Costs & financial support

Reduced access fees and financial support are available for student and early-career researchers and researchers from low and middle-income countries.

In determining the access fees, UK Biobank seeks to recover only the incremental costs of servicing an access application: it does not seek to recover the cost of development and management of the UK Biobank data resource, which already runs into hundreds of millions £GBP.

The rationale for this fee structure is that:

• The three Tiers of fees are based broadly on the size of the respective datasets (and the respective costs of their distribution) and on UK Biobank’s analysis of common researcher usage of these datasets, as UK Biobank is keen to ensure that access to its Core level dataset remains at a cost level which is comparable to that under the old fee structure.
• The fee per collaborating institution is intended to cover the administrative costs of adding an institution to an application.
• The transition to a periodic charge – namely for an initial 3-year period, renewable for further periods – is to provide researchers with more flexibility, and reflects research practice and also takes into account the request of provision of updated and new data from UK Biobank.

These Access Fees were introduced on 1st April 2021. 

UK Biobank will provide a reduced access fee of £500 (plus VAT) for data-only requests from researchers who meet the following criteria:  

• The application is submitted by a student or their supervisor for the sole purpose of performing the student’s research project (the resulting paper must be authored by the student) 
• The application cannot be used to conduct research for any other purpose, nor can it be used for multiple student (or other) projects 
• Any collaborators (which are permitted only at UK Biobank’s discretion) must have a clearly articulated and relevant role in the production of the research project 

Applications from low and middle income countries can receive financial support to cover the reduced application fee of £500 (plus VAT).  

UK Biobank will keep this reduced-fee regime under regular review to ensure that it is being used appropriately and fairly. 

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