BU Research Blog

The Research Councils have published their success rates for the period April 2013 to March 2014. The key message is that their demand management measures are working; most Councils have seem a decline in the number of applications submitted and the success rates stabilising, despite a decrease in the amount of funding allocated.

In 2012-13 BU’s success rate with Research Councils was 8%, despite 12 applications being submitted. This year we have submitted the same number of applications (12) and our success rate has increased to 33% – which is excellent news! This is against a sector average of 30%. The successful awards were:

• AHRC – Cultural and Scientificat Perceptions of Human-Chicken Interactions (Prof Mark Maltby)
• AHRC – Music Publishing (Prof Ruth Towse)
• AHRC – Research Network: Researching Readers Online (Dr Bronwen Thomas)
• NERC – Dynamics and Thresholds of Ecosystem Services in Wooden Landscapes (Prof Adrian Newton)

BU has had more grants awarded from the Research Councils over the past year, however the stats only show against the lead institution so successful bids where BU is the collaborating institution are not shown against BU in the data.

BU is especially keen to reduce the number of bids submitted to Research Councils whilst significantly increasing the quality of those which are submitted. BU initiatives, such as the internal peer review scheme and the Grants Academy, have been specifically established to support you to design, write and structure competitive, fundable research proposals and to maximise your chances of being awarded funding.

Read more about the demand management measures that the Research Councils have put in place here: Demand Management