1. Internal review of case for support.

All proposals with a sizeable written case for support must be reviewed by two members of staff before submission. 'Sizeable' excludes small travel grants, but includes small NERC grants, NERC Open Case applications, and anything larger. (Exceptions to this are proposals where the application is joint with colleagues in other institutions and we are not the Lead Organisation)

Proposals are reviewed using SEE's online Document Review System (DRS). Follow the link and instructions there.

Questions? Ask the Director of Research, Piers Forster.

Proposals will not be submitted by the School unless reviews exist in DRS.

2. Complete the on-line application form through the Research Council Joint e-submission (J-eS) system. The Estates and Indirect costs will be completed by the School Research Administrators based on the amount of time to be spent on the project by Academic and Research Staff.

Questions? Ask the Research Administrator: Lisa Burke (Environment).

3. Submit your proposal for costing approval

Click "Submit Document" on J-eS. This submits your proposal to SEE's research admin team, not the funding council! A holding case for support (e.g., a blank sheet) is sufficient at this stage. [The proposal can be transmitted between you and the Research Admin team as many times as may be required before submission to the Sponsor is agreed]

The research admin team will add the Indirect and Estates costs and may suggest the inclusion of other costs (e.g. recruitment costs/technician time/admin support costs).

4. Check postdoc status

If you have named a postdoc in the application, there is a further step to take account of the new University Policy on Employment of Researchers. The School HR Manager (Kate Higham) will need to determine whether the employment of the named researcher would take them beyond the 6 year limit, which has implications for the nature of their contract. In such cases, this situation must be discussed with the Head of School. The onus is on the PI to make sure that sufficient time is allowed for this discussion to take place prior to proposal submission.

5. Proposal submission

The proposal will be submitted by the research admin team once they are satisfied that (i) the proposal has been reviewed within DRS; (ii) that the financial case and written Financial Justification are acceptable; (iii) that all HR issues regarding potential appointment of named researchers have been approved by the Head of School or designate.

 The basic procedures for other sponsors are not greatly different from the perspective of the research admin team, although for non-standard ones there are contractual terms and conditions to consider and the application will probably be paper-based. Reviews in the Document Review System are still required (see item 1 under Research Councils.) The situation can also be influenced depending on whether the proposal attracts Full Economic Costs (FEC) or not.

Contact the Research Admin team for advice on all costing matters.

EU grants do not pay Estates and Indirect Costs at the present time so they are a bit different again. Advice should be sought from the European Office.

All applications for personal fellowships (e.g., NERC, Leverhulme etc.) from existing postdocs/researchers should be discussed with the appropriate Institute Director and the Head of School well in advance of putting the proposal together.