research funding | Cash for Questions: Research funding, policy and development

A version of this article first appeared in Funding Insight in February 2022 and is reproduced with kind permission of Research Professional. For more articles like this, visit www.researchprofessional.com

How to select bids when funders restrict the number that each university can submit

Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665), The Judgment of Solomon (1649), oil on canvas, 101 x 150 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.

One of the most awkward challenges in research development is responding to a ‘restricted’ funding call that only permits a limited number of applications per university. This requires an internal selection process. I’m going to share some of the things I do when I set one up. I don’t have all the answers, and I’d be interested to hear what others do, via twitter, or email or the comments.

This article refers primarily to funding schemes with a hard limit on application numbers. In the UK, that includes the Leverhulme Trust’s major calls and the Academy of Medical Science’s Springboard Awards. Some of the suggestions may also be relevant to panels for schemes with a ‘soft’ limit. These typically don’t set a formal limit on application numbers, but require universities to have a process to manage demand, submit only their most competitive applications, and not support others. There are good arguments for saying that we should be doing this sift anyway, if only to prevent our researchers wasting time and effort.

A version of this article first appeared in Funding Insight in November 2021 and is reproduced with kind permission of Research Professional. For more articles like this, visit www.researchprofessional.com.

Originally published in two parts, I’ve merged them into one and lightly edited to update and (in the case of EU funding) to try to future-proof!

This article is intended for researchers who have moved to UK academia recently (welcome!) and for UK researchers in the very early stages of their careers. My aim is to give a very brief tour of the UK research funding landscape and help you get to grips with some of the terminology. In part one, I’ll look at government or public funding and say a bit about different funding models for research. In part two I’ll touch on research charities, learned societies, EU funding, and conclude with some general advice on finding research funding opportunities.

Tag: research funding

The art of the sift

So you’re new to… UK research funding