Following feedback from the community NERC have strengthened the guidance on their submission rules. Please refer to the NERC website for more details. In addition the research grants and fellowships handbook has also been updated.
Please note that these rules will apply for all future closing dates including the forthcoming Highlight Topic, Independent Research Fellowship and Large Grant closing dates. This includes international calls where applicants might be based at an overseas organisation, so Principal Investigators should ensure that all component proposals are aware and meeting the requirements.
The main changes are:
Applicants to a standard, large or knowledge exchange grant call may submit up to one proposal as the Principal or as a Co-Investigator, and one further proposal as a non-lead Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator. Involvement of a UK investigator in a submission to NSF (under the NSF-NERC Lead Agency agreement) counts as a submission as non-lead PI/Co-I to the July NERC standard grant round. However, the submission rules are also in line with the demand management cap on institutional submission numbers to the standard grant rounds and so you must contact the RKEO Funding Development Team if you are considering applying to this NERC call.
Large grant proposals will only be accepted if an outline proposal has previously been submitted and invited to proceed to the full proposal stage.
There is further information on the NERC website confirming submission deadlines, proposal attachments, font sizes and margins.