Research fellow
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The title of research fellow is used to denote an academic research position at a university or similar institution. A research fellow may act as independent investigator, or under the supervision of a principle investigator. In contrast to a research assistant or research officer, the position of research fellow, normally requires a doctoral degree or equivalent work.

In the United Kingdom, at many universities, this position is the first career grade of a Research Career Pathway and may be permanent, subject to normal probation regulations. The next two higher career grades are senior research fellow and professorial fellow. Although similar to the position of a Research Fellow, these two positions are research only posts, with the rise of the career grade there will normally a formal requirement of a moderate amount of teaching and/or supervision (often at postgraduate level). These positions are for researcher with a proven track record of generating research income to fund themselves and producing high quality research output that is internationally recognised.

In the UK, research career grades roughly correspond to the grades of the Teaching and Scholarship Career Pathways the following way: Research Fellow - Lecturer, Professorial Fellow - Professor, whereas Senior Research Fellow somewhere between a Reader and a Senior Lecturer.

In the past, at many Universities in the UK, before the introduction of specific research careers, the term research fellow often referred to a (junior) researcher, who worked on a specific project on a temporal basis. Research fellows tended to be paid either from central university funds or by an outside organization such as a charity or company, or through an external grant-awarding body such as a Research Council or a Royal Society. Particularly in Oxbridge style colleges, research fellows appointed as fellows of a college tended to, or still do, partially receive numeration in form of college housing and subsistence. In contrast, senior research fellows tended to be established academics, often a Professor on sabbatical from another institution, conducting temporally research elsewhere. Nowadays, at some universities in the UK (e.g. the University of Oxford, the University of Leeds), the position research fellow has entirely replaced that of research associate and might well be a permanent appointment within a defined research career pathway.