Research grants - points for specific funding schemes
The following section gives suggestions that relate to specific funding bodies - please read after having read the .
Always download and read the most recent Grants Handbook from the relevant funding body before starting to write the proposal. These can be downloaded from the websites for the individual funders.
Contents:
NERC Standard and Small Project Grant
- Administrative part of the form
- Attachments
NERC Knowledge Transfer Grants
BBSRC Standard Grants
Royal Society Grants
NERC Standard and Small Project Grant
Note that the Small Project and New Investigator grant schemes are now discontinued, but those qualifying as New Investigators should indicate this on the online application form for Standard grants, and while they are initially ranked in competition with every other Standard Grant proposal, their 'New Investigator' status is taken into account at the final decision on how far down the rankings to fund, so they may ‘leap-frog’ above other proposals and so get funded ahead of applications that were initially ranked higher.
Competition for Standard Grants is intense. All proposals are sent to 3 members of the Peer Review College (a group of c.750 academics who have committed to refereeing proposals and joining Panels to make the final decisions), plus several other referees. Peer Review College members will often only have moderate expertise in the subject of the application (each PRC member may receive several deal with in each grant round), and so you really need to make sure the project is easily accessible and appealing to the non-specialist.
You will subsequently be sent the comments of the PRC members and the referees, and will be given just a few days in which to reply to them (see the section in 'General points' on how to reply to referees). The proposal, the PRC and referee comments, and your response, are then studied in detail by two PRC members on the panel that meets to decide the rankings of applications. Other members of the committee may skim over your proposal, but it is really these two that decide its fate.
The two PRC members each give an initial grade to each proposal (from 1 to 10) prior to the meeting, and if both grades are low then the proposal is usually not discussed at the subsequent panel meeting. At that meeting a final score (again from 1-10) is given for each proposal, and a ranking within each of the scores that are potentially fundable: all 9’s and 10’s will be funded, and most 8’s (sometimes all, depending on money available). In a typical grant round only the very top ranked 7’s stand a chance of being funded.
Note that the committee does not simply take the mean of the grades given by the earlier referees - they can assign a rank that is significantly lower than what you might have expected from the referee comments if they spot a problem that was not picked up by referees. This grading is based purely on the scientific quality of the project - 'value for money' only comes into it if they are trying to choose between two projects on the borderline for funding with a similar scientific grade.
'Fit to NERC's priorities' is similarly irrelevant, provided that the project falls within the broad remit of NERC science (i.e. it is not something that should be funded by a different research council). Also little notice is taken of whether the project will have any applied benefit - the decision for these grants is based almost entirely on the quality of the pure science, rather than whether it will be useful, although rarely it might be considered at the borderline for funding, but the chances of your project being the one at this single borderline (usually across all of NERC's disciplines) is very small so it's probably safe to ignore this as an issue.
Administrative part of the form:
Objectives: Must be the same as stated on the Case for Support - use the same wording.
Summary: Needs to be self-contained, and may be the only part that is read by non-specialists on the committee (if the proposal gets as far as the final stage), so it really needs to 'sell' the project. Don't go into details of methodology - concentrate instead on why this project is really interesting.
Other support: You are not required to list everything you've applied for, so be selective here - list the successes (even if only tangentially connected to this project), but only the failures that are really relevant.
Classification of grant proposal: This is used to categorise the project for NERC administrators, and may be used to assign it to the particular committee in NERC, but don't agonise over precise percentages, nor over the ENRIs.
Attachments:
CV: Note that this is separate from your Previous Track record (which is Part 1 of the Case for Support), so divide the information between them rather than duplicate it. These are the only place where you can boast about what you have done, so make the most of them.
There is little guidance on what to put, but in the CV you should probably include brief details of education, previous and current job, something on your research interests/experience (relevant to the current proposal) and publications. Make sure there is a reasonable number of these, even if they are not strictly relevant, since they may give the reviewers confidence that you are a decent scientist and so are capable of learning any new techniques required by the project.
Case for Support: Follow the general rules given above. Note that Part 1 is the Previous Track Record, which is the place where you should put any pilot data, tests of protocols, experience of study site etc. Try and get as much of this background methodological detail into Part 1, since that will free up more space in Part 2 (where the main project description goes).
Justification for Resources: This is on a separate page (or two pages – check rules) and needs to be broken down into directly incurred and directly allocated costs. Directly incurred costs are those where there is a clear bill to be paid by the grant, so including all temporary staff funded by the project (e.g. the postdoc) plus all consumables, equipment and travel paid for by the grant.
Directly allocated costs are those where the grant is contributing towards some of the costs that are being paid by someone else (usually the University). So under this category you need to include a justification for the time put in by each investigator (e.g. 4h per week - see the section on the 'Research Grants - General Points ' web page) - what will you and you co-investigators be contributing to the project?
Also under this heading go the contributions by existing technicians (e.g. if you are claiming 25% of the time of an existing technician or member of the animal husbandry staff); you need to explain why they are needed and what they will do. Also you can include a 'contribution to the Well Found Laboratory', which can be for several £000's to include the servicing of items such as cold rooms, deep freezes, molecular and other lab equipment such as microscopes, balances etc.
Note that the Research Councils have recently changed the rules on charges for use of a 'facility'. The only such charges that can be claimed are for facilities that have been registered with the research Councils (the only ones at Glasgow so far are Biological Services and aspects of the Glasgow Polyomics Facility, and this is unlikely to change in the near future since it is not cost effective to register small facilities).
This means that we can no longer apply a 'charge per sample' cost for analyses done by (for example) the Institute’s Molecular Ecology Unit, if that charge includes a contribution towards technicians costs, equipment maintenance contracts etc. Instead, each component of the cost must be included separately - so there can be a claim (under the Directly Incurred Costs) for the costs of the consumables, a separate claim for equipment maintenance contracts, and a request (under Directly Allocated Costs) for X% of an existing technician's time. Similarly for animal care we should include a separate entry for the consumables costs of the animals and for the staff costs.
An example of a 'recommended' Justification for Resources page is on the NERC website. It is really worthwhile studying this to see the level of detail needed.
See the page on General Pointsfor advice on how to respond to referee comments.
Tied Studentships
Discontinued as of July 2012 round.
NERC Knowledge Transfer Grants
These are for partnerships between academics and other organisations such as partners in industry, NGOs or Government departments. There is more than one scheme, and the names and details keep changing, so check the requirements for each.
In general, NERC will only contribute a percentage of the total cost, the rest coming from the partner(s), although the latter can be 'in kind'. You apply for the NERC component, and attach covering letters from the partners that say what they are providing and its value. The emphasis is on the practical applications of knowledge gained from pure science - so it must be highlighted exactly what knowledge is involved and how the transfer will be achieved. It is not sufficient to give vague assurances that the work will have an applied value - instead you have to demonstrate in the proposal what information will be provided by you to solve what (applied) problem (though the actual solving of the problem will be done by others).
You also need to show that you (as the academic partner) have (or will be obtaining) information that is needed by the applied partner(s) - it has to be clear why these partners need you, and why they can't solve this problem by themselves.
As an example, the project might involve the generation and/or analysis of data that will provide the kind of information that a conservation organisation (the partner) needs to formulate its management policy. But it has to be clear that they could not have done this themselves (since NERC doesn't want to hand out money for things that others could do for themselves). It's a good idea to phone up the contact person in NERC (obtainable from the website) to discuss a potential project - they are extremely helpful and can give good advice on how to slant a proposal.
BBSRC Standard Grants
While BBSRC allow applications on any subject within their remit, they favour those that fit their remit in general, and their specific priority areas in particular. These change over time, so it is essential that you check their website for the current priorities (note that different committees in BBSRC have their own priorities, and 'our' kind of research can fit several committees, so check them all). Then adjust your project accordingly, and really stress how much your project ties in with their priorities.
Make sure that you don't use words like 'ecology' or 'environment' (unless you are looking at effects of food production on the environment, which is a BBSRC theme), otherwise it's possible your proposal will be bounced to NERC. Note also that BBSRC committees generally contain more people from industry/Government bodies/research institutes than NERC, and consequently very few people that will know much about evolution/behaviour/whole organism biology. So it is even more important that you sell the project clearly to the non-specialist.
One plus side to this: when proposals reach the stage of being refereed, DEFRA may offer to part-fund proposals that they think are relevant to them. BBSRC will then contact you to ask whether you are interested in this arrangement - benefits are that this increases your chance of being funded (because the DEFRA rep on the committee will support you), while costs are that you have to write progress reports for DEFRA.
BBSRC does not have a Peer Review College, so all proposals go out to referees, who (strangely) are not asked whether or not they think the project should be funded, but instead are just asked for comments. At the committee stage, proposals are handled in a similar way to NERC. Note that BBSRC does not allow you to re-submit a failed grant application (unlike NERC, which allows resubmission once 9 months have elapsed since the original submission date), so it is worth getting it right first time. The general impression is also that BBSRC really want to see pilot data - they are less likely to fund speculative science than NERC.
The same general rules for proposals apply as for NERC Standard Grants, although there can be small differences in terms of page lengths, font sizes etc so please check the specific details.
Royal Society Grants
Like all RS applications the form is short, so you have to able to sell your ideas in a concise format. The application will be read by committee members who are not experts in your field, so avoid jargon and define your aims clearly. Chose well-respected, senior colleagues as referees and check in advance that they will provide a positive review of the grant.
If you send a draft application to your referees in advance make sure that you incorporate their comments into the application. They will be less complimentary if you do not. Read the application criteria, some of the RS grants have very precise requirements. For example, if you apply for a Joint- project grant to support an overseas collaboration then make sure that the exchange is in both directions and that you spell out the tangible benefits that both applicants will gain.
EU Grants
The rules for these depend on the scheme and so it is difficult to provide general advice, but it is worth making absolutely sure that the project clearly hits the exact subject area specified for that program - avoid anything that looks contrived for that scheme, since the evaluators tend to be looking for applications that can be excluded as not fitting the program.
Note also that it helps to have evidence of scientific quality OF THE INSTITUTION (not just the researcher proposing a project) - so boasting about Glasgow's large size and biological outputs (papers in Science, Nature etc) is very positive when an application is competing with projects from small departments.
Additional advice is available in ''.