Information for Students

If you are the recipient of a funded PhD, for example from UKRI (AHRC, BBSRC, EPSRC, ESRC, MRC, NERC, STFC), you will be required to make a yearly submission to the funder regarding what types of outcomes have resulted over the past year. UKRI in particular require their PhD grant recipients to continue to submit a yearly report for 3 years after the PhD ends.

For the past few years, these submissions have been optional. This continues to be the case for the 2023 submission period.

Even though the submission is currently optional, and you may not have any outcomes (such as published journal articles or public engagement activities) to report yet, it is still beneficial to login and make a submission.

Why?

1. Having a funded PhD is prestigious. If you are considering a career as an academic/researcher, a career in research support, or a career working for a funding body, then being able to say you have used the reporting system (called ResearchFish) and are familiar with it is something you can add to your CV. Many funders use ResearchFish to manage their reporting and it is the same system that academic staff and Principal Investigators use when they have received a grant.
2. Even if you don’t have any outcomes to report yet, submissions are valuable in helping funders understand the outcomes of student research, timescales and in particular the impact the pandemic has had on student outcomes.
3. Submissions are likely to become mandatory again in future, so being able to login, familiarise yourself with the system and make a submission now will likely make this process easier in future years.

You can login to ResearchFish and add outcomes to your PhD at any time throughout the year. However, there is a limited period each year where you can submit these outcomes to the funder. We call this the Submission Period. The ResearchFish Submission Period for 2023 begins on February 6^th and ends at 16:00 on March 16^th.

If you would like to login and make a submission, you will receive an email from your funder (for example UKRI), with further information before the submission period begins. This email will have instructions on how to login and what kinds of things to include/not include in your submission.

If you need any further help or guidance, the institutional contact for ResearchFish submissions is the Open Access Manager based in the University’s Research, Innovation and Knowledge Exchange service. Please email oa@hud.ac.uk with any questions. You can also contact ResearchFish directly by emailing support@researchfish.com.