SSI Research Software Maintenance Fund (RSMF) Round 2¶
Application Status: Expression of Interest Submitted — Not Yet Granted
EoI submitted 25 February 2026. Rebuttal phase: 25-26 March 2026. Decision on invitation to full proposal: mid-April 2026.
About the RSMF¶
The Research Software Maintenance Fund (RSMF) is a £4.8m fund administered by the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) on behalf of UKRI. Round 2 offers grants of up to £150,000 over 12 months, with approximately 10 projects expected to be funded.
The fund aims to:
- Fund ongoing software maintenance activity and reduce technical debt
- Improve usability and user experience of research software
- Build and sustain research software communities
- Support long-term sustainability planning for research software projects
Grants are funded at 80% full economic cost (fEC) for UK higher education institutions.
Fund website: software.ac.uk/research-software-maintenance-fund/round-2
Application Timeline¶
| Date | Milestone |
|---|---|
| 28 Jan 2026 | EoI opened |
| 25 Feb 2026 | EoI submitted (closing date) |
| 25–26 Mar 2026 | EoI rebuttals |
| Mid-Apr 2026 | Invitation to full proposals communicated |
| Mid-May 2026 | Full proposals due |
| Jul 2026 | Decisions communicated |
| 1 Oct 2026 | Earliest project start |
| 29 Feb 2028 | End date for projects |
Proposed Objectives¶
The EoI sets out six objectives for SyRF under this fund:
- Annotation question versioning with full audit trails — Implement immutable versioning of annotation questions so that changes to question text or answer options are tracked, and historical answers remain linked to the exact question version under which they were recorded.
- Security remediation from independent penetration testing — Address findings from a recent independent penetration test, resolving identified vulnerabilities and strengthening the platform's security posture.
- Accessibility improvements towards WCAG 2.1 AA — Audit and remediate the SyRF web application to meet WCAG 2.1 AA conformance, improving access for users with disabilities.
- Documentation and training — Expand the user guide, produce structured onboarding materials, and deliver webinars for new and existing user communities.
- Community Steering Group and public roadmap — Establish a Community Steering Group with representation from the SyRF user base to advise on priorities, and publish a public development roadmap.
- Long-term sustainability plan — Develop a formal sustainability plan covering governance, funding diversification, and community ownership to reduce dependence on a single funding source.
Proposed 12-Month Timeline¶
Months 1–3: Foundations & Risk Mitigation¶
- Address security vulnerabilities identified by penetration testing
- Design the annotation question versioning architecture
- Recruit members for the Community Steering Group
- Scoping and requirements gathering for accessibility work
Months 4–8: Core Implementation¶
- Build and release annotation question versioning
- Continue technical debt reduction (dependency updates, deprecated API removal)
- Begin accessibility remediation work
- First Community Steering Group meeting; publish public roadmap
Months 9–12: Validation, Training & Sustainability¶
- Independent accessibility audit against WCAG 2.1 AA
- Deliver user webinars and expand training documentation
- Ongoing Community Steering Group engagement
- Develop and publish long-term sustainability plan
Proposed Team¶
| Name | Role | Responsibility |
|---|---|---|
| Chris Sena | Lead Developer / RSE | Technical lead: architecture, implementation, security remediation |
| Francesca Tinsdeall | Product Owner | User needs, roadmap prioritisation, steering group liaison |
| Gill Currie | Scrum Master / Methodologist | Community engagement, training delivery, helpdesk |
| TBC | Additional Software Engineer | To recruit for funded period; development support across all objectives |
Key Arguments from the EoI¶
- Methodological safeguards are built-in defaults, not configurable options. SyRF's blinding of reviewer identities and random study serving are core platform behaviours, not optional settings — ensuring methodological rigour regardless of user configuration. This differentiates SyRF from general-purpose systematic review tools.
- Free at point of use, removing financial barriers. SyRF is provided free of charge to all researchers, contrasting with commercial competitors (Covidence, DistillerSR, EPPI-Reviewer) that charge per-project or per-seat fees. This is particularly significant for researchers in lower-resourced institutions.
- Demonstrated adoption across UK research. SyRF has supported 759 projects in the past two years, with 322 projects linked to UK institutional contacts spanning 29 universities — evidencing genuine community need.
- Established scholarly impact. 56 peer-reviewed publications have referenced SyRF since 2021, demonstrating that the platform is embedded in active research workflows and not merely a demonstration tool.
- Recent infrastructure modernisation creates capacity. Migration to Kubernetes, ArgoCD, and a fully automated CI/CD pipeline has significantly reduced operational overhead. This creates headroom for maintenance and improvement work that was previously crowded out by infrastructure concerns.
Value Regardless of Outcome¶
The EoI process has articulated a well-structured maintenance and governance roadmap for SyRF. The six objectives — versioning, security, accessibility, documentation, community governance, and sustainability — represent a coherent programme of work that is valuable to the platform independent of funding outcome.
Even if SyRF is not invited to submit a full proposal, or if the full proposal is not funded, these objectives inform SyRF's development priorities and can be pursued incrementally through other funding mechanisms or internal investment over a longer timeframe.