Dear UCSF Research Community,  

We are excited to announce that the Research Gateway Conflict of Interest (COI) portal is now live—replacing COI-Smart. This new portal offers a more user-friendly interface, and comprehensive features designed to streamline the COI disclosure and management process. A UCSF COI policy change is now in effect in conjunction with the availability of this new portal.  

All UCSF investigators (“anyone responsible for the design, conduct, or reporting of research” per university and federal policies) will be required to have an annual disclosure on file regardless of their funding source. 

This will align UCSF with industry best practices—instituting a change for the following groups:  

• Non-PHS federally funded researchers will no longer submit a PI certification for each project, and instead will just maintain their annual disclosure in the system. This will reduce the administrative burden for this group.  

• Privately funded researchers will now be required to submit an annual disclosure (in addition to the California State required Form 700-U) with each proposed project. This will provide more clarity and reduce the need for follow-up questions on the 700-U disclosures.   

NEXT STEPS: The COI office will be reaching out to UCSF investigators on a rolling basis as research awards are received for review. Researchers should be on the lookout for an email requesting a disclosure submission in Research Gateway. If you are a UCSF researcher and would like to get a head start on the process, please reach out to [email protected] to request access to the system.   

We appreciate the ongoing efforts of our researchers and staff to meet administrative requirements and are pleased to enable those efforts with the new Research Gateway Conflict of Interest portal.  

For more information, please reach out via email: [email protected].  

Sincerely,  

Brian Smith
Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer

Mandy Terrill
Associate CIO for Research