Frequently asked questions and facts aimed at researchers about our grants schemes
Contents
General Enquiries
Yes. Feedback is provided on request after funding decisions are announced although due to the volume of applications received this can take some time to prepare. Feedback is normally given via email and is compiled based upon comments from our Grant Review Board.
You should contact our Head of Research by emailing research@alzheimersresearchuk.org in the first instance. Your concerns will then be handled in accordance with our bullying and harassment policy.
Rounds open approximately three months before the deadline. Please refer to our individual grant scheme pages for upcoming deadlines.
Unfortunately, we are unable to share personal details of any of our researchers. However, a list of currently funded projects can be found on our web pages.
Grant Schemes and Eligibility
Please see our individual grant schemes pages and/or our Eligibility Guidelines.
No. Although moderate travel costs for conferences can be requested in our larger grant schemes, we do not give individual grants to support scientists travelling to conferences. Researchers can however apply for travel bursaries through our network centres.
We do not have any grant schemes to support undergraduate or master’s students.
We do have a PhD Scholarship scheme for students undertaking a 3-year PhD. However, this scheme must be applied for by the prospective supervisor, not the prospective student.
Yes, some of our schemes are open to international lead applicants. Please download our Eligibility Guidelines for further details.
Response mode funding for drug discovery projects is only available through our Fellowship and PhD studentship schemes. If you’re interested in pursuing a drug discovery project we encourage you to consider applying to the Dementia Consortium or approaching one of our Drug Discovery Institutes to discuss the potential for collaboration.
We removed the time-bound eligibility criteria for our Fellowships in 2017. Instead we now use our Early Career Researcher Framework to assess researchers’ eligibility for our Fellowships. We anticipate researchers being able to establish their own eligibility for our Fellowship schemes upon consultation of this framework. Essentially, research Fellowships are viewed as an opportunity for a researcher to develop a tool-box of skills which they will go on to use in their future career. Senior Research Fellowships are for those researchers who are on the verge of independence and have a strong track record of leadership in their field.
No, but you would need to have completed your PhD and passed your viva ideally before the final Grant Review Board meeting and certainly before we can issue a contract.
At ARUK, the Grant Review Board do invite some applications to be resubmitted, however applications can only be invited for resubmission once. If a resubmitted application isn’t funded, it will not be invited for resubmission again.
At Alzheimer’s Research UK we aim to support and accommodate flexible working arrangements for staff employed on any of our grants, if the employing institution agrees to the request. Please get in touch with our Research team prior to submission if you intend to undertake an award part-time.
Grant Tracker
There could be a number of reasons for this.
The most common is that you have a duplicate account and you have logged into the one that was not added; you will need to ensure you log in using the email address to which the email was sent. Duplicate accounts are created when people log in with two different email addresses, e.g. jsmith@uni.ac.uk and jsmith@university.ac.uk, or when a co-applicant/collaborator uses the wrong email address when adding you to their grant. If you think you might have duplicate accounts, please contact the Research Team on research@alzheimersresearchuk.org.
Other reasons can include the lead applicant changing your role after your initial addition, the application being deleted, or following a link from an older email. If you are in any doubt, please contact the Research Team on research@alzheimersresearchuk.org.
In the first instance, please ensure that you have ticked the box on the application form for embedding documents if you wish them to embed. If your attachment is of a file type that cannot embed (e.g. Docx, PNG image files), it will still be attached electronically. The difference is that when you submit your proposal we will receive that document as a separate file, alongside the application PDF, rather than as a part of it. When you print, you will need to ensure that you print any non-embedded files and staple them to the back of the application as an appendix (E.g Excel files).
CVs are not edited from the application form but from the “Manage My Details” page. This can be accessed from the left-hand menu when first logging in. The advantage to this system is that you only need to enter your CV details once, and they will automatically be pulled through to any ARUK grant on which you are a lead applicant or co-applicant.
When an application is at an early stage, for example if the co-applicants and authorised signatory have not yet confirmed their participation, then it will show a ‘Working copy’ watermark.
When an application form is first opened it is assigned a pre-submission reference, e.g. 1445. Upon successful submission the number will change to a submission reference, e.g. Alzheimer’s Research UK-PG2014-1.
Please check your department’s procedure for signing off grant applications. Alzheimer's Research UK prefer the authorised signatory to be someone in your department’s research office with the expertise to review your finance and costs section.
If your department requires the Head of Department to act as signatory, and you are the Head of Department then yes, please select yourself as the authorised signatory. Buttons to view, edit, submit and approve the application should appear on the very first page you reach when you access your application.
All participants must be registered for an account on our application system, Grant Tracker before they can be added to a grant application. Registration to Grant Tracker can take up to 3 working days to be authorised.
If you cannot add a participant to an application, it is likely that their registration to Grant Tracker is still pending. If the registration hasn’t been authorised after 3 working days, please contact the Research Team on research@alzheimersresearchuk.org
Check all sections are filled in correctly and that all participants* have both i) confirmed their participation and ii) approved the application on Grant Tracker.
* Note that Collaborators only need to confirm participation, they do not need to approve the application.
No, you can add co-applicants but there can only be one lead applicant per application. The lead applicant has overall accountability for the application.
Example application forms can be found on our individual grant scheme pages. World limits vary according to scheme, guidance regarding word limits can be found on the application form and help-text on Grant Tracker.
Finance
Different institutions have different rules on how inflation should be calculated when costing grants. For salary costs, inflation can be included either within the other salary lines (basic salary, national insurance, etc.), or separated into the designated line for inflation. Please set the entries in the inflation line to £0 if it instead incorporated into any of the other salary lines.
For non-salary costs, please use the box provided on the application form to indicate the percentage used to calculate inflation.
Yes, up to a ceiling of 5% per annum. Please do not include predicted pay awards in the costing for the application.
Yes, please see our open access policy for more information. APCs must be clearly requested in the application; grant holders cannot apply for further funds for publication once a grant has been awarded.
For our Fellowship, Major Project and PhD scholarship grants, you can ask for costs for training for Early Career Researchers in your application if it is not already being offered to them at their host institution. The training must be related to helping Early Career Researchers advance their research careers in dementia research.
You can request up to £1,000 annually per person for this training. You will need to justify these costs in your application.
The costs can be for career development, technical and research skills training.
Examples include:
- Leadership training, for example the EMBO leadership and management course
- Grant management skills
- Budget and people management
- Reproducibility and integrity
- Equality, diversity and inclusion
As a charitable organisation we do not pay indirect costs, which are non-specific costs charged across all projects for underpinning resources. These costs are diverse, and examples range from estates, shared IT and administration to university human resources (HR) costs and libraries. However, grants awarded by us in England are eligible for the Charity Research Support Fund. Find out more about the CRSF and what happens in devolved nations here.
No. ARUK considers the apprenticeship levy to be an indirect cost.
No. Alzheimer's Research UK considers the recruitment costs to be indirect, however we would happy to help you advertise for post associated with your Alzheimer's Research UK-funded grant. Contact the research team on research@alzheimersresearchuk.org
The PI cannot request salary on any of our grant schemes (other than Fellowships). Although not encouraged a co-applicant can request a proportion of their salary reflective of their estimated time involved and this should be justified in the application. However, if co-applicants have tenure or fixed term contracts ARUK would not pay towards their salaries.
The salaries of people to be fully employed on the grant such as post-docs or technicians can be requested.
No, we only pay tuition fees at the Home/EU student rate. Supervisors are welcome to recruit international PhD students however they would have to cover the difference in fees through alternative funding sources.
