What does FWO require?

FWO requires all information on research results to be submitted to the FRIS research portal if these results originate from a project or fellowship that is at least partially funded with FWO resources. At Ghent University, fulfilling this requirement is supported through GISMO and Biblio. From these institutional systems, the required data will then flow through to FRIS.

The FWO requires the submission of information on three types of research results:

1) peer-reviewed journal articles

2) datasets

3) research infrastructure

The FWO asks its researchers to update the information in the institution's own systems and repositories on a regular basis. When a fellow leaves the receiving institution, responsibility for registration of the new publications, of which the former fellow is an author, is transferred to the promoter.

More information on the FWO requirement

What to do?

Each fellow and (co-)promotor involved in an FWO project is responsible for entering the correct and complete metadata of the research results in the information systems of their institution(s). Researchers should not only enter the required information, but also make the links (or validate the links) between their research results and related research projects/fellowships.

• All projects funded by the FWO at Ghent University are registered centrally in GISMO. This includes fellowships. You therefore do not have to do anything yourself for this to happen.
• The promotor/fellow receives an email from the research administration (Team Flemish-federal) that the project and the grant have been created, with a direct link to the project form in GISMO. This project form must be checked and any missing metadata must be completed. Required metadata are: Dutch title and abstract, English title and abstract, discipline code level 4, min. one Dutch and one English keyword. > more on the project form
• The same email also contains a reference to the personal profile. A complete personal profile is obligatory, i.e. an ORCID-id linked to Ghent University and a discipline code level 4. > more on the personal profile
• If these files are not complete, the project will not be shown in the Research Explorer, and will not be forwarded to FRIS! > more on how GISMO feeds into FRIS
• From now on, the project is also available in Biblio and can be linked to publications and/or datasets. And this is what FWO is now expecting from its researchers: do not forget to connect your outputs to your project! > More about linking research output to a project in Biblio
• GISMO forwards the publication information, including the project link, to FRIS. FRIS identifies the publications that have undergone peer review.
• For the reporting of published, peer-reviewed journal articles, FWO offers an online reporting form and retrieves the publication information from FRIS. On the FWO portal, you need to initiate the import of publications from FRIS to the project report. Make sure you do this in a timely manner, so that there is enough time to verify the report and take action to complete the report by providing the necessary information to Biblio and/or GISMO if there is any incorrect or missing information (often this requires contact with the helpdesk teams of Biblio or GISMO).
• More about linking datasets to publications in Biblio

Reporting

These reporting requirements for research results resulting from research funded at least partly by FWO funds was introduced in 2022. Since 2025, a more stringent reporting policy is adopted by FWO in which compliance to the reporting requirements is monitored more closely and infringements will result in an insufficient rating with impact on future funding.

Since June 2024, FWO extracts published, peer-reviewed journal articles from FRIS. It is therefore important to link your publications in Biblio to your FWO project now.

Other research output types and research infrastructure still needs to be reported in the old way, namely by manually adding the information for the publications, datasets and infrastructure. Whether your report is partly compiled based on information in FRIS (and thus the institutional systems Biblio and GISMO) depends on the start date of your project or fellowship and the date of initiation of the report in the FWO portal. If you do not see a button to import publications into the report you will have to enter all research output manually.

For further information on how to ensure that the reporting of publications based on information in FRIS runs smoothly, check the research tip FWO: Why is my publication report not complete?.