiable outcome, not an open-ended programme of work or a personal fellowship.

    Who is eligible for BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants?

    Postdoctoral scholars or equivalent who are ordinarily resident in the UK, including independent scholars without institutional affiliation. Co-applicants can be based anywhere, but the Principal Applicant must be UK-resident, and postgraduate students are not eligible.

    Are BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants covered by Full Economic Costing?

    No. The scheme is explicitly outside the fEC regime that governs most UKRI research council grants. The £10,000 ceiling is a direct-cost award to the researcher, not an institutional fEC settlement, which removes the usual 80/20 UKRI-institution cost split entirely.

    What can BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grant funding not be used for?

    Funds cannot cover replacement teaching, payment in lieu of salary, or computer equipment. Grants also exclude stand-alone conference attendance or UK–overseas interchange that lacks a defined research objective tied to the funded project.

    Implications for humanities and social science applicants

    The practical takeaway for applicants and research administration offices is that BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants require a genuinely different compliance checklist from an EPSRC or MRC application. Institutions whose research administration workflows route every funder through the same fEC costing template risk misclassifying this scheme — either by over-costing an award that is meant to be direct-cost only, or by missing the independent-scholar submission window introduced for the 2026 round.

    As UKRI consolidates research council funding onto a single portal and cost model, schemes like BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants remain a deliberate exception — and, for humanities and social science researchers, an opportunity: a low-friction, direct-cost route to project funding that never touches the UKRI Funding Service. Teams that keep a funder-specific map of eligibility, costing and reporting rules, rather than one generic template, turn that simplicity into an advantage rather than a compliance gap.

  • EPSRC Grants on the Web: Practical Search Guide

    EPSRC Grants on the Web is a legacy name for the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council’s public grant records, which today live inside UKRI’s Gateway to Research (GtR) — not a standalone EPSRC portal. Research administrators who search “EPSRC grants on the web” are usually looking for pipeline intelligence — who has been funded, at what value, on what panel — and that data is now accessed through GtR’s project, person, organisation and publication search tabs, with facets and Boolean syntax most users never open.

    EPSRC Grants on the Web is the name research administrators still use for EPSRC’s public record of funded projects, even though EPSRC itself no longer runs a separate database under that title. UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) — the body that has governed EPSRC since its formation in April 2018 from a merger of seven UK research councils, Research England and Innovate UK — now reports funding data centrally through Gateway to Research. This guide explains where the old records went, how to run an effective search across UKRI’s award database, and which search fields administrators most often overlook.

    What is EPSRC Grants on the Web?

    EPSRC Grants on the Web is a defined term: a public register of grants awarded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, historically published as a searchable database in its own right and now consolidated into UKRI’s cross-council Gateway to Research service. The phrase persists in search behaviour and in older bookmarks, guidance documents and institutional wikis, but the underlying dataset is maintained centrally by UKRI rather than by EPSRC alone.

    For funding decisions made before 2018, EPSRC’s historic “funding rates” data — what the council called success and funding rates prior to the UKRI merger — sits in the UK Government Web Archive rather than in any live, searchable interface. That distinction matters for benchmarking: pre-2018 figures require an archive lookup, not a GtR query.

    Where did EPSRC’s “Grants on the Web” go?

    EPSRC’s council-specific funding page on ukri.org — last updated 29 September 2025 — directs users to Gateway to Research (gtr.ukri.org) for “research and training grants funded by EPSRC,” alongside a Tableau dashboard of panel outcomes. There is no standalone “EPSRC Grants on the Web” URL left to bookmark; the consolidation happened as UKRI centralised funding reporting across its research councils.

    This is a genuine source of confusion in the sector, because not every council followed the same path. NERC still operates its own distinct “Grants on the Web” portal at gotw.nerc.ac.uk, separate from Gateway to Research. Administrators who assume EPSRC has an equivalent standalone tool will end up on an archived or dead link instead of the live dataset.

    • EPSRC-funded projects, people and organisations: searchable live via Gateway to Research.
    • EPSRC panel outcomes and funding application results: a dedicated Tableau dashboard, linked from ukri.org.
    • Pre-2018 EPSRC funding/success rates: UK Government Web Archive snapshot only.
    • NERC awards: a separate, still-branded “Grants on the Web” portal at gotw.nerc.ac.uk.

    How do you search UKRI’s award database for EPSRC awards?

    Gateway to Research is built on Elasticsearch and Apache Lucene, so it supports full Boolean and field-level search syntax that most casual users never invoke. To find EPSRC awards specifically, run a keyword search and then apply the “Funder” facet to restrict results to EPSRC — the same mechanism works for MRC, NERC, BBSRC, ESRC, AHRC, STFC, Research England and Innovate UK, since all sit inside the same index.

    The search fields research administrators most often miss are the ones below the basic keyword box:

    • Quoted phrases — wrapping a term in quotation marks (e.g. "quantum sensing") matches the exact phrase rather than the individual words, which cuts noise dramatically on common technical terms.
    • Boolean operators — AND, OR and NOT must be capitalised to function; lower-case “and” is treated as a stray keyword, not an operator.
    • Wildcards — a question mark (?) matches a single character and an asterisk (*) matches zero or more, useful for catching spelling variants across a large grant corpus.
    • Fuzzy and proximity search — a tilde after a term (test~0.8) finds near-matches; a tilde after a quoted phrase ("test blood"~10) finds terms within a set word distance of each other.
    • Resource-type tabs — Projects, Persons, Organisations and Publications each expose a different advanced-search form, so a search run on the Projects tab will not surface matching Person or Organisation records by default.
    • Facets — ordered alphabetically and additive; selecting facets across categories (funder, scheme, research topic, lead organisation) narrows a result set, but switching tabs clears facets from the previous search.

    For institutional benchmarking, combine a funder facet (EPSRC) with an organisation facet and a date range, then bookmark the query URL — GtR search results are shareable by link, useful for a live funding-strategy dashboard rather than a static export.

    How does EPSRC’s data compare with MRC, NERC and BBSRC?

    Not every UKRI council presents its award data the same way. The table below summarises where each dataset actually lives, which is the detail administrators need before writing a search strategy that spans more than one funder.

    Council Primary live database Legacy/standalone portal Notes
    EPSRC Gateway to Research (gtr.ukri.org) None — retired into GtR Panel outcomes tracked separately via Tableau; pre-2018 rates in the Government Web Archive
    MRC Gateway to Research (gtr.ukri.org) None — retired into GtR MRC award and studentship data reported through the same GtR index as EPSRC
    NERC Gateway to Research (gtr.ukri.org) gotw.nerc.ac.uk (“Grants on the Web”) NERC still runs a dedicated legacy portal alongside GtR
    BBSRC Gateway to Research (gtr.ukri.org) Referenced as “Grants on the Web” in search behaviour, no dedicated live URL Council-specific funding page links back to GtR

    A single, correctly faceted Gateway to Research query will retrieve EPSRC, MRC, BBSRC and most other UKRI council awards from one interface — but anyone chasing NERC records should also check gotw.nerc.ac.uk, since it is not a simple synonym for GtR.

    Answer-first Q&A

    What is an EPSRC grant?

    An EPSRC grant is a funding award made by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council to support research or training in engineering, mathematics, physical sciences and related disciplines. Awards are assessed at panel meetings, recorded centrally by UKRI, and searchable through Gateway to Research alongside awards from every other UKRI council.

    What is the EPSRC standard grant?

    The EPSRC standard grant is EPSRC’s core responsive-mode funding route, supporting investigator-led research proposals that fall within the council’s engineering and physical sciences remit. It sits alongside programme grants, fellowships and other UKRI application routes, and outcomes for standard-grant applications appear in the same panel-outcomes Tableau dashboard as other EPSRC schemes.

    Who is eligible for EPSRC funding?

    Eligibility for EPSRC funding generally requires an applicant to be based at an eligible UK research organisation and to hold, or be applying for, a role recognised by UKRI as suitable for a principal or co-investigator. Exact eligibility rules vary by funding scheme, so administrators should check the specific opportunity’s guidance on ukri.org before assuming a route applies.

    Are UKRI and EPSRC the same?

    No — UKRI and EPSRC are not the same body. UKRI is the umbrella organisation formed in 2018 that brings together seven research councils (including EPSRC and MRC), Research England and Innovate UK. EPSRC is one constituent council operating under UKRI’s governance, which is why EPSRC’s award data now reports through UKRI’s shared Gateway to Research rather than a council-only system.

    What this means for research administrators

    Treating “EPSRC Grants on the Web” as a live, separate URL wastes time chasing archived or dead pages. The efficient workflow is to query Gateway to Research directly, apply the EPSRC funder facet, and layer in Boolean, wildcard or proximity syntax when a common technical term returns too much noise. Institutions building funding-pipeline dashboards for research administration teams should bookmark faceted GtR query URLs rather than static exports, since the index updates as new awards are recorded.

    As UKRI continues centralising reporting across its councils, expect fewer standalone legacy portals to survive outside NERC’s. Administrators who build benchmarking habits around GtR’s search syntax now will not need to relearn an interface if NERC’s “Grants on the Web” is eventually folded into the same system.

  • UKRI Standard Grant Compared: 4 Core Grant Types

    The UKRI Standard Grant is UK Research and Innovation’s open-call, investigator-led funding route — no closing dates, no fixed value cap, no length limit. Frontier Research, Programme and Block grants each serve a narrower purpose: guarantee funding for European Research Council award-holders, large-scale team challenges, and institutional open-access costs respectively. Choosing the right one depends on team size, project duration and how much reporting your institution can absorb.

    UKRI’s Standard Grant is best defined as follows: it is the default, responsive-mode mechanism through which any eligible UK researcher can seek funding for a well-defined project, assessed purely on research quality by independent peer review, with no predetermined ceiling on award size or duration.

    What is the UKRI Standard Grant?

    The Standard Grant is UKRI’s most flexible, investigator-led route. According to EPSRC’s guidance for applicants (updated 7 May 2026), standard research funding carries “no closing dates – applications may be submitted at any time” and “no limit on the value or length of the grant.” Proposals are judged on international excellence and national importance as determined by independent peer review, not on fit against a themed call.

    The same “standard grant” label is used across research councils with council-specific framing. AHRC’s responsive-mode standard research grant, for example, funds “well-defined collaborative projects across the arts and humanities,” while EPSRC’s version spans everything from small feasibility studies to multimillion-pound programmes. This makes the Standard Grant the right starting point for most single-investigator or small-team proposals that do not fit a themed or strategic call.

    What is the UKRI Frontier Research Grant?

    This is the term most often misunderstood, including by AI search summaries that describe it as a loosely defined thematic label. In practice, the UKRI Frontier Research Grant is the domestic guarantee mechanism for UK-based researchers who win a European Research Council (ERC) grant under Horizon Europe — it mirrors the ERC’s own Starting, Consolidator, Advanced and Synergy Grant tiers rather than constituting a separate UKRI competition. Documented recipients, such as an Oxford economics fellow awarded “UKRI Frontier Research Guarantee” funding for a Horizon Europe-equivalent project, confirm this guarantee framing.

    Because it tracks ERC rules, duration follows ERC norms: Starting, Consolidator and Advanced Grants typically run up to five years, and Synergy Grants up to six. Applicants are assessed through the ERC’s own peer-review process, with UKRI stepping in only to administer the UK-side award and reporting. Do not confuse this with NERC’s separate “Pushing the Frontiers” discovery-science scheme or the Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP), both of which use “frontier” language but run entirely different application routes.

    How does the UKRI Programme Grant differ?

    Programme Grants exist for a different scale of problem. EPSRC describes them as “a mechanism to provide flexible funding to world-leading research groups to address significant major research challenges” (UKRI, updated 1 May 2026). Unlike the single-PI Standard Grant, a Programme Grant backs a multi-investigator team pursuing a coherent, multi-year research vision rather than one discrete project.

    The application route reflects that scale: applicants submit an outline proposal first, and only invited teams proceed to a full proposal — a staged process that does not exist for Standard Grants. This structure exists because Programme Grants fund substantially longer, larger and more interdisciplinary work than a single responsive-mode award, and the reporting burden scales accordingly, typically including milestone and work-package-level progress reporting rather than a single end-of-grant report.

    What does the UKRI Block Grant cover?

    The Block Grant sits apart from the other three because it does not fund research directly — it funds compliance. UKRI’s Open Access Block Grant (OABG) is paid to eligible research organisations, not to individual investigators, to help meet the costs of UKRI’s open access policy. UKRI states it is providing “up to £46.7 million per year to support the overall implementation” of that policy.

    Institutions use OABG funds to cover article processing charges (APCs) for peer-reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings arising from UKRI-funded research. The grant explicitly cannot be used for page or colour charges, and it does not cover monographs or book chapters, which draw on a separate long-form open access fund. Hybrid-journal APCs are eligible only where the title sits within a Transitional Agreement holding Transformative Journal status. Researchers apply to their own institution’s library or research office, never to UKRI directly.

    Which UKRI grant type fits your project?

    The table below maps the four grant types against the three variables that matter most when choosing a route: team size, duration and reporting burden.

    Grant type Who applies Typical team size Typical duration Reporting burden
    Standard Grant Individual investigator or small team 1–5 researchers No fixed limit; open-ended, project-driven Standard annual/final reporting
    Frontier Research Grant Single PI (ERC guarantee award-holder) PI plus group members Up to 5 years (up to 6 for Synergy) Follows ERC/Horizon Europe reporting cycle
    Programme Grant Multi-investigator research group Several co-investigators and teams Multi-year; longer than Standard Grants Staged outline/full proposal, then milestone reporting
    Block Grant (OABG) Research organisation (not individuals) Institutional — no project team Annual allocation cycle Institutional compliance reporting to UKRI

    For research administration teams triaging incoming proposals, the practical rule is: route single-investigator, open-scope ideas to the Standard Grant; route ERC-guarantee cases to Frontier Research; route large, team-based, multi-year challenges to Programme Grants; and manage Block Grant allocations centrally through the library or research office rather than per-project.

    Frequently asked questions

    What is a UKRI Standard Grant?

    A Standard Grant is UKRI’s responsive-mode, investigator-led funding route with no fixed closing date, value cap or duration limit. Proposals are assessed purely on research quality through independent peer review, making it the default option for single-investigator or small-team projects that do not fit a themed call.

    What is a UKRI Frontier Research Grant?

    A Frontier Research Grant is UKRI’s guarantee funding for UK-based researchers who win a European Research Council grant under Horizon Europe. It mirrors ERC Starting, Consolidator, Advanced and Synergy Grant tiers rather than being a standalone UKRI competition with its own criteria.

    How long does a UKRI Programme Grant last?

    Programme Grants run substantially longer than Standard Grants because they fund multi-investigator teams tackling significant, multi-year research challenges. Applicants submit a staged outline proposal before an invited full proposal, and the extended timeline supports interdisciplinary work across several linked work packages.

    Who can apply for a UKRI Open Access Block Grant?

    Only eligible research organisations — not individual researchers — can hold a UKRI Open Access Block Grant. Institutions use the allocation to cover article processing charges for UKRI-funded journal articles, while researchers request funds through their own university’s library or research office.

    Implications for research administrators

    The four grant types are not interchangeable entry points into the same competition — they are four separate governance structures with different applicants, timelines and reporting obligations. Institutional research offices that route proposals correctly at intake avoid two common failure modes: individual researchers mistakenly treating Programme Grant scale ambitions as Standard Grant submissions, and confusion between UKRI’s Frontier Research guarantee funding and NERC’s differently-named “Pushing the Frontiers” scheme.

    As UK association to Horizon Europe continues, expect the Frontier Research Grant guarantee mechanism to shrink in volume relative to direct ERC applications, while Programme Grants and the Open Access Block Grant remain the stable, UKRI-administered backbone of team-scale research funding and open access compliance respectively. Research administrators should treat grant-type selection as a governance decision made before drafting begins, not a formality resolved at submission.

  • UKRI Open Access Block Grant: How It Works

    The UKRI open access block grant is an annual allocation UK Research and Innovation pays to eligible research organisations to help them meet the costs of complying with UKRI’s open access policy for research articles. It is not paid to individual researchers, and it is separate from — and administered differently to — the wider RCUK/Plan S open access mandate debate. This guide explains how the allocation is calculated, what it can and cannot fund, and what institutions must now report back to UKRI.

    A UKRI open access block grant is a lump-sum award, calculated from an institution’s UKRI-funded research volume, that research organisations distribute internally to cover open access publication costs rather than a grant researchers apply for directly.

    How is the UKRI block grant calculated and paid?

    UKRI does not divide a fixed pot equally between universities. Instead, the amount an organisation receives is calculated using an algorithm that uses directly incurred and directly allocated staff costs on UKRI awards as a proxy for research volume, according to UKRI’s own open access funding and reporting guidance. Institutions with a very small UKRI research footprint may receive nothing at all.

    For administrative reasons, only organisations whose calculated entitlement is £5,000 or more are offered an award. Every block grant allocated from 2022 onwards is published on UKRI’s Gateway to Research service, giving institutions and auditors a transparent, checkable record of what each organisation received and when.

    Payment is not a single annual cheque. Under the 2025–26 block grant terms and conditions, the grant covering 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026 is paid via the EPSRC Research grants pay run process in four quarterly instalments, mirroring the cash-flow pattern of a standard research grant rather than a one-off subvention. UKRI’s own figures put total block grant spend at approximately £40 million per year across the research-article scheme, separate from the long-form publications fund described below.

    What can the block grant fund — and what can’t it fund?

    The block grant is deliberately flexible. Research organisations can spend it on any activity that supports compliance with UKRI’s open access policy, not just article processing charges (APCs). UKRI’s terms and conditions and the sector guidance built around them (for example Jisc’s publisher-facing compliance guide) converge on a consistent list of eligible and ineligible spend.

    • Eligible: APCs for fully open access journals and platforms.
    • Eligible: the “publish” element of Jisc-approved transitional (read-and-publish) agreements.
    • Eligible: membership or participation fees for alternative open access models, such as subscribe-to-open schemes.
    • Eligible: repository and green-route infrastructure costs, and staff time spent administering compliance, deposit checking and the block grant itself.
    • Not eligible: APCs for hybrid journals outside an approved transitional agreement.
    • Not eligible: page charges and colour charges.
    • Not eligible: long-form outputs — monographs, book chapters and edited collections sit under a separate, dedicated £3.5 million UKRI open access fund with its own caps (up to £10,000 for a book processing charge, £1,000 for a chapter processing charge, and £6,000 for participation in an alternative open access model, rising by a further £3,000 where an organisation has two or more eligible outputs in a period).

    Researchers cannot normally claim these costs directly from their research grant budget; the block grant exists precisely so that publication costs are pooled and administered centrally by the research organisation rather than budgeted line-by-line inside every award.

    How does UKRI’s grant compare with Wellcome, CRUK and BHF?

    Institutional open access teams frequently administer several funders’ block grants side by side, and confusion between them is a real, current problem. In particular, Cancer Research UK is winding down its own open access block grant from 1 April 2026, with a new CRUK policy taking effect on 1 October 2026 under which CRUK will no longer pay for open access publishing at all. That change concerns CRUK’s scheme only — it does not alter UKRI’s block grant, its eligibility rules or its payment schedule, though several university library guides bundle the funders together in ways that can make the two easy to conflate.

    Funder Scheme status (mid-2026) Hybrid journals covered? Repository deposit required?
    UKRI Ongoing annual block grant, ~£40m/year Only within Jisc-approved transitional agreements Europe PMC deposit required for MRC/BBSRC-funded articles
    Wellcome Ongoing; DOAJ-listed journals only No Europe PMC deposit required; rights retention statement required
    Cancer Research UK Ending — no APC funding after 1 October 2026 N/A (scheme closing) N/A
    British Heart Foundation Ongoing Yes, for original articles Europe PMC deposit required

    For research administrators, the practical takeaway is to treat each funder’s block grant as a distinct compliance stream with its own terms, rather than assuming a single institutional “open access fund” rulebook covers all of them.

    What are institutions’ reporting and assurance duties?

    Reporting obligations on the UKRI block grant have tightened materially for the 2026–27 cycle. Research organisations must already provide high-level information about their block grant spend through their Final Expenditure Statement, the same mechanism used for standard UKRI grant financial reporting, and block grant expenditure now falls within scope of UKRI’s Funding Assurance Reviews. Institutions need governance, financial and risk-management processes capable of demonstrating that funds were used for their intended purpose if selected for review.

    The most significant near-term change is that UKRI is reintroducing dedicated block grant reporting in 2026 to 2027 through a co-developed, lightweight, standardised template, explicitly designed to close evidence gaps around what institutions actually spend the money on. This marks a shift away from the lighter-touch, largely self-certified approach that has applied since the block grant scheme was last simplified, and research offices should expect to log spend by category (APCs, transitional agreements, repository costs, staff time) in a form that maps to that template rather than an internal ad hoc breakdown.

    1. Confirm which team owns block grant financial tracking (library, research office, or finance).
    2. Categorise 2026–27 spend against UKRI’s eligible-cost list as it is incurred, not retrospectively.
    3. Retain invoices and journal/agreement documentation in case of a Funding Assurance Review.
    4. Complete the Final Expenditure Statement and the new standardised reporting template on time.

    Answer-first Q&A

    What is the UKRI block grant policy?

    The UKRI open access block grant policy gives eligible UK research organisations an annual lump sum, sized to their UKRI-funded research volume, to cover eligible open access publication costs for research articles. It is administered by the institution, not claimed per-article from a researcher’s own grant.

    How is the UKRI block grant amount calculated?

    UKRI uses an algorithm based on directly incurred and directly allocated staff costs charged to UKRI awards as a proxy for an organisation’s research volume. Only organisations whose calculated entitlement reaches £5,000 or more are actually offered a grant.

    Do researchers apply for the UKRI block grant directly?

    No. Researchers do not apply to UKRI for block grant funding. The research organisation receives and administers the award, and individual authors instead request an APC payment or transitional-agreement cover through their own institution’s open access team.

    Do institutions have to report block grant spending to UKRI?

    Yes. Institutions must summarise spend through the Final Expenditure Statement, and block grants are now included within Funding Assurance Reviews. From 2026–27, a new standardised reporting template is being reintroduced specifically to capture more granular cost evidence.

    What this means for research administrators

    The direction of travel is towards more visibility, not less. A scheme that has run for over a decade on light-touch institutional discretion is moving into a period where UKRI wants comparable, standardised cost data across the sector. Institutions that build 2026–27 spend-tracking around UKRI’s eligible-cost categories now, rather than retrofitting records later, will find the reintroduced reporting template far less disruptive.

    Research administration teams should also keep the funder distinctions in this guide close at hand: UKRI’s own scheme continues on broadly the same basis it has run under since 2022, even as other funders in the same open access landscape — Cancer Research UK most visibly — withdraw block grant support altogether. Conflating the two risks under-claiming funding UKRI still provides, or over-promising APC cover a funder such as CRUK will no longer honour after October 2026.

  • UKRI Training Grant Terms and Conditions Guide

    UKRI training grant terms and conditions govern doctoral studentships and are legally distinct from the standard terms and conditions that apply to UKRI research grants. The two documents share a similar condition-numbering structure but diverge sharply on studentship transfer, extensions, absence/leave, stipend funding shares, and cohort-level data reporting through the Studentship Data System.

    A UKRI training grant funds one or more Studentships at a Research Organisation — typically through a Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP) or Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) — and is governed by the Standard Terms and Conditions of Training Grant, not by the fEC-based conditions that apply to a standard research grant.

    UKRI revised its training grant conditions with effect from 1 October 2025, following a policy statement published on 30 January 2025 after an equality-focused review. DTP and CDT administrators need to know exactly how the training-grant rulebook diverges from the standard research grant rulebook their finance teams already use.

    How Do UKRI Training Grant Terms Differ From Standard Research Grant Terms?

    UKRI training grant terms and conditions are built around the Student and the Studentship; standard research grant terms are built around the funded project and its staff. Both use a similar numbered-condition format, but the numbering and substance diverge from condition 8 onward.

    The Standard Terms and Conditions of Training Grant run to thirteen Training Grant Conditions (TGC 1–13). The parallel Terms and Conditions of fEC Grants run to fourteen Research Grant Conditions (RGC 1–14) — the extra condition is a dedicated RGC 9 Equipment clause with no training-grant equivalent, and RGC 8 covers Staff where TGC 8 instead covers Student Absence.

    Condition area Standard research grant (RGC) Training grant (TGC)
    Funding basis Full Economic Costing (fEC) — UKRI meets 80% of the assessed project cost At least 50% of the total Studentship cost must be drawn from UKRI; the remainder can come from the Research Organisation or partners
    Condition 8 focus RGC 8: Staff TGC 8: Absence (Student leave categories, including family leave)
    Equipment RGC 9: dedicated Equipment condition No equivalent condition; funds cover stipends, project costs and Research Training Support Grant (RTSG)
    Extensions No-cost extensions for non-people-related reasons capped at six months over the grant’s lifetime (from 1 April 2026) Extensions tied to Student leave categories; Studentship suspension capped at 12 months cumulative absent exceptional circumstances
    Transfer Handled via the standard change-of-institution request process TGC 6 sets an explicit Studentship/Training Grant transfer clause (see below)
    Data reporting Standard financial and technical (final) reporting UKRI Studentship Data System: per-Student records, annual 31 October check, submission-rate monitoring

    UKRI’s own guidance confirms the split directly: TGC 2.10 requires every Student stipend to be at least equal to UKRI’s published minimum rate for the relevant academic year, a rate reviewed annually and typically uplifted from 1 October — a mechanism with no equivalent in the standard research grant conditions, which fund salaries rather than stipends.

    What Are the Rules for Studentship and Training Grant Transfer?

    Under TGC 6, when a Student transfers institutions, the receiving Research Organisation must accept all terms and conditions relating to the Studentship exactly as originally offered — including its start date, duration, registration requirements and submission date. This is training-grant-specific; standard research grant terms have no direct parallel, since a research grant is tied to a project rather than an individual person’s award.

    Where several Students sit on one Training Grant, the two institutions arrange the transfer of funding between themselves; the grant itself stays with the original Research Organisation. Where the transferring Student is the only Student on that grant, UKRI requires the entire Training Grant and any remaining funds to move to the receiving Research Organisation.

    • Receiving institution inherits the original start date, duration and submission date in full.
    • Multi-student grants: funding transfer is arranged institution-to-institution.
    • Single-student grants: the whole grant and remaining balance transfer.
    • Both Research Organisations must record the change in the Studentship Data System.

    What Cohort and Studentship Data Reporting Do DTPs and CDTs Require?

    Training grants carry a data-reporting layer standard research grants do not: the UKRI Studentship Data System, which superseded the Je-S system’s student functionality in 2025. Research Organisations must create a new Student record within one month of starting and log status changes within one month of formal agreement.

    UKRI additionally requires Research Organisations to undertake an annual check of every Student record by 31 October each year, and Councils use submission data from the system to calculate annual submission rates across a DTP or CDT’s cohort — a Studentship terminated before the end of its first year is excluded from that calculation. UKRI states it monitors submission rates and may apply sanctions where they fall short. Standard research grants instead rely on conventional financial and technical end-of-grant reporting, with no equivalent cohort-level mechanism.

    How Do Extensions and Leave Provisions Differ?

    Training grant extensions under TGC 6 are driven by individual Student circumstances rather than project delivery risk. Extensions arise from categories of Absence set out in TGC 8 — family leave (maternity, partner/paternity, adoption, neonatal care and parental leave), medical leave and other specified reasons — and Studentship suspension is capped at a maximum cumulative 12 months unless exceptional circumstances apply. Research Organisations must keep leave records, since UKRI requests this information whenever an extension is sought.

    Standard research grant extensions under RGC 6 work differently: a no-cost extension for a “people-related” reason (parental leave, sick leave, a reduction from full to part-time working, jury service) may run for the full duration of the delay, but extensions for non-people-related reasons — such as recruitment delays — are capped at six months over the grant’s lifetime, and no-cost extensions approved before 1 April 2026 do not count toward that cap. Neither route allows contingency time; every request must state one primary justification.

    Answer-First Q&A on Training Grant Terms and Conditions

    Do UKRI training grants use the same terms as standard research grants?

    No. UKRI training grants are governed by the Standard Terms and Conditions of Training Grant (Training Grant Conditions, TGC 1–13), a separate document from the Terms and Conditions of fEC Grants (Research Grant Conditions, RGC 1–14) that apply to standard research grants. The documents share structure but diverge on funding share, extensions, absence and studentship-level data reporting.

    Can a UKRI-funded studentship transfer between universities?

    Yes. Under TGC 6, a Studentship can transfer to a new Research Organisation, which must honour the original start date, duration, registration requirements and submission date. If the Student is the sole award-holder on that Training Grant, the entire grant and remaining funds move with them; otherwise the two institutions arrange funding transfer directly.

    What is the minimum UKRI stipend requirement?

    UKRI publishes a minimum Stipend rate for each academic year, and TGC 2.10 requires every Student’s Stipend to meet or exceed it. Rate changes should be applied from 1 October, though UKRI permits limited flexibility around that date, and Research Organisations must never link an uplift to a Student’s individual start-date anniversary.

    How long can a UKRI training grant extension last?

    There is no fixed universal cap — extensions follow the Student’s category of Absence under TGC 8. However, Studentship suspension is limited to a maximum cumulative 12 months unless exceptional circumstances apply, which differs from the six-month non-people-related extension cap that applies to standard research grants under RGC 6.

    Implications for DTP and CDT Administrators

    For institutions running a DTP or CDT, grant finance teams cannot apply their standard research-grant compliance checklist to a training grant file. Studentship transfer, cohort-level monitoring through the Studentship Data System, and Absence-driven extensions each require processes that sit outside the fEC grant workflow.

    Since the October 2025 revision followed an equality-focused review, DTP and CDT administrators should treat the current terms as a baseline UKRI is likely to keep refining, particularly around leave, part-time study and international eligibility. Mapping each Training Grant Condition to a named responsible team — anchored in wider research administration standards rather than folded into general grants administration — is the most durable way to stay compliant as the terms continue to evolve, and will make UKRI’s next round of condition updates easier to absorb without re-auditing every open Studentship file.

  • UKRI FEC Grant Guidance: The 80% Recovery Rule

    UKRI FEC grant guidance sets out how UK Research and Innovation calculates and pays Full Economic Costing on research grants: UKRI funds a fixed 80% of a project’s full economic cost, the research organisation covers the remaining 20%, and costs are split into Directly Incurred, Directly Allocated and Indirect categories under the Transparent Approach to Costing (TRAC) methodology.

    Full Economic Costing (FEC) is the UKRI funding model under which a research organisation states the total cost of delivering a project — including staff time, estates and administrative overheads — and UKRI reimburses a fixed proportion of that total rather than reimbursing itemised expenses alone.

    What is UKRI Full Economic Costing?

    UKRI’s guidance on FEC grant terms and conditions states the underlying principle directly: research organisations indicate the full economic cost of a project in their proposal, and UKRI pays “a fixed percentage of 80% of this sum unless stated otherwise.” The remaining 20% must come from the research organisation’s own resources.

    Where a project also has external co-funding, for example from an industry partner, that contribution is treated as additional to FEC — UKRI still funds 80% of the remaining resources needed, rather than reducing its own contribution pound-for-pound.

    Several categories of cost fall outside the 80% rule entirely. Associated studentships are funded at 100% of UKRI’s standard annual stipend and fee values, and externally contracted social surveys are funded at 100% under the “Exceptions” heading. Postgraduate students are also excluded from the full-time-equivalent (FTE) count used to calculate estates and indirect charges.

    How are FEC costs categorised?

    UKRI’s FEC guidance divides every grant budget into three cost categories, and getting this classification right is the first task for any research administrator building a proposal. Each category is audited, funded and adjusted differently if a grant changes scope or ends early.

    Cost category Definition How it is evidenced
    Directly Incurred (DI) Costs explicitly identifiable to the project — research assistant salaries, consumables, travel, equipment under £25,000 Auditable cash spend, supported by timesheets and invoices
    Directly Allocated (DA) Shared resources used by multiple projects, including investigator time, pool technicians and major facilities Estimates applied at proposal stage; not vired or re-audited during the grant
    Indirect Costs Non-specific overheads — central administration, general laboratory and office consumables, some departmental services A standard rate per research FTE, derived from the institution’s TRAC return

    Estates and indirect rates are not calculated per grant. Instead, a university’s whole-institution TRAC return sets a standard charge-out rate per research FTE, which is then applied to every proposal. Institutions with under £3 million in annual public research income may instead use TRAC dispensation default rates, reviewed annually by UKRI and the UK higher education funding bodies.

    Project leads and co-leads can be funded up to 100% of salary, calculated on a notional maximum of 1,650 hours a year (37.5 hours a week across 44 weeks) — but this investigator time is itself only reimbursed within the overall 80% FEC envelope once combined with the rest of the project’s costs.

    What changed in UKRI’s 2025–2026 FEC guidance?

    UKRI’s FEC grant terms and conditions are not static, and the guidance has been revised twice in the current funding cycle — a detail research administrators updating budget templates should not overlook.

    • Equipment funding at 80% FEC. From 1 April 2025, UKRI moved to fund all new equipment purchases at 80% of FEC rather than the fuller funding some equipment previously attracted, with limited exceptions for dedicated infrastructure opportunities, instrument development awards, and international partner costs in OECD Development Assistance Committee-listed countries.
    • Capital equipment threshold raised. The threshold above which an item counts as capital equipment rose from £10,000 to £25,000 on the same date, reducing the number of smaller purchases that require separate capital justification.
    • No default expectation of matched funding. UKRI clarified that, unless a specific funding opportunity states otherwise, there is no default expectation that institutions provide matched funding on top of the standard 20% FEC contribution.
    • Tighter no-cost extension limits from 1 April 2026. Non-people-related no-cost extensions are now capped at six months over a grant’s lifetime, except in defined exceptional circumstances (such as ethics delays or export-control licensing under Trusted Research and Innovation); extensions approved before 1 April 2026 do not count towards that limit.

    UKRI has framed these changes as a response to its own Research financial sustainability: insights paper, which found research costs have outpaced available funding — the same “sustainability gap” that independent analysis by the Innovation and Research Caucus has linked to persistently low FEC cost recovery.

    How do research administrators apply FEC to a grant budget?

    Building a compliant UKRI budget starts with classifying every cost line as Directly Incurred, Directly Allocated or Indirect before a single figure is entered, since each category is treated differently at award and close-out.

    • Confirm the institution’s current TRAC-derived estates and indirect rates per research FTE before costing investigator and technician time.
    • Cost equipment over £25,000 as capital equipment, and expect it to be funded at 80% FEC rather than assumed to be fully reimbursed.
    • Identify any Exceptions items — associated studentships and externally contracted social surveys — and cost these at 100% rather than 80%.
    • Keep the full FEC figure, not just the 80% UKRI contribution, visible in internal costing tools, since the 20% institutional contribution must be tracked and reported against.
    • Reduce Estates, Indirect and Infrastructure Technician claims proportionately if a funded post goes unfilled or a staff member leaves more than six months before the funded period ends.

    At grant start, only Directly Incurred, Directly Allocated or equipment costs can be drawn down — estates and indirect costs cannot be claimed until the Grant Start Confirmation is issued. At close-out, Directly Incurred costs settle against actual expenditure, while Directly Allocated and Indirect Costs are paid as requested, provided the grant runs its full course and stays within the cash limit.

    FEC grant guidance: frequently asked questions

    What percentage of research costs does UKRI FEC actually cover?

    UKRI funds a fixed 80% of a project’s Full Economic Cost, with the research organisation providing the remaining 20% from its own resources. Some cost types are treated as Exceptions and funded at 100%, including associated studentships and externally contracted social surveys, so administrators should check each cost line against the exceptions list before assuming the 80% rate applies universally.

    What is the difference between Directly Incurred and Directly Allocated costs?

    Directly Incurred costs are auditable cash amounts spent specifically on a project, evidenced by invoices and timesheets. Directly Allocated costs are shared resources — investigator time, pool technicians, major facilities — charged on estimates rather than actual audited spend, and these estimate-based figures cannot be re-audited or vired once the grant is underway.

    What is TRAC and why does UKRI’s FEC guidance depend on it?

    The Transparent Approach to Costing (TRAC) is the agreed sector methodology UK universities use to calculate the full economic cost of research activity from their financial statements. UKRI’s FEC guidance relies on each institution’s annual TRAC return to set the standard estates and indirect charge-out rate per research FTE applied across every grant proposal.

    Has UKRI changed how it funds research equipment?

    Yes. From 1 April 2025, UKRI moved to fund new equipment purchases at 80% FEC rather than fuller reimbursement, and raised the capital equipment threshold from £10,000 to £25,000. Institutions costing equipment-heavy proposals need to budget the 20% shortfall rather than assume equipment sits outside the standard cost-share rule.

    What this means for institutions

    The direction of UKRI’s FEC guidance since 2025 is toward tighter, more explicit cost-recovery rules rather than looser ones: equipment now sits inside the 80% rule, extensions are time-limited by default, and matched funding is explicitly not assumed. For institutions already struggling with the FEC recovery gap documented in UKRI’s own sustainability insights work, each of these changes shifts marginally more cost risk onto the research organisation’s 20% contribution.

    Research administrators building budgets should treat the FEC grant guidance document as a living compliance reference rather than a one-off read: rates, thresholds and exception lists are reviewed and republished, and the terms and conditions in force at the time of a purchase or activity — not at the time the grant was awarded — are the ones that apply for audit purposes.

  • Research Governance Framework for Health and Social Care: What It Requires

    The research governance framework for health and social care is the UK-wide system of principles, defined roles and formal approvals that govern how health and social care research is designed, sponsored, hosted and conducted. The original Department of Health document of that name (2001, second edition 2005) was withdrawn on 7 November 2017 and replaced by the UK Policy Framework for Health and Social Care Research, published by the Health Research Authority (HRA). This guide sets out what the current framework actually requires of sponsors, host organisations and investigators.

    The UK Policy Framework for Health and Social Care Research is the Health Research Authority’s single, UK-wide set of principles — replacing the four separate national Research Governance Frameworks — that defines proportionate, assurance-based management of health and social care research involving patients, service users, carers or their data.

    What is the research governance framework for health and social care?

    The Research Governance Framework for Health and Social Care was first published by the Department of Health in 2001, with a second edition on 24 April 2005. It set out principles, requirements and standards that applied to research falling within the responsibilities of the Secretary of State for Health.

    It formalised three roles that still anchor governance today: a sponsor taking overall responsibility for a study, an NHS or care organisation granting local research-and-development (R&D) permission, and a Chief Investigator leading the research. Most searches for “research governance framework” still refer to this historic document, even though it no longer governs live research.

    Why was the original framework withdrawn — and what replaced it?

    GOV.UK’s official record confirms the Research Governance Framework for Health and Social Care “was withdrawn on 7 November 2017”. It was superseded by the UK Policy Framework for Health and Social Care Research, published in October 2017 by the HRA together with the health departments of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, following public consultation.

    The change replaced four separate country-level research governance frameworks with one UK-wide document. According to the HRA, the policy framework “replaces the separate Research Governance Frameworks in each UK country with a single, modern set of principles for the whole UK.” The framework was itself informed by earlier standards, including ICH Good Clinical Practice (ICH GCP) and the pan-European RESPECT ethical guidelines, rather than being written from scratch.

    Practically, the core accountability structure — sponsor, host, investigator — carried over. What changed was terminology, scope (a single UK document instead of four) and the mechanics of local sign-off, discussed below.

    Aspect Research Governance Framework (2001; 2nd ed. 2005) UK Policy Framework for Health and Social Care Research (2017–present)
    Status Withdrawn 7 November 2017 Current governing document
    Publisher Department of Health Health Research Authority, with health departments of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales
    Geographic scope Separate framework per UK nation Single set of principles across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales
    Local sign-off “R&D approval/permission” issued by individual NHS trusts “Capacity and capability” confirmation by host organisations
    Core roles Sponsor, R&D-approving organisation, Chief Investigator Sponsor, host organisation, Chief Investigator, Principal Investigator (per site)

    Every study within scope must have a named sponsor — an individual, organisation or partnership that takes overall responsibility for setting up, running and reporting the research. For non-commercial studies, the sponsor is typically the employer of the Chief Investigator (often a university or NHS trust); for commercial studies, the funding company usually sponsors directly.

    • Ensuring the protocol is scientifically sound before the study starts
    • Securing a favourable opinion from a Research Ethics Committee (REC) and any other required regulatory approvals
    • Putting proportionate quality, risk-management and monitoring systems in place
    • Arranging adequate insurance or indemnity to cover potential liabilities
    • Taking responsibility for accurate reporting, registration and dissemination of findings

    Sponsorship is a formal role that must be explicitly accepted in writing — it is never assumed by default.

    What does it require of host organisations?

    The framework does not use the word “host” as a defined technical term, but the obligations fall on the research site or employing organisation — an NHS trust, university, or social care provider where the research actually takes place. Under HRA Approval, hosts confirm capacity and capability rather than issuing the older-style “R&D permission”.

    • Confirming the site has the resources, facilities and capability to deliver the research safely
    • Completing local capacity and capability checks before recruitment begins at that site
    • Ensuring staff involved are appropriately qualified, trained and supervised
    • Safeguarding the dignity, rights, safety and wellbeing of participants at that site
    • Working collaboratively with the sponsor and Chief Investigator throughout the study

    What does it require of investigators?

    The Chief Investigator (CI) is the overall lead researcher and, for clinical trials, must be a healthcare professional. In multi-site studies, a Principal Investigator (PI) holds equivalent responsibility for conduct at each individual site.

    • Conducting the research to the approved protocol and to high scientific and ethical standards
    • Obtaining valid informed consent from every participant before they take part
    • Protecting participant dignity, rights, safety and wellbeing throughout the study
    • Reporting adverse events and unexpected issues to the sponsor and REC promptly
    • Collecting, recording and storing data accurately and securely

    Common questions about research governance

    What is a research governance framework?

    A research governance framework is the set of regulations, principles and standards that govern how health and social care research is designed, approved, conducted and reported. It defines who holds responsibility — the sponsor, host organisation and investigator — and sets the assurance and oversight arrangements that protect participants and data.

    What is the UK Policy Framework for Health and Social Care Research?

    The UK Policy Framework for Health and Social Care Research is the document that has governed UK health and social care research since October 2017, when the Health Research Authority and the health departments of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales replaced the country-specific research governance frameworks with one UK-wide set of principles.

    What is research governance in the NHS?

    In the NHS, research governance means every study has a designated sponsor who takes overall responsibility, a host organisation that confirms capacity and capability, and an investigator who leads day-to-day conduct — with a favourable Research Ethics Committee opinion required before recruitment can begin under HRA approval.

    What are the 7 pillars of clinical governance, and how does that differ from research governance?

    Clinical governance covers seven pillars — education and training, clinical audit, clinical effectiveness, staffing, patient involvement, risk management and information governance — and concerns everyday care quality. Research governance is a distinct system specific to research projects, covering sponsorship, ethical approval and investigator accountability rather than routine service delivery.

    What this means for research teams today

    Any protocol, SOP or training material that still cites the “Research Governance Framework for Health and Social Care” as live guidance is referencing a document withdrawn in 2017. Institutions relying on legacy templates risk misaligning their sponsor and host obligations with current HRA Approval processes, particularly around capacity-and-capability sign-off rather than the older R&D permission route.

    The HRA’s guidance page on the current framework shows a last-reviewed date of 10 January 2025, indicating the 2017 principles remain the active, maintained standard rather than a static one-off publication. Research administrators and R&D offices should audit internal documents against the current text on the HRA website, not archived Department of Health PDFs.

    The bottom line

    The research governance framework that many searches still name no longer governs UK health and social care research: the UK Policy Framework for Health and Social Care Research has done so since 2017. Its sponsor, host and investigator obligations are more precisely defined than the 2005 document they replaced, and they are the requirements institutions must demonstrate compliance with today. As research becomes more decentralised and data-driven, these role definitions — rooted in accountability, capability and consent — remain the reference point for governance across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

    For related definitions and role frameworks, see CASRAI’s research administration resources and the research administration dictionary.