Research funding decisions

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

 

 

Funding committees

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. Decisions about funding strategically led initiatives 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 importance

The first question is the importance of the work, if successful to arc 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 arc takes into account expert opinion from the field as well the views of the stakeholders in arc funded research (see USER below)

2. Evaluating scientific quality

  • Funding decisions require an evaluation of methodology to be employed
  • Where the question is of strategic importance to arc, the judgement should be made as to whether the methods proposed could be easily modified to achieve the required goals
  • arc 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

Peer review

  • arc has been accredited by the Association of Medical Research Charities for its peer review processes
  • arc is 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
  • arc is committed therefore to establishing funding committees of acknowledged but non-conflicted experts to guide the final decisions

3. Evaluating costs

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.

  • arc is committed both to maximising the research benefit from its resources but accepts that sufficient resources need to be available to complete the tasks
  • arc 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 arc funds 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
  • Other viewpoints will be considered by arc in making its 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
  • arc is also committed to identifying how consumers can best inform the funding decision process. Thus arc has 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 here.