ELIXIR-UK Impact Award 2026

The ELIXIR-UK Impact Award recognises work from across our member institutions that has changed practice, capability or policy through activities, projects, visibility from ELIXIR-UK or as a result of being part of it. Submissions are open until 30 October 2026 and the winning team/individual:

  • Is presented at the All Hands 2026 in Liverpool with a diverse audience including our funders
  • Receives impact award of the year as recognition, but no cash award is offered
  • Receives visibility of work with a published article on our site, promotion on our social channels and across the European research infrastructure

What this call covers

The award recognises results that can be traced back to being part of ELIXIR or the outputs of an ELIXIR-related activity/project. Submissions should show what membership, visibility or ELIXIR’s support made possible, rather than impact in general.

We recommend three routes in and a submission can draw on more than one:

  1. Work funded through ELIXIR. Impact form project results supported by ELIXIR UK/Europe funding or ELIXIR-coordinated grants.
  2. Funding and standing gained through the infrastructure. Grants won, partnerships formed or findings given reach and credibility because the work sat within an (inter)national research infrastructure.
  3. Services selected by ELIXIR-UK. What that selection changed for a service – users gained, funding secured, exposure and the credibility the designation carried.
  4. Community, career and credibility. What the ELIXIR community itself made possible for people. Connections that became collaborations, working groups or training networks that would not otherwise have formed, and the support, visibility and standing that come with being part of an international infrastructure – people invited to lead, to speak, to sit on panels or to take on roles they would not otherwise have been offered.

The award can go to a team or to an individual.

Where an individual is nominated, name the people around them and be specific about what that person did that the result depended on. Technical, training, community and professional contributions count equally alongside research contributions.

Output, outcome or impact

The award is for impact, evidenced through outcomes. Outputs are context. Describing outputs as impact is the most common reason a submission scores poorly.

  • Output: what ELIXIR work or membership produced. A paper, a tool, a dataset, a training course, a service selection.
  • Outcome: what changed as a result of the output. Users gained, uptake by other groups, skills acquired, a grant awarded, citation in guidance. Requires someone else to act beyond ELIXIR’s influence.
  • Impact: the difference that change made. Work now done that could not be done before, decisions taken differently, a capability that exists where it did not.

One example through all three. A tool is released, documented and selected as an ELIXIR-UK Service: those are outputs. In the following year it gains several hundred users across a dozen countries, two groups build on its API and a funder cites the designation in awarding a follow-on grant: those are outcomes. Analyses that three of those groups previously outsourced are now run in-house, and the tool sits in two national workflows: that is impact.

If you can only provide evidence as far as outcomes, submit anyway and say so. A well-evidenced outcome scores better than an asserted/unevidenced impact.

An example outside the scope of this call: A group at a member institution builds a metadata validation tool. It becomes the default in three national consortia and two commercial providers adopt it. Clear, evidenced impact – but the work was funded by a UKRI grant, the group has never used an ELIXIR service, taken part in a working group or drawn on the node’s training, and nobody involved has any connection to the community. There is nothing to trace back, so it is out of scope. If the same group had first met their consortium partners through an ELIXIR-UK event, or built the tool to a standard they adopted through an ELIXIR community, it would be in scope – the thread can be that thin, but it has to exist.

What to expect

Submissions run to around 800 words across four sections: the work and its outputs, the ELIXIR contribution, outcomes and impact with evidence, and contributions to open science, knowledge exchange and research culture. The form carries a prompt and a word count for each.

Our Management Committee and representatives from our SIAB reviews the submission against the following criteria:

  • Significance of the impact:  how far the change reaches beyond the project team
  • Attribution to ELIXIR: how clearly the result is downstream of ELIXIR funding, network standing or service selection, or any other ELIXIR connection
  • Strength of the evidence:  whether claims are verifiable
  • Breadth of contribution:  whether it is clear who did what
  • Openness: whether outputs are open, standards-compliant and demonstrably reused

The shortlisted and the winner are published.

Shortlisted case studies go on the ELIXIR-UK website and are offered to the ELIXIR Hub and BBSRC, and can be reused by their authors in grant applications, CVs and institutional reporting.

Before scoring, every reviewer declares any interest in each submission – their own institution, a current or recent collaboration, co-authorship, line management, or a personal relationship. Anyone declaring an interest takes no part in scoring or discussing that submission. Declarations are recorded and available on request.

Reviewers score independently against the criteria before any joint discussion. The shortlist and the winner are then agreed by those without a declared interest.

Who is this for

Anyone based at one of ELIXIR-UK’s member institutions whose work connects to the Node’s work or ELIXIR at large. Self-nomination and nomination of others are both welcome.

How to submit

Download the submission template, complete all four sections and upload it to the submission form by the deadline. The form collects your contact details and contributors.

You can draw on existing text from reports, applications or publications where copyright allows.

If you are unsure whether a piece of work fits, register to attend our informational webinar or write to us at any point before the deadline at contact@elixiruknode.org.

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This award is modelled on the Impact of the Year award run by our colleagues at HDR UK, an ELIXIR-UK member. Their approach to impact shaped how we have set out: abroad, decoupled from individual researchers and counting research culture alongside research outcomes.