Demystifying Funding: Reconstructing a Unified Dataset of the UK Funding Lifecycle
New dataset connects funding opportunities to panel decisions and outcomes for the first time.
A team of researchers—William Thorne, Rupert Shepherd, and Diana Maynard—has published a significant new resource for analyzing research funding. Their paper, "Demystifying Funding: Reconstructing a Unified Dataset of the UK Funding Lifecycle," accepted at NSLP 2026, details the technical reconstruction of UK Research and Innovation's (UKRI) Gateway to Research (GtR) database. The core achievement is linking three previously disconnected data sources: the GtR project database, UKRI funding opportunity announcements, and the competitive funding decision records from across UKRI's research councils. This integration closes the loop on the complete funding lifecycle, a task previous work had not accomplished.
The researchers faced substantial technical hurdles, including navigating inconsistent publication formats and restricted access to the often-opaque panel decision records. The resulting unified dataset enables, for the first time, a holistic interrogation of the entire UK public research funding process. Analysts can now trace a path from the initial announcement of a funding call, through the submitted project proposals and the panel's evaluation, to the final funded projects and their research outcomes. The team has made both the reconstructed database and the associated code publicly available, promoting transparency and further study in science policy and research analytics.
- Links three UKRI data sources: GtR projects, funding opportunities, and panel decisions.
- Overcomes technical challenges of inconsistent formats and restricted access to decision records.
- Enables full lifecycle analysis from funding announcement to research outcome for the first time.
Why It Matters
Provides unprecedented transparency into public research funding, enabling better policy analysis and accountability.