Enhancing Research Culture: Open Call 2024-25

We are seeking proposals for projects that address research culture challenges or enhance existing practice. Projects can be undertaken by researchers, academic, technical, or professional services colleagues, or teams comprised of diverse profiles. By investing in innovative solutions to shared challenges, we will inspire genuine, lasting organisational change.

Proposals are invited for projects in the region of £10k - £30k (including directly incurred costs). Funds must be spent and goods receipted by 31 July 2025.

The deadline for applications is Friday 28 June 2024 at 17:00. The application form can be found at the bottom of this web page.

To learn more about current Enhancing Research Culture projects, you may like to read about:

• the 13 projects funded by the 2022-23 ERC Open Call
• the 12 projects funded by the 2023-24 ERC Open Call

Proposals are welcomed for projects that promote a more inclusive, equitable, open and supportive research environment. Projects should boost both:

• the institutional and local research culture and
• colleagues’ own career development and profile

It is likely that these aims will contribute not only to research culture in and of itself, but also to the institutions’ profile in preparation for REF2029.

Projects may involve (but not be restricted to) preliminary/preparatory collaborative activity, data collection and analysis, and engagement and dissemination activity.

Engagement with research culture activities can take many forms and involve many different internal and external collaborators. We welcome applications from all those involved in contributing to a better research culture.

Projects may span one or more of our four strategic objectives:

• Valuing diverse forms of research activity.
• Embedding EDI principles in research practices
• Enabling open research practices
• Mutually supporting and developing research teams

Our Research Culture Strategy launched in 2023 and provides a blueprint for a values-driven university working towards a more inclusive, equitable, open and supportive research culture. More information can be found via the research culture webpages.

All project outcomes must be delivered by 31 July 2025, and the project scale should reflect this.

The Enhancing Research Culture (ERC) fund is open to individuals, research groups, institutes, Schools, Services, and Faculties at the University of Leeds. As long as you are on a paid contract with the University and your contract runs until the end of the spending period (31 July 2025) then you are eligible to apply.

We are keen to support a range of projects from people in a wide variety of roles, however we strongly encourage applications from the following:

• Early Career Researchers (self-defined)
• Colleagues representing diversity in all forms
• Teams with a broad range of experience and skills (e.g. academic, research, professional service and technical)
• We would also like to encourage more applications from Faculties that weren’t as well represented in our previous calls, including the Faculty of Biological Sciences, the Business School and the Faculty of Social Sciences.

PhD students are not eligible to apply to be project leads but may apply as part of a team project.

All ERC awards can only cover direct costs associated with the award (i.e. do not cover Full Economic Costs), which may include the following:

• Principal- and Co-Investigator time may be costed to recognise the contribution of staff  currently employed by the University of Leeds, up to a maximum of 0.1 FTE as workload relief payable to their School or Service.
• Salaries are also eligible for the remuneration of staff on a fixed-term basis for the duration of the project to meet the skills requirement of the role, providing recruitment can be achieved in an appropriate timescale for the implementation of the project. Please consider the Fairer Futures for All commitment when considering staffing.  All staffing costs should be justified in your application and separated from other costs in your finance table.
• The time of other collaborators is also an eligible cost (up to 0.1 FTE). If teams plan to work with external providers, they should be costed as consultants via direct costs only. There may be some exceptions, so please get in touch with us if you are unsure. Please note, when working with external collaborators you must follow due diligence requirements detailed in the University's guidance on Trusted Research.
• Reasonable travel, accommodation and subsistence costs - in accordance with the University expenses policy.
• Equipment - consumables directly related to the project.
• Other – such as registration costs at events, production of professional materials, room bookings, catering etc.

The following costs are not eligible:

• Estates and indirect costs
• Building and refurbishment costs
• Patent filing or similar costs associated directly to registering intellectual property rights
• Infrastructure and Capital Expenditure, i.e. no single items of equipment above the £10k threshold are permitted.
• PhD student time is not applicable (unless students are bought out of their PhD projects).

If you have a query on eligible costs, we advise you to check with your Faculty Finance office before submitting your application.

Applicants should provide costings with their proposal (in consultation with Faculty Finance offices) and justification for the budget provided on the application form. Important: Please contact your Faculty Finance office at least two weeks before the deadline to allow finance colleagues sufficient time to assist with costings.

All projects must be complete by 31 July 2025 due to strict spending rules from the funder. All associated costs must be ‘goods receipted’ by this date.

Applicants should describe the work they plan to undertake, show how this aligns with one of the four Research Culture Strategic objectives (although your project may span several, please select the one closest aligned with your proposal), and define the budget required for specific activities and components of the work plan.

For this call, we will adopt a traditional peer review process to make funding decisions.

This means that we will use a panel to grade applications, in reviewer pairs, against 6 quality criteria.

Successful applications will need to score sufficiently against the criteria below. The criteria are designed to eliminate proposals which are out of scope, unclear, unfeasible, without impact, and/or poor value for money. Peer reviewers, from a range of academic and professional services roles, will confirm that applications are fundable when assessed on six criteria: (1-6)

1. Does the proposal persuasively articulate the research culture problem or challenge that it aims to address? (required)
2. Are its aims clear and achievable within the given timescale? (required)
3. Is the methodology appropriate?
4. Are the likely impacts of the project identified, and are the outcomes measurable?
5. Are the roles and responsibilities of all team members and any partners clearly defined?
6. Are the costs requested appropriate?

Reviewer teams will comprise In previous calls, this pair system has proven beneficial for professional development of reviewers, for reducing bias, and for reducing score variation.

Those that come at the top of the score list down to the total funding limit will be recommended for funding. If there is a tiebreak at the funding limit and applications require some further discussion, panel members may be consulted.

The research culture team will manually review the gender, race, disability, and career stage diversity among project teams to verify that the peer review process has not generated any preferential . We will then transparently present the outcome to the panel members in writing.

Reviewers may be approached for reflections on the process, and the relative merits of this traditional review compared to the trial of Partially Randomised Allocation of internal funding as conducted in our previous call. Given the very modest gains made by trialling PRA in 2023, as indicated in stakeholder feedback, we have selected a traditional peer review approach for this call. We would like to gather reflections where possible, to compare experiences of the two review approaches.

The case study does not purport to be a controlled trial comparing PRA to the traditional peer review process used in our previous call: the two calls differed in several other aspects, e.g. reviewing criteria, concurrent industrial action in 2023, and a different applicant and reviewer cohort.

Applicants will then be notified of the reviewing outcomes in mid-July. Any written feedback from the review process will be shared with unsuccessful applicants.

To support applicants, we are offering 2 workshops, one on the application and one to help refine your idea.

Workshop 1: Unlocking your idea

Monday 10 June, 2-3.30 on Teams

This session is designed to help you shape and refine your Open Call idea.  It will include:

• Defining the importance of your idea
• How it fits with the Research Culture strategic objectives
• Highlighting the aims and objectives
• Identifying the impact and beneficiaries

Workshop 2: Writing the application 

Wednesday 12 June, 10-11.30 on Teams

In this session we will cover:

• Aims of the Open Call
• What goes in the application
• Structuring your proposal
• Selling your idea, what are the reviewers looking for

To join the workshops, you will find the Teams links on our Open Call intranet page. 

Both workshops will be recorded and made available on our Open Call intranet page. 

Download an application form (Word).

Download an accessible application form (Word).