Introduction to the Research Network

The Genomics England Research Network is the collection of academic and clinical researchers working on within the National Genomic Research Library. The Research Network consists of eight cross-functional communities which are united around specific research methods and goals. If you are a researcher from industry with access to the RE, you are Discovery Forum member rather than a Research Network member.

Joining the Research Network

You can join the Research Network via the form on the Genomics England website. Once you have applied, you can find all the details about your application by logging in to the Research Portal. By this point you should have received emails from our service desk with your username and instructions to set your password. If you have any trouble with this, please raise a ticket with our service desk.

From the Research Portal you also have the option to Apply to additional communities from the Quick links on the home page after logging in.

You must notify Genomics England about any contact detail changes, and if you intend to change institution, by raising a ticket on our Service desk portal.

Registering a project

Once you have an idea of the research you would like to perform on the data within the Research Environment you must register your intention as a Research Project within the Research Registry. You can find information about this in our help pages. You will also need to have an approved project in the Research Registry for at least three months before you will be able to export results related to this project out of the Research Environment.

Any requests for additional data or samples should be made by creating a Service desk ticket outside the Research Environment. The samples team will then handle all requests however this process is still being developed and will take some time.

Using RE Access Groups and Folders

When you initially joined the Research Network, you would have been asked to select an RE Access Group that corresponded to your disease focus. Within the RE HPC, you will find a folder named re_gecip, which contains folders for each of the RE Access Groups. You should use your selected folder as your working directory and to store your files.

Applying for funding

If you are applying for funding for your research, please fill in the Register a Grant Application form on our website so that we may support you. Some funding bodies will require you to provide our supporting documents to award you a grant. Funding applications supported by us also have a good chance of being approved historically. Please make sure any research you are requesting funding for is already registered in the Research Registry.

Data security

You must not share your login details with anyone, as this is a breach of the GECIP Rules which are legally binding. Please refer to our section on Data security to learn more.

For guidelines on publishing your results, please refer to our section on Exporting and publishing your results.

Getting help

For any technical enquiries, please create a ticket on our Service desk portal. For more general Research Network enquiries, please email research-network@genomicsengland.co.uk and a member of the Research Network team will get back to you.