Frequently asked questions and facts aimed at researchers about our grants schemes.
If you have any questions which we have not answered below, please contact the team at research@alzheimersresearchuk.org.
Contents
General Enquiries
Alzheimer’s Research UK is a member of the Association of Medical Research Charities and complies with their guidelines for best practice in expert review. More information of the review process for each grant scheme can be found on the individual grant scheme pages.
Our Full assessment Criteria and Scoring System can be found here.
Yes. Feedback is provided to all applicants independent of outcome. The type of feedback given may differ from scheme to scheme and which point of the review processes it progresses to. 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 Committees.
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. You can also sign up to our Research e-newsletter for updates of schemes opening and closing.
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. Your institution may be able to offer some further support around this.
We will not penalise for AI use if the original thoughts are your own. We will be screening for AI use in our applications going forwards and will have an AI question in our application forms. Your response will not be visible to reviewers or influence the outcome of your application.
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 full PhD programme. 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 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 Research Committee meeting and certainly before we can issue a contract. The final meeting for Fellowships is usually held in the summer following the deadline.
In some circumstances, the Research Committee 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.
A co-applicant is considered as someone who is vital to the research and success of your proposal project. They will be actively engaged in some or all aspect of your research if your application was successful. A collaborator’s role is significant, but less actively involved in the research. They should be seen as mentors or someone who will provide expertise but not contribute to the research operations.
Letters of support will need to be attached as appendices to your application dependant on scheme. They are needed from any supervisors or collaborators. Please refer to the individual schemes and guidance before applying.
Flexigrant
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 invited to participate. 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 application. 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.
CVs are not edited from the application form but from the “My CV” page of your account. You will need to ensure your CV is up-to-date before you submit or agree to be part of an application. This can be accessed from the left-hand menu of the Application Portal. 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 Alzheimer's Research UK grant on which you are a Lead Applicant or a co-applicant.
Please check your department’s procedure for signing off grant applications. For each application, you are able to invite one Administrative Support. This is a person who can help complete the Budget and Justifications section of your application and is responsible for approving the submission on behalf of your institution. Alzheimer's Research UK prefer the Administrative Support to be someone in your department’s research office, or an account associated with the research office, with the expertise to review your finance and costs section.
You must ensure all participants invited to your application have a “Complete” status and your application is 100% complete before a button to submit your application will appear. Please note that an application at 100% completeness alone is not sufficient. Participants achieve a Complete status once applicants have provided an up-to-date CV (unless solely added as administration support) and all participants have clicked their “Finish Contribution” button in the portal.
Yes, you can invite one or more Joint Lead Applicants, alongside you, the Lead Applicant to your application (except for Fellowship applications). Joint Lead Applicants and Lead Applicants will be recognised with equal status. The Lead Applicant must assume responsibility for submitting the application, being the point of contact for all communications during the review and grant process and for sharing all information with their Joint Lead Applicants.
World limits vary according to scheme, guidance regarding word limits can be found on the application form and guidance on FlexigrantIn your application process.
On the ‘Application’ tab, you can Start or Edit each page. Each page status must read ‘Complete’ for the application to reach 100% completion.
On the 'Participants' tab, you may invite co-applicants and collaborators to support your application. We recommend that you only do this once all pages of the application have been completed as participants will have access to your application and may help review it.
All invited participants must approve the application before the 'Submit for approval' button will appear on the summary page. Clicking this button will then submit the application to your host institution's Administrative Authority, who must approve the application before it is received by us. This step must be completed by the submission deadline.
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 (per applicant) or separated into the designated line for inflation.
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, Project Award 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. For further information on allowable costs please see our cost guidance here. 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. Alzheimer's Research UK 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 Alzheimer's Research UK 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. Your institution may have further guidance to support you with this.