BU Research Blog

Changes to final reporting

In a move to reduce the amount of effort required of grant holders and peer reviewers, and building on the policy of consolidating outcomes reporting through online systems, the Research Councils have decided to scale back their requirements for final reporting on grants.

For Councils other than BBSRC and ESRC, most grants with an end date on or after 1st January 2013 will no longer require a final report. ESRC will for now be continuing with its end of award reporting process and BBSRC intends to phase out final reports over the coming months. Some grant schemes within the other Councils may also continue to require reports and in these cases a final report request will be issued in the normal way. But, in the majority of cases, a final report will not be required.

Grants ending before 1 st January 2013 will continue to require a final report in the normal way, unless this requirement has previously been waived.

Changes to research grant terms and conditions

Some changes have been made to the core terms and conditions of Research Council grants, affecting grants announced from 1 October 2012. These are:

GC7 (Extensions) – grants may now be extended for up to 12 months, in total, as a result of maternity, paternity or adoption leave.

GC2 (Research Governance), under Misconduct and Conflicts of Interest – inclusion of a requirement that the Research Organisation has in place procedures for governing good research practice, and for investigating and reporting unacceptable research conduct, that meets the requirements set out in the 2012 Concordat to Support Research Integrity (as well as the RCUK Policy and Guidelines on Governance of Good Research Conduct).

Improvements to peer-review feedback

In a first step towards improving the transparency of the peer review process, the Councils are making changes to the Je-S system in November that will enable the decision provided to grant applicants on the outcome of their proposal to be made available, through Je-S, to research organisation administrative offices.