Research funding decisions

Note: This section refers to the process of making individual funding decisions as opposed to decisions about strategy.

For all researcher led initiatives, decisions about funding are made by the appropriate funding sub-committees of the Scientific Strategy Committee (SSC).

The funding committees are responsible for ensuring that the decisions made were coherent with the overall research strategy and for prioritising requests to ensure compliance with a prior agreed budget for any specific committee.

For strategically led initiatives, decisions about funding could be:

  • made by the SSC
  • devolved to such sub-committees or deferred to a specifically established committee (for example in the case of Institute and Centre Funding).

In reaching any funding decisions there are three key areas to be considered: strategic importance, scientific quality and cost.

1. Evaluating the strategic importance of the work

The first question is the importance of the work, if successful to our goals.

  • For strategically led research, the importance is accepted as implicit and funding decisions are made on methodological rigour and costs
  • For researcher led research, the importance to us takes into account expert opinion from the field as well the views of the stakeholders in Arthritis Research UK funded research.

2. Evaluating the scientific quality of the work

  • Funding decisions require an evaluation of methodology to be employed.
  • Where the question is of strategic importance to us, the judgement should be made as to whether the methods proposed could be easily modified to achieve the required goals.
  • We will not adopt the role of ‘writing proposals for an applicant' but will be constructive in encouraging and educating how fundable proposals should be produced in an area of relevance.

2.1 Peer review

  • We have been accredited by the Association of Medical Research Charities for our peer review processes.
  • We are committed to funding research that is of the highest quality and accepts that the process of independent peer review is the most widely accepted tool for achieving this.
  • The external peer review process, by its very nature, typically can only judge the value of a specific proposal and is only one factor in making a decision.
  • We are committed therefore to establishing funding committees of acknowledged but non-conflicted experts to guide the final decisions .

3. Evaluating the cost of the work

Identifying the real costs of a research proposal is difficult, both in terms of the inherent uncertainty in the costs themselves and also in identifying the role of other available resources to complete the research.

We are committed both to maximising the research benefit from its resources but accepts that sufficient resources need to be available to complete the tasks

We will support any of the direct costs of research including the salary (either whole or proportionate for staff employed on multiple projects) and the necessary consumable costs.

Salaries are typically the predominant cost heading and we fund at the most appropriate level to achieve a specific research task.

Stakeholder involvement

The value of the question to be addressed can be determined from several standpoints.

  • The scientific peer review can advise on the potential contribution to the field of endeavour and the relationship of the proposal to other work in the area
  • We will consider other viewpoints when making a decision including the perspective of the health professionals who may utilise the outcome of the research and of the consumer, the patients and their families who may benefit from the research
  • We are also committed to identifying how consumers can best inform the funding decision process. We have established a stakeholder committee (USER) which comprises both consumer (patient and public) as well as front line health care professionals in musculoskeletal disorders. USER provides comments to the relevant funding award committees on all response mode proposals received based on an extended lay summary.

Further information on this initiative can be found on the USER page.

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