GtR Data Explained

What types of information are held on the portal?

The data on this website provides information about publications, people, organisations,outcomes and classifications relating to research projects.

The projects details include information about the project title, project abstract, duration of the project and the amount awarded.

What is the scope of the data?

The data on this website includes information such as the title, abstract, duration of the project, the amount awarded, the researchers involved and a list of publications produced.

The website does not hold any of the data created or used as part of undertaking the research. Research Councils call this "Research Data".

There are links to the publication texts in the website where available.

The data, published on GtR, is collected from a range of systems used by the funding organisations to collect information from researchers, these include, the Joint electronic Submissions system (Je-S) and ResearchFish. There are some limitations on the data that can be made available from these systems. See data limitations below.

How reliable is the data?

The information within this website is collected as part of the process of awarding and funding research. Information that is created and held by the funding organisations is correct at the time of publication. Information collected from researchers is presumed to have been checked for correctness by the individual researchers entering the data.

What are the data limitations?

Gateway to Research publishes information from a variety of source systems. This information is not transferred to Gateway to Research on a real-time basis and the information is processed against a set of funder agreed business rules to determine suitability for publication.

Gateway to Research may not exactly reflect the information shown in the source systems.

Other limitations include:

• Historic Information: All funding organisations have provided information about research they have funded since January 2006; however historic information provided by some funding organisations was not found to be consistently comprehensive and therefore some older projects are not published on GtR. The start and end dates for each project are published in GtR.
  o There are a number of funders that do publish all their data including historical data and they are, Medical Research Council (MRC), Innovate UK and Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).

• Outcomes: Some projects have no outcomes associated with them. Outcomes from Research Council funded projects are collected through ResearchFish which went live in December 2009.
  o Completion of outcomes for projects starting prior to this was not mandatory for all Research Councils. Recently started projects will not yet have generated outcomes. Research Councils are working on ways to improve compliance and improve the quality and scope of outcomes data.

• Studentships: Studentship information being published on GtR is limited to data submitted against training grants awarded after and including 1 February 2015. The criteria has been based on the revised RCUK training grant terms and conditions which came into effect in February 2015.

• Classifications: The ability to search for classifications has been provided to give an insight into grants that are from similar areas that may be of interest to the user. Care should be taken if using these classifications for comparative analysis purposes as the source, coverage and level of usage of the classifications varies significantly across the GtR funders. It is not possible to search and download all the classification categories that are being published on GtR. The ones that are searchable and downloadable are Research Topics, Health Category and UKRI Programmes. A full list of these classifications and their categories can be found here.

How do I find out more about the data?

The information within the website is described in the data dictionary here.

How do I report "incorrect" data?

It is not possible to change information directly on Gateway to Research. Changes should be made or requested through the usual channels for each system.

For any other queries please use the relevant link on the contact us page.

Research often leads to valuable Intellectual Property, an UKRI statement in intellectual property ownership can be found here

How do Organisations, Projects and People relate to each other?

The Project will always be associated with the awarded Lead Research Organisation, or in cases where this changed mid project - the last Lead Research Organisation.

Academics and other people associated with research often move organisations many times in their careers. The UKRI source systems only maintain a consistent record of the current (or last) organisation that the person was associated with. The person view in GtR shows both the organisation the person works at and a history of all the projects they are and have been associated with. This means that the organisation displayed as associated with the person being viewed may not have been associated with all the projects in their listed research history.