CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: ukri gateway to research

  • 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 Gateway to Research: A Reporting Guide

    UKRI’s Gateway to Research (GtR) is the free, open database of research and innovation projects funded by UK Research and Innovation since 2006, covering roughly 170,000 awards. Research administrators use it to track funded projects, benchmark peer institutions and pull evidence for institutional and REF-style reporting, without needing a login or a data-sharing agreement.

    Gateway to Research is UKRI’s public search and analysis portal for administrative data on publicly funded UK research and innovation, refreshed quarterly from UKRI’s central Databank. It is distinct from UKRI’s funding finder, which lists open funding calls rather than completed or active awards — a distinction covered in detail below.

    What is UKRI’s Gateway to Research?

    Gateway to Research (GtR) is the open portal UKRI built to make its funding data visible and searchable by the public. It draws on administrative records held in UKRI’s Databank, sourced from the Innovation Funding Service, the UKRI Funding Service, the Joint Electronic Submission (Je-S) system, off-system project records, and an annual outcomes collection run through a service provided by Elsevier.

    UKRI’s own guidance confirms GtR covers 170,000 funded projects with start dates on or after 1 January 2006, with UKRI-funded studentship information available from 1 February 2015 onwards. The site is built on open source, open standards and an Open Government Licence, so both the interface and the underlying code are free to reuse.

    Coverage spans the seven research councils — AHRC, BBSRC, EPSRC, ESRC, MRC, NERC and STFC — plus Innovate UK and a growing number of UKRI-managed delivery programmes. Research England funding is a notable exception: because most of its money is allocated as a block grant rather than project-by-project, it is not published in GtR.

    How do you search Gateway to Research for funded projects?

    GtR supports a keyword search from its homepage, refined by side-panel facets rather than a single advanced-search form. This makes it fast to move from a broad topic to a specific award once you know which filters to combine.

    • Use double quotes for an exact phrase, for example “open access monitoring”.
    • Combine terms with AND, OR and NOT (uppercase) to broaden or narrow results.
    • Filter by funder (e.g. EPSRC, MRC), project category, start year, region and lead research organisation.
    • Open a project record to see the abstract, funded value, duration, collaborating organisations, named investigators and, where available, ORCID iDs and linked publications.

    Each project page also links to a “related projects” tab, which is essential when an award has been transferred between organisations, since GtR issues a new reference suffix (/2, /3, and so on) for each transfer rather than overwriting the original record.

    Gateway to Research vs the UKRI funding finder: which tool do you need?

    These two UKRI tools are frequently confused because both sit under ukri.org and gtr.ukri.org, but they answer opposite questions. GtR looks backwards at what has already been funded; the funding finder looks forwards at what is currently open for application.

    Feature Gateway to Research (GtR) UKRI funding finder
    Purpose Search historical and active funded projects Search currently open funding opportunities
    URL gtr.ukri.org ukri.org/opportunity
    Data scope ~170,000 awards from 1 Jan 2006 onwards Live calls only, replaced as deadlines close
    Update frequency Quarterly (second week of Jan, Apr, Jul, Oct) Continuous, as calls open and close
    Typical user Research administrators, analysts, developers Applicants seeking funding

    If your task is to benchmark what a peer institution has already won, GtR is the correct source. If the task is to identify a call to apply to, the funding finder — not GtR — is the tool you need.

    Using GtR data for institutional benchmarking and reporting

    Research offices use GtR as a free alternative to commercial funding-intelligence platforms for lightweight benchmarking. Filtering by lead research organisation and funder produces a portfolio view of a competitor institution’s award count, funded value and subject spread without a subscription.

    Two structural details matter for reporting accuracy. First, funded value reflects commitment, not spend — it is the amount UKRI approved at award stage, drawn down over the project’s life, so it should not be equated with cash disbursed in a given reporting year. Second, since October 2025 all awards issued via the UKRI Funding Service carry a “UKRI” prefix in their award identifier (for example, UKRI127, replacing the previous numeric-only format), which affects how administrators cross-reference internal grant codes against GtR records.

    The People and Publications tabs also make GtR useful for tracking named investigators across institutions and linking outputs to ORCID iDs, supporting the kind of contributor-and-output reporting that research administration offices are increasingly asked to produce for funders and league-table submissions.

    Data limitations every research administrator should know

    UKRI’s own data guide, last substantively updated for the April 2026 refresh, sets out limitations that should sit alongside any figure pulled from GtR:

    • Exclusions: 3.6% of projects are excluded from publication, either flagged “Do Not Publish” or awaiting funder identification.
    • Duplicate organisations and people: UKRI lacks unique identifiers across all its source systems, so the same institution or researcher can appear under multiple names — any headcount or organisation count is likely an overestimate.
    • Regional attribution: project region is based on the lead applicant’s postcode, not where the research is actually carried out, which tends to overrepresent administrative hubs such as London, Oxford and Cambridge.
    • Classification inconsistency: UKRI advises against using its project categories for trend analysis across funders, as classification rules are not applied consistently.

    Developers can also query GtR programmatically through two public APIs, though UKRI describes the API as currently unsupported and recommends building request delays and cache-busting parameters into any automated pipeline that pages through results.

    Frequently asked questions

    Is UKRI’s Gateway to Research free to use?

    Yes. GtR is open and free for all users, built on open source, open standards and an Open Government Licence. Both the website and its underlying data and code can be reused by third parties, including through UKRI’s public API, without a subscription or login.

    How often is Gateway to Research data updated?

    GtR refreshes on a quarterly cycle, scheduled for the second week of January, April, July and October. Each release pulls the latest snapshot from UKRI’s central Databank, so figures can lag real-time award decisions by up to three months.

    What is the difference between Gateway to Research and the UKRI funding finder?

    GtR is a retrospective database of funded and active projects since 2006; the funding finder is a live listing of open calls. Use GtR to see what has been awarded, and the funding finder to find opportunities to apply for.

    Can I access Gateway to Research data through an API?

    Yes. UKRI provides two public APIs for programmatic access, though they are officially unsupported. UKRI recommends paging through results with built-in delays and using cache-busting query parameters to avoid stale error responses.

    As UKRI continues to consolidate its systems — including folding new studentship data into GtR from mid-2026 — the dataset is likely to become more consistent, though the underlying caution around duplicate organisation names and commitment-versus-spend figures will remain relevant for any institution using GtR as an evidence source in formal reporting.