Faculty Internal Grant Review System

Research Councils have been required to make efficiency savings in their administration, with the aim of maximising the budget for research. In order to achieve this they need to reduce the number of applications that they receive (“demand management”), with the potential benefit of an increased success rate.

We are therefore now required to manage our applications so that the quality of our proposals is kept acceptably high (as evidenced by our success rates). If we fail to achieve this then we may be sanctioned in the future. The Faculty therefore now requires all applications to the Research Councils, including those based at other institutions on which we are CoIs (as these also contribute to our application quality profiles), to undergo internal pre-submission review.

While we should not submit any proposal that is likely to be uncompetitive, our primary aim is to improve the quality of the proposals we submit. As few PIs have a success rate of 100%, this process should be helpful to all applicants. The procedure needs to be completed early enough to allow the reviewing to have a positive impact on the applications. We also need to be able to show in any audits that our applications have been through such a process. It is clearly vital that colleagues fully cooperate with this scheme and give requests for reviews a high priority. There are also likely to be benefits from the improved communication of research plans among colleagues, and from sharing best practice.

Please refer to the Faculty of Science Internal Grant Review document, which can be downloaded on the right, when implementing the system in your department. This document has been agreed by the Faculty Executive Board and the Faculty Research and Innovation Committee, and includes:

• Details of the grant review process
• Details of relevant contact points with departments
• Details of current/recent members of Research Council peer review colleges and committees
• Reference materials including links to individual RCUK assessment criteria and reviewers guidance notes.

Please contact Chris Smith with any changes to the contact points within departments: c.p.smith@sheffield.ac.uk, ext 29773.