Background

The Grants Search portal for Research Grant Services (RGS) provides details of research-based grants managed through the ARC’s Research Management System (RMS). This includes details of both ARC funded research grants, and those from other Grant Funding Entities.

The ARC has been providing grant management services to other Grant Funding Entities since 2020.

The RGS data portal only shows funding information once the grant is initiated, this differs from the NCGP Grants Search portal which shows grant information upon announcement.

Search Items

Search Field

To undertake a search, enter your search term in the search field. Details of the searching protocols available are provided in the Searching Protocols section below.

Search Filters

Your free text search can be further filtered using the fields below.

Sort Functionality

You can also choose a parameter by which the Grants Search results will be sorted. The parameters are:

• Most relevant
• Current grant value – lowest to highest
• Current grant value – highest to lowest
• Funding year – oldest to newest
• Funding year – newest to oldest

Most relevant: Individual grants are sorted by the strength of their relevance to search terms identified in the main search field.

Current grant value: Individual grants are sorted by the 'current grant value'. Where grants are identified as 'closed' and have null current grant value, they will be listed at the bottom of the list of grants returned.

Funding Year: Individual grants are sorted by the funding commencement year.

Searching Protocols

You can enter multiple search terms in the search field, for example, you could enter the name of the investigator, a field of research, a Grantee name (shortened versions are acceptable) and/or the name of any participating organisation.

Please note, the search will return results that contain all of the words you have entered (that is similar to using the 'AND' connector). The search will attempt fuzzy matching of the search terms, for example, singular, plural, uppercase, lowercase, related words (stemming). All searches ignore upper/lowercase.

In this release of Grants Search, you can refine your free-text search further using the instructions below.

Quantum Computing

+Nuclear or "Nuclear"

"Quantum Computing"

"Quantum Computing" +USA

Physics -Nuclear

Australia -"New Zealand"

Nuclear OR Physics

<health significant challenge>

Cryst*

(health child OR (military -profile) 
 OR <mother daughter>)

climate a the then

For advanced searches, the free-text query can be combined with expression filters. The expression filter begins with the '=>' key. Expression filters can be combined with operators 'AND' and 'OR'. Parentheses '(...)' can also be used to enclose sub queries to form a more complex query.

Syntax: <search text> => <filter queries>

The following are the supported expression filters with examples:

grant-funder

=> grant-funder="ARC"

Australia => grant-funder="Discovery"

program

=> program="Discovery"

Australia => program="Discovery"

scheme

=> scheme="Discovery Project"

Australia => scheme="Discovery Project"

year-from

=> year-from="2015"

year-to

=> year-to="2019"

grant-value-from

=> grant-value-from="300000"

grant-value-to

=> grant-value-to="1000000"

grantee

=> grantee="The University of New South Wales"

grantee-short-name

=> grantee-short-name="UNSW"

state-name

=> state-name="New South Wales"

state-short-name

=> state-short-name="NSW"

four-digit-for

=> four-digit-for="0101"

two-digit-for

=> two-digit-for="01"

seo-code

=> seo-code="700101"

status

=> status="Active"

Searching Results

Individual grant details

Search results returned for individual grants will look like the following:

The details provided for individual research grants include the following information:

Data Downloads

CSV

Following a search, the results that are displayed on the screen can be extracted into a comma separated values (CSV) file. These files can then be opened and manipulated using products such as Microsoft Excel.

JSON

Following a search, the results that are displayed on the screen can also be extracted in JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format. JSON is a way of storing and transporting data, usually from one system to another.

The JSON data can also be extracted through the API. Further help regarding the API is provided in the following section.

Status of the data in CSV and JSON

Note that the status of the information in the CSV and JSON files is as per the table below, where 'current' indicates that the information provided includes post-award variations.

If you are looking for information, SEO codes for example, that are contained in the Grants Search portal which are not available in the below table this can be sourced through reviewing the project details on screen, or by calling the data through API.

Calling The API

Returning a list of Grants

The DataPortal API for the Grants Search follows the JSON API Specification (v1.0). The API supports Pagination, Filters and error handling as per the specification. Sparse Fieldsets and Sorting are not supported at this stage.

The Grants Search API data is provided in a paginated format. Clients can access this API by specifying a page size of up to a maximum of 1000 records. The following is an example of the URL format that will return the first page in a set of paginated results containing the first twenty (20) grants.

https://dataportal.arc.gov.au/RGS/API/grants?page%5Bnumber%5D=1&page%5Bsize%5D=20

The following is an example of the URL format where searches and filters are included:

https://dataportal.arc.gov.au/RGS/API/grants?page[size]=20&page[number]=1&filter=[SEARCH TEXT]=>(scheme="[SCHEME]") AND(grantee-short-name="[GRANTEE SHORT NAME]" OR grantee="[GRANTEE]") AND(status="[STATUS]")

Where

• SEARCH TEXT - free text word or phrase to search on. Optional filters can be added to SEARCH TEXT using the separator '=>'
• SCHEME - results are filtered by scheme
• GRANTEE SHORT NAME - results are filtered by Grantee short name
• GRANTEE - results are filtered by Grantee
• STATUS - results are filtered by status

The API URL components must be encoded before calling the API. The following is an example of an encoded URL.

https://dataportal.arc.gov.au/RGS/API/grants?page%5Bnumber%5D=1&page%5Bsize%5D=20&filter=Astronomy%20%3D%3E%20(scheme%3D"Discovery%20Projects")%20AND(grantee-short-name%3D"ANU")%20AND(status%3D"Active")

The following is a snippet of a paginated JSON API call that returns the first page of all grants with one grant per page.

{
	"meta": {
		"requested-page-number": 1,
		"requested-page-size": 20,
		"actual-page-size": 1,
		"total-pages": 1,
		"total-size": 1,
		"search-description": {...},
		"sort-by": ""
	},
	"links": {
		"self": "https://dataportal-uat.arc.gov.au/RGS/API/grants?page%5Bnumber%5D=1&page%5Bsize%5D=20&filter=LP180100122",
		"first": "https://dataportal-uat.arc.gov.au/RGS/API/grants?page%5Bnumber%5D=1&page%5Bsize%5D=20&filter=LP180100122",
		"last": "https://dataportal-uat.arc.gov.au/RGS/API/grants?page%5Bnumber%5D=1&page%5Bsize%5D=20&filter=LP180100122",
		"prev": "https://dataportal-uat.arc.gov.au/RGS/API/grants?page%5Bnumber%5D=1&page%5Bsize%5D=20&filter=LP180100122",
		"next": "https://dataportal-uat.arc.gov.au/RGS/API/grants?page%5Bnumber%5D=1&page%5Bsize%5D=20&filter=LP180100122"
	},
	"data": [{
		"type": "grants",
		"id": "LP180100122",
		"attributes": {
			"code": "LP180100122",
			"program-name": "Linkage",
			"scheme-name": "Linkage Projects",
			"funding-commencement-year": 2019,
			"scheme-information": {
				"scheme-code": "LP",
				"program": "Linkage",
				"submission-year": 2018,
				"round-number": 1,
				"scheme-round": "LP18 Round 1"
			},
			"grantee": "Swinburne University of Technology",
			"grant-funder": "Australian Research Council",
			"grant-title": "Coordinating Innovation in Knowledge-Based Multinational Organisations",
			"grant-summary": "Integration into global supply chains is one of the fundamental challenges for manufacturing companies in Australia. This project seeks to identify the optimal design for coordinating innovation in globally-dispersed organisations. It will analyse three mechanisms for transferring knowledge within organisations: hierarchies, communities of practice, and social networks. Outcomes will include a new multilevel statistical network modelling framework and organisational designs to overcome barriers to knowledge-transfer, such as language, culture and distance. The project will collect and apply data from Boeing Global Technology, the international research arm of The Boeing Company, a world leading business with major subsidiaries in Australia.",
			"lead-investigator": "Prof Dean Lusher",
			"grant-value": 433981,
			"grant-status": "Active",
			"primary-field-of-research": "1608 - Sociology",
			"anticipated-end-date": "2023-05-01",
			"investigators": "Prof Graham Schaffer; Prof Dean Lusher; Dr Peng Wang; Prof Michael Gilding; Prof Giuseppe Labianca; Mr Michael Edwards",
			"grant-priorities": [{
				"priority-type": "Science and Research Priority",
				"priority-name": "Advanced manufacturing"
			}]
		},
		"links": {
			"self": "https://dataportal-uat.arc.gov.au/RGS/API/grants/LP180100122"
		}
	}]
}

In the snippet above, the meta attribute has the information related to page size, page number, total results and search description. The search description is in Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) format. The links attribute has navigation links to other pages and the data attribute has the collection of research outputs data.

Clients can fetch a maximum of 1000 results per page and then keep navigating the results of subsequent pages by following the navigation links. They can also get the desired results using filters and search text as described in the Search Items section. The API also supports Free-Text search operations like AND, OR, NOT. Words like ‘as’, ‘the’, ‘if’, ‘of’, etc may be ignored for a more predictable result, however phrases within a double quote will return exact matches.

Returning the details of a single Grant

After calling the API for a list of grants, each result will contain a links section within the data object of the payload. The URL contained in this section is specific to an individual grant, which can be called to access a more detailed API for that grant.

Troubleshooting

No relevant data in the response

{
"meta":{...}
"links": {...}
"data": []
}

For a specified search, there is no data.

A 'Failed/Unexpected/Unauthorized' response

{
"links": {
    "self": "https://dataportal.arc.gov.au/RGS/API/grants?page%5Bsize%5D=0&page%5Bnumber%5D=1&filter=titlenotfound"
},
"errors": [
    {
    "id": "500InternalServerError",
    "status": "InternalServerError",
    "code": "500",
    "title": "SqlException",
    "detail": "The number of rows provided for a FETCH clause must be greater then zero."
    }
]
}
                

{
"links": {
    "self": "https://dataportal.arc.gov.au/RGS/API/grants"
},
"errors": [
    {
        "id": "401Unauthorized",
        "status": "Unauthorized",
        "code": "401",
        "title": "UnauthorizedAccessException",
        "detail": "..."
    }
]
}
                

A failed/unexpected/unauthorized response will occur when :

• The URL has invalid attribute values
• The client has issued a bad request
• The client is trying to access unauthorized URL or data.
• The client is blocked