UK Biobank Credits Programme: Frequently Asked Questions

UK Biobank follows these guidelines. Eligible researchers will already have been approved for reduced Access fees.

An early career researcher is defined as an individual within an academic institution within 4 years of the award of their degree, or within 4 years of starting their first academic appointment (full-time or part-time), excluding career breaks.  Early career researchers also include those bona fide students eligible for reduced Access fees.

In addition to the free £40 credit provided by DNAnexus to become familiar with using the RAP, eligible researchers are pre-approved to receive a Getting Started Credit for £1,000 that can be put towards the costs of storage and compute. The credit is valid for a period of 12 months and only one request for Getting Started Credits is available per approved Access project.  You will be required to complete a request form here.

Enhanced Credits may be requested once a researcher has understood the scope of their analyses and have calculated the estimated compute and storage costs to carry out all or part of their research.  These credits are awarded at UK Biobank’s discretion in increments of £1000 and require supporting information that detail the proposed analyses and compute and storage estimations.

Yes, you can apply for Enhanced Credits on multiple occasions and/or for multiple UK Biobank research projects.  If you require additional credits, please see the question “I have underestimated the amount of money that I require, can I get additional credits?”

All Enhanced Credits are awarded at UK Biobank’s sole discretion. UK Biobank may reject a request for a number of reasons including, but not limited to:

• Not enough detail/unclear in the proposal
• Estimation of cost not detailed clearly
• Available credits have been exhausted within that review cycle

UKB does not have an Access Fee discount for Early Career Researcher, some Early Career Researcher may qualify for a Student discount if they are currently a post graduate student (e.g. MSc or PhD equivalent) 

Research credits are not intended to be used by commercial organisations (i.e. research credits must not be awarded to an early career researcher employed within industry).

No, the credits are only available to offset Compute, Storage and Egress charges generated within the RAP.

Researcher credits are awarded quarterly in Jan, Apr, Jul, Oct, but applications must be submitted one month prior

Grants are awarded for a period of 12 months and any funding not used within that period will be lost; UKB can award up to three grants to run consecutively, noting that year 2 and year 3 credits are subject to successful completion of annual review.

No, researcher credits are awarded in periods of 12 months, any credits not used within that time will be lost.  UK Biobank will accept requests for three consecutive researcher credits on one project, allowing funding for three years, noting that these credits from one researcher period cannot be moved to another.

No, the AWS researcher credits are separate from the UKB discounted access fees.

Yes, by paying full access fee you may still apply for the AWS researcher credits noting that the researcher credits will only be for use within the RAP.

The researcher credits is allocated to the Application, but the funds are to be administrated by the qualifying individual.  Therefore you may invite users to your RAP Project that is associated to your researcher credits wallet and depending on the permission you grant would allow / restrict them carrying out chargeable activities.

When credits are awarded UKB will inform AWS and DNAnexus, at the start of the Researcher Credits Period DNAnexus will issue a Researcher Credits Wallet to the individual to the value agreed.

No, the AWS researcher credits are awarded to work exclusively with the UKB Application they are awarded to.

In accordance we the RAP terms of use, you may upload data that you require to work on your UKB Applications. Therefore as long as the data uploaded is required it AWS credits may be used.

Requests for additional researcher credits will be assessed on a case by case basis and will be solely at UK Biobank’s discretion. Please email access@ukbiobank.ac.uk for more detail.

Unfortunately direct AWS researcher credits must be applied directly to an AWS account, therefore cannot be used in the RAP.

AWS host a site for estimating at https://calculator.aws/, please note the rate calculated are AWS list price and would will need to recalculate this using the RAP Rate Card 

As all billing calculations in the RAP are in £GBP, AWS and DNAnexus covert the credit before apply to make it more easy for the Researcher to estimate cost.

Yes, you can apply for these credits yourself. Your Professor/Supervisor does not need to apply on your behalf.

You are responsible for the administration of the researcher credits Wallet and therefore if you add a collaborator with the permission to execute chargeable events you need to ensure that you have authorised the spend.  Neither UKB, DNAnexus or AWS are able to recover these funds.

UK Biobank has a defined amount of AWS credits to issue, these will be issued on research merit and at the sole discretion of UK Biobank; by informing us that you are likely to apply for further grants will enable UK Biobank forecast usage, but does not guarantee approval.

For all awards other than a Getting Started, you are required to submit spend details in your annual report.

Please see here.

Failure to submit an annual report may result in any follow on or new researcher credits being refused for the individual researcher and/or organisation.

As long as you application is active and is not expiring within the next 12 months, please complete the application form. 

You may only have one getting started credits per application, if you are an Early Career or LMIC Researcher that has more than one research application then this will be reviewed on a case by case basis.

UKB aim to address any getting started requests within 14 days of request, enhanced credits may take longer depending on the complexity and the amount requested.  You will received an acknowledgement of request with 14 days.