Researchfish Guidance

You can request access from the Researchfish website. 

You may also have received an invitation from your funder to create an account.

All the UK research councils (as well as other funders, including UKRI) will impose sanctions if outcomes are not submitted on time, including:

• stopping payments on existing grants
• not accepting further grant applications

Researchfish will email the principal investigator (PI) of an awarded grant if the funder uses the system.

The PI must ensure that outcomes are recorded and submitted via Researchfish to the funder. Outcomes can only be submitted to the funder during a submission period.

Award

This is a full list of funders who use Researchfish, which includes all the UK Research and Investment (UKRI) funding councils as well as many major charities.

If a funder uses Researchfish, the principal investigator will be notified by email. 

• If you do not have a Researchfish account, follow the link in the email to set up your profile.

• If you have a Researchfish account, follow the link in the email to add your new award to your account.

Record

You can record your outputs at any time.

You can add delegates who can record these outcomes for you, although only the principal investigator can submit them to the funder.

In the portfolio screen there are a list of common outcomes (such as publications, impact and engagement) as well as specific outcomes for your funder. You need to complete only the common outcomes that are relevant to your award but all of the specific outcomes that relate to funder.

The accuracy and completeness of the information provided is important. Funders are interested in the quality of returns, not only that returns are submitted or the number of outputs entered.

Submit

If your funder has announced a submission period, you must submit your outcomes before it closes. If you do not, you may have payment on your grant stopped and the funder may not accept further applications from you.

If your grant has only recently been awarded you must still submit something to your funder – even if that is a nil submission.

You can check submission periods by logging into Researchfish. 

UKRI only has one submission period a year. Other funding bodies may have more than one.

Publish

After your research outcomes have been submitted, details will be added to Gateway to Research – the database of publicly funded research grants.

You can see how award and outcomes will look by searching on Gateway to Research.

If you have not used Researchfish before we recommend visiting the Researchfish help pages where you can find help guides, videos, webinars and FAQs.

If you cannot find the answer to your query using the resources above then please contact [email protected].