BU Research Blog

Yesterday Jo added a post to the Blog about the national Research Councils’ success rates in 2014-15. This post is a follow-on from that one and provides the data at BU-level. The coverage is decisions made between April 2014 to March 2015.

BU’s success rate in 2014-15 was a respectable 17% with two bids awarded out of the 12 submitted. In 2013-14 BU’s success rate was 33%, also based on 12 applications. Although the success rate this year has decreased slightly it is still one of BU’s highest annual success rates with the research councils. The sector average success rate in 2014-15 also declined slightly, from 30% to 28%. The successful BU awards were:

• NERC – Integrated software system for the 3-dimensional capture and analysis of footwear evidence (Prof Matthew Bennett)
• NERC – X-band radar applications for coastal monitoring to support improved management of coastal erosion (Dr Luciana Slomp-Esteves)

The sector average success rate with NERC was 26%, compared to BU’s impressive 67%.

BU has had more grants awarded from the Research Councils over the past year than are reported here, however, the official stats only show results 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 increase the quality of bids submitted to Research Councils and RKEO run a number of initiatives, such as the Grants Academy, to support you to design, write and structure competitive, fundable research proposals and to maximise your chances of being awarded funding. Anyone considering submitting a bid to a research council should speak with their Research Facilitator as early on in the process as possible. The Research Facilitators have extensive experience of reviewing research proposals and can provide you with expert guidance on how to shape your bid. You can also access guidance documents on the Research Blog here: http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/researcher-toolbox/je-s-guidance/

Read more about the demand management measures that the Research Councils have put in place here: Demand Management. As the councils are still seeing an increase in applications received alongside declining success rates then there is a possibility that demand management requirements will be stepped up in future. This may also form part of the BIS changes likely to result from the HE Green Paper published last week and the CSR decisions announced at the end of the month. We’ll keep you posted via the Blog of any developments.