This page provides a guide to the data in the Gateway to Research (GtR) website, published by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).
The key areas covered in this guide are:
- data coverage
- sources
- limitations
- usage guidelines
We developed GtR to make research and innovation visible and open to the public. We want to enable users to search and analyse information about publicly funded research and innovation from UKRI.
Data is published to GtR quarterly and is scheduled to update in the second week of January, April, July and October.
Gateway to Research data coverage
GtR publishes research and innovation data on funded projects by UKRI where the start date is on or after 1 January 2006. We’ve excluded some projects (3.3%) following a series of UKRI data privacy obligations. These exclusions are described in the publication rules detailed in Annex A.
Information about UKRI-funded students, associated with UKRI training grants, is only available from 1 February 2015. UKRI-funded student information, if available after 1 February 2015, is in the ‘related projects’ tab.
Research England data is not published in GtR, as the majority of its funding is allocated by formula as a block grant. Find out more on the Research England Data Portal.
We collect outcomes from UKRI projects via Researchfish annually. The data published in the April 2025 update is taken from the submission period that closed March 2024. Innovate UK project outcomes are not currently available in GtR.
Data sources
Data is collected in the UKRI Databank from different systems, including:
- Joint Electronic Submission (Je-S) system
- Innovation Funding Service (IFS)
- UKRI Funding Service (TFS)
- off-system projects
- Researchfish
Multiple sources from UKRI Databank feed into a single source of funding and outcomes data – quarterly snapshot (SSD). This then feeds into website staging, where GtR publication rules are applied, before being published on the GtR website.
Publication rules
We apply a series of publication rules to the data before publishing to the website. We’ve put these rules in place to ensure UKRI is transparent whilst still adhering to its data privacy obligations, data validation, and the terms and conditions of the funding opportunity. This means that 3.3% of projects have been excluded from GtR.
A list of the publication rules can be found in Annex A.
Data published
The data published in Gateway to Research is organised into the following key sections, each highlighting different aspects of funded research and innovation projects.
- overview
- organisations
- people
- publications
- outcomes
In May 2023 UKRI announced a change to role names in line with the launch of the new UKRI Funding Service. See further information on the new role names and mapping to the previous names.
The Overview section contains project details including:
- project title
- project abstract
- duration of the project and the funded value
- project status
- project category
- project reference
- classification
The Organisations section includes the lead and collaborating research organisations with any project partners that are formally supporting the research and innovation.
In the People section we cover researchers’ role on a project and publish ORCID IDs where available.
In the Publications section we include publications that are a direct result of the funding released. There are links to the publication texts on the website where available.
Outcome data includes descriptions of outputs covering the following areas (a data dictionary can be found in Annex B):
- artistic and creative products
- collaboration
- key findings
- impact summary
- further funding
- engagement activities
- policy influence
- research databases and models
- impact summary
- software and technical products
- intellectual property
- product interventions and clinical trials
- spin-outs
Data limitations
Classifications
Classifications are applied at the point of application by the applicant or grant manager with no common standards across UKRI. This means the classification should be used with caution when analysing the entire project portfolio.
Outcome data
Outcomes submitted during the six-week submission period across February and March each year are only published once a series of checks have been performed.
We exclude outcomes where a free text field has been used to voice a complaint, obscene language has been used or there is a potential breach of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Duplicated outcomes can exist where multiple outcomes are given unique IDs.
Text fields, for example narrative impact and key findings, are not published if they have fewer than 30 characters and do not reference another award.
If the following fields are missing a response, the outcome is not published:
- publications: no author
- publications: no title
- intellectual property: blank response
- spin-outs: blank response
After the Researchfish submission period has closed, UKRI determines if the spin-outs reported are related to a true spin-out. Each spin-out record is further enriched with data from Companies House. Only confirmed spin-outs are published.
Publications
Publications that are entered into Researchfish from a third party resource, for example DataCite and ORCID, are published directly every quarter. They do not require any checks as researchers are unable to edit the text provided.
Publications that have been manually entered by the principal investigator are subject to our annual checks before being published.
Organisation region
The region of an organisation is based on the postcode contained in the data supplied by the organisation. This is not necessarily where the funding is spent or where the research takes place.
Funded value and total expenditure
The finance values represent the commitment made to support research and innovation and is indicated by ‘funded value’.
For Innovate UK, the project cost is the full amount of money estimated the project will cost to deliver, and grant offer is the amount of public money committed to support the delivery of the project.
For the project category ‘Intramural’, the financial value is the amount the project has received to date. This is indicated by ‘Total expenditure.’
Transferred projects
If a project is transferred from the academic institution it was originally awarded to, the project will have separate references for each organisation it is transferred to.
From 2013 onwards, GtR displays the original reference with a suffix /1, and each subsequent transfer will be given the same reference but with an incremental suffix /2, /3 for example. Older projects may have different references for the transferred part of the project.
The funding on the original project (for example, /1) will be the whole life value of the project when it was first made. The transferred project will carry the unspent funding at the time of transfer. When viewing a transferred project, the ‘Related projects’ tab will show the commitment value and the transferred value.
Caution should be used when reporting funded amounts for projects where a transfer has been made, as the funded amount will contain some duplication.
Data quality
The information in GtR is collected as part of the process of project delivery and funding research and innovation, including the collection of outcome data.
Since the creation of UKRI we have made continual improvements in the way we manage our data internally. We have brought together a single source of data to underpin reporting and analysis. This data source now underpins GtR data.
We last reviewed the publication rules applied to the data in October 2022 to ensure they are still relevant and working as expected.
Going forward, we are exploring an upgrade of the GtR platform so that we can ensure GtR continues to reflect as much of our budget and activity as possible. This includes extending the data fields we publish.
Usage guidelines
The GtR website is open and free for all to use and has been developed using open source, open standards and an Open Government Licence to enable the code to be reused by third parties.
We’ve provided two application programming interfaces (APIs) as a way of accessing the information directly from other information systems. Find out more about the GtR APIs. This allows third parties to link the GtR data to other data sets and analyse the information for their own purposes.
Contacts
For data questions
Email: data@ukri.org
For website questions
Email: gateway@ukri.org
For general enquiries
Email: communications@ukri.org
Annex A: publication rules
Rule descriptions
Abstract null all project types except Training Grant
Replace with a placeholder text as follows:
Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.
Training Grant abstract (for research-related abstracts see the linked studentships)
Replace with a placeholder text as follows:
Doctoral Training Partnerships: a range of postgraduate training is funded by the Research Councils. For information on current funding routes see the common terminology. Training grants may be to one organisation or to a consortia of research organisations. This portal will show the lead organisation only.
Excluded projects that do not meet UKRI data privacy obligations
Excludes any marked as not to publish including personnel on the project.
Data quality
Excludes awards where UKRI is still carrying out data quality checks.
Annex B – data dictionary
This is a list of definitions of terms associated with the ‘outcomes’ tab of GtR projects.
Artistic and creative product
- Description: description of the artistic and creative product
- Type of art: type of artistic and creative product
- Year produced: year when the outcome was produced
- Impact: the impact of the artistic and creative product
- URL: website address
Collaboration
- Description: description of collaboration
- Parent organisation/organisation: name of collaborating organisation
- Department: name of collaborating department, faculty, school or ministry
- Country: country of collaborating organisation
- Sector: business or societal sector of collaborating organisation
- PI contribution: contribution of principal investigator to collaboration
- Collaborator contribution: contribution of the collaborating organisation to project
- Impact: impact of the collaboration
- Start year: year collaboration started
Contact
- First name: first name of an individual person who has one or more roles on the project
- Second name: second name of an individual person who has one or more roles on the project
- Surname: surname of an individual person who has one or more roles on the project
- ORCID ID: a persistent identifier that distinguishes a person from every other researcher
Engagement activities
- Body involved with dissemination: organisation assisting with the engagement activity
- Description: summary description of the engagement activity
- Form of engagement activity: form of engagement activity
- Geographic reach: geographic reach
- Name of official scheme: name of official engagement activity scheme
- Part of official scheme: whether engagement activity is part of an official scheme
- Primary audience: type of audience for engagement activity
- Results and impact: further details and impact of the engagement activity
- Type of presentation: type of presentation
- URL: website address
- Year(s) of engagement activity: year(s) of engagement activity
Further funding
- Amount: amount of funding in cash (may be in local currency)
- Country: country of organisation providing further funding
- Department: department, faculty, school or ministry of funding organisation
- Description: description of the further funding activity
- End: end date (month and year)
- Organisation: name of funding organisation (text)
- Funding ID: identifier used by organisation providing further funding
- Sector: societal or business sector
- Start: start date of further funding
- Title: title of further funding
Impact summary
- Description: lay summary of individual impacts arising from the research (including advances in understanding, methods, theory and application and contributions made to society and the economy)
- First year of impact: date in which the impact first materialised
- Impact type: actual and potential ways in which this research could be and is being used
- Sector: business or societal sector receiving the impact
Intellectual property
- Impact: impact of the intellectual property (IP) created
- Description: description of the IP created
- Protection: stage of disclosure
- IP reference: reference of the IP created
- IP title: title of the intellectual property
- Licenced (y/n)
- URL: website address
- Year protection granted: year protection granted
Key findings
- Description: summary of key findings with the lay audience in mind
- Exploitation route: actual and potential ways in which the research may be put to use
- Sectors: business or societal sector of application of research
- URL: website address
Organisation
- Organisation city: the city element of the organisation address
- Organisation country: the country element of the organisation address
- Organisation department: department of the lead research organisation holding the project
- Organisation name: name of organisations involved in the project
Policy influence
- Description or influence: description of the policy influence
- Geographic reach: reach of the policy influence
- Impact: impact of the policy influence
- Policy guideline title: title of policy document or health guideline influenced
- Policy influence type: the type of influence
- URL: website address
Product interventions and clinical trials
- Clinical trial indicator: clinical trial indicator
- Current stage of development: current stage of development of the product
- Description: description of the product or intervention
- Development status: development status
- Impact: impact of the product or intervention
- Title of product or intervention: name of product or intervention
- Intervention type: type of product or intervention
- UKCRN or ISCTN ID: identifier of clinical trial (UKCRN or ISCTNID)
- URL: website address
- Year development stage completed: year development of product or intervention completed
Project
- Actual spend: spend over lifetime of project
- Call: name of call
- End date: date when project has ended or will end
- Expected impact: anticipated impact of the project provided by the principal investigator in the proposal
- Funded amount: the sum of the authorised funding streams
- Funder: the name of the main funder with responsibility for the project (the list includes: AHRC, BBSRC, EPSRC, ESRC, MRC, NERC, STFC, NC3Rs, UKRI, Covid, FIC, FLF, GCRF, HEG, ISCF, Newton Fund, SPF, UUI, UKRI, Innovate UK)
- Grant category: categories used by the research councils (currently: research grant, fellowship, training grant, studentship, third party grant and intramural)
- Grant reference: the identifier of the grant (unique for each funder)
- Lead research organisation: the name of the organisation that is leading the research and is the grant holder
- Planned impact: potential economic and societal impacts and pathways towards realising them (specifically it considers who might benefit from the research and how)
- Project abstract: summary of the project
- Project location: location of the lead research organisation
- Project status: statuses are rolled up into ‘Active’ and ‘Closed’
- Project title: title of the project
- ProjectID: a unique ID allocated by the GtR project
- Start date: official start date of project (some awards published have start dates in the future, they reflect UKRI’s commitment to financially support an application that may still be subject to some administrative changes)
- Technical summary: technical summary of grant included in the proposal
- Project cost: total cost of project including grant values and project
- Grant offer: total grant issued to each project participant
Project role - Person role on project: the role that a person is fulfilling on a project (for example, Brian Smith is the principal investigator)
Publication
- Author: the name of the first author of the publication
- Book title: title of book
- Chapter: title of chapter
- Conference location: location of conference
- Conference number: number of conference in a series
- Date published: the date of publication
- DOl: digital object identifier of publication
- Edition: book or report edition
- ISBN: ISBN of the publication
- ISSN: ISSN of the journal
- Issue number: issue number of publication
- Journal title: title of journal
- PMID: the PubMed unique ID
- Publication abstract: publication abstract
- Publication type: publication type identified by ROS or RF
- Series title: title of series
- Subtitle: subtitle of publication
- Title of volume: volume title
- URL: link to further information on the publication
Research databases and models
- Title: title of the research and database models
- Type of material: type of research and database models
- Description: the description of the research and database models
- Provided to others?: who this has been made available to
- Year produced: year in which the research and database models were produced
- URL: website address
- Impact: the impact of the research and database models
Software and technical products
- Title of technology: title of the software or technical product
- Type of technology: type of software or technical product
- Description: the description of the software or technical product
- OpenSource licence? (Y/N): is the software available under any form of licence?
- Year produced: year in which the software or technical product was produced
- URL: website address
- Impact: impact of the software or technical product
Spin-out
- Company name: the name of the company that was created as a result of project, or whose business strategy was directly influenced by the research project
- Description: a description of the spin-out company and how it was formed
- Impact: the impact of the spin-out company
- URL: website address
- Year established: year company was established