Domestic programmes funding guidance for outline applications

Summary information

The 'Summary information' section asks some questions about you and your application.

Contracting organisation

Please give details of the organisation who will be the contractor if your application is funded.

You must check you have chosen the most appropriate organisation. The contracting organisation has overall responsibility for the successful completion of the programme of work detailed in your application and any financial administration of the award, where applicable, if your application is successful. Once a funding decision has been made, you will need to follow a formal approval process if you wish to request a change to the contracting organisation.

If you have a research sponsor, they can also be the contracting organisation, or a collaborating partner. A sponsor is the organisation directly responsible for securing the arrangements to initiate, manage, and finance your project. They must follow the guidelines set out in the NHS’s UK policy framework for health and social care research. 

In the application system, your own primary organisation will be shown by default in the 'Contracting organisation' field. This is based on what you added in your contact profile. To change the contracting organisation, type the organisation name into the search box and find it in the list. If the organisation you are looking for does not appear, you can request to ‘Add new contracting organisation’. Our systems team will need to approve the new organisation before you can submit your application. Please request this change as early as possible. We recommend you give us at least 2 weeks’ notice before the funding opportunity closing date.

Before you apply, you must ask an authorised representative from the contracting organisation, for example head of department or head of school, to confirm that they will support your application.

Please refer to the specific funding opportunity for any restrictions on contracting organisation.

Contracting organisation department (100 characters)

Please name the department within your contracting organisation that you will be based in for the duration of your research.

Application title (100 characters)

Your application title should clearly and concisely summarise your proposed research. Please write any abbreviations out in full.

Duration (months)

This is the period of time you will need to complete your research. Enter the number of months as whole numbers only - avoid fractions or decimal numbers. 

Make sure you allow enough time to complete all aspects of the research. This includes time for any necessary regulatory approvals and for writing a final report.

Please see the funding opportunity for limits on duration.

Total cost to NIHR

Enter the total amount that you are requesting from the NIHR to fund your project, ensuring that you have already applied any relevant funding rates. Please include costs at current prices.

Your total research costs figure should not include NHS or non-NHS support costs or excess treatment costs. These are funded separately and are not included in the funding you receive. Applicants can identify any separate research costs using the attributing the costs of health and social care research development (AcoRD) guidance.

You do not need to include open access costs in your estimated research costs. If your application is successful, you will get an open access budget allocated to you. This is additional money on top of the funding given. 

For a full application you will be asked to provide more detail about your estimated costs. You may wish to refer to our full application guidance when completing your estimated costs for your outline application. This will help you work out which costs are eligible for funding, and the rate at which they will be funded. You will need to consider direct costs, for example salaries and consumables, and indirect costs where appropriate. 

The total amount of funding you can request for an outline application varies depending on the funding opportunity and programme you apply to. Please see the funding opportunity for specific details on funding limits. 

Please see our finance guidance for more information, including details about specific funding rates.

Has this application been previously submitted to this or any other funding body?

Please tell us if you have submitted your application previously to this or another NIHR funding opportunity, or another funder. Please select either the ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ option.

If you fail to answer accurately or fully, this will be seen as academic misconduct and treated accordingly. 

Re-submitting applications to NIHR

We do allow applicants to re-submit a previously unsuccessful application but we encourage that you only re-apply if you have made changes. We encourage you to rework your previous application and respond to feedback. If you do re-apply, your application will be treated as a new application and considered on its merits at the time.

If you have answered yes, please provide:

• Grant reference

  Please tell us the grant reference number associated with your previous application.

• Funder

  Please list the name(s) of the funder(s) you have previously submitted this application to.

• Please provide details 

  Please tell us why your previous application was declined and how you have changed and improved it in response to feedback.

Lead applicant and research team

This section covers 2 tabs in the awards management system:

• 'Lead applicant', which contains details on lead and joint lead applicants
• 'Research team', which contains details on co-applicants and administrative contacts

It is important that all applicants are registered in the system, and that their details are up to date. If any do not already have an account, please visit the awards management system and follow the on-screen instructions.

Information on name, primary and other affiliated organisations, and contact details will be automatically populated from each applicant’s contact profile within the application system. To add in missing information, or make updates, click the ‘My profile’ button on the awards management system home page. Or click the ‘Update contact profile’ button in the relevant section(s) of your funding application.

Please note that each applicant will need to validate their individual contact profile prior to your application submission. 

Your research team will need to include a dedicated lead for PPI. They are a dedicated staff member with responsibility for the coordination and reporting of these activities in line with UK Standards for Public Involvement and relevant NIHR guidance and policies.

Within this form, there are 3 types of applicant:

How to add new applicants, or edit existing applicants

For all applicant types, you are required to provide:

Title, first name and surname

These sections of the form will be pre-populated based on the applicant’s contact profile in the application system. If you need to change any details, click the ‘Update’ button alongside the relevant sections to edit your profile. Please note that each applicant will need to update their own contact profile.

Organisation

The organisation from your contact profile will appear here by default. If you need to change your organisation, click on the ‘Update contact profile’ button at the top of this section. 

If needed, you can add a new organisation to your account by:

1. clicking the 'Update contact profile' button
2. selecting 'Affiliated organisation' in the left-hand selection bar
3. clicking ‘Add new organisation’
4. filling out the details of your organisation and pressing ‘Submit’

Department

This section will be pre-populated based on the applicant’s contact profile. If you need to change any details, click the ‘Update’ button alongside these sections to edit your profile. Please note that each applicant will need to update their own contact profile.

Proposed role (1,700 characters)

Briefly explain the applicant’s role in the research. For example coordination, project management, analysis, methodological input. For the lead applicant, this should be what they will do in addition to leading the project.

There are several appropriate roles you may wish to include when designing your team. If the applicant is the PPI lead, please specify this here. You must include a PPI lead in your team. See our definition and role of the designated PPI lead guidance for more information. 

In the event that the public co-applicant and PPI lead roles will be fulfilled by the same person, you should make this clear and justify the duties and dedicated hours for each role.

If you have a dedicated knowledge mobilisation lead, please mention this. See our knowledge mobilisation guidance for more information. 

You can go into more detail about roles and responsibilities in the 'Research plan' section of your application.

ORCID

In order to submit an application, all applicants, with the exception of PPI co-applicants, are required to provide an ORCID. This is a free, unique, user identification number used by NIHR and other health research funders. 

To obtain an ORCID, or add an existing one to your user contact profile:

1. Click on the 'Home' button in the right-hand corner of the page and then go to the 'My profile' tab.
2. Add your existing ORCID or register for an ORCID account by clicking on ‘Create or connect your ORCID’. This will redirect you to the ORCID website.
3. Sign in to ORCID, or register for an ID number.
4. Within the ORCID system, click on the ‘Continue to import your ORCID data’ button. This will update your contact profile in our application system with your ORCID number. 

Please ensure that your ORCID profile is up to date before submitting your application. The information provided in your ORCID profile replaces the need for a CV or publication information in the application. This will be used by reviewers and committees as part of the decision making process. Please ensure that the visibility settings within your ORCID account are set to ‘everyone’ to allow reviewers to access this information.

%FTE commitment

This refers to the percentage of time that each applicant will commit to this project. If they are funded as part of other, concurrent, NIHR projects, their time must not exceed 100% overall.

Status

Joint lead applicants and co-applicants are required to be invited and accept their participation in this application. You must also complete applicant details for all applicants before you can submit your application. 

Once an applicant has accepted their invitation to join the application, you can complete their applicant details form by clicking on the corresponding row of the applicant details table. Fill in all details, as outlined above, and click the ‘Submit’ button to change the applicant's status from pending to submitted.

If you are not ready to submit an applicant’s details, you can click the ’Save’ button instead.

Add administrative contact

You might want to add an administrative contact(s) to your online application. They can help complete the application but will not be able to submit the application. Administrative contacts do not need to be a co-applicant. 

The lead applicant must submit the application, and will be the person that receives all automatically-generated emails from the system.

To add an administrative contact:

1. Click on the envelope icon within the 'Administrative information' section of the 'Research team' tab.
2. Click the plus icon (+) within the 'Invitations' pop-out.
3. Fill in the name and email address of your administrative contact.
4. Within the 'Role' section, select the level of access you want the administrative contact to have to your application. You can choose to give them editing rights, or read-only access. If you want your administrative contact to have access to all financial information within your application, select one of the ‘with financials’ options.
5. Once you have filled in all the details, click the ‘Invite’ button at the bottom of the screen. Your administrative contact will then receive an invite to access the application. If you are not ready to send an invitation, you can click ‘Save’ instead.

Please note that the administrative contact must accept their participation in the application before it can be submitted.

Application details

This information relates to the 'Application details' tab in the application system.

Plain English summary (3,500 characters)

You will need to write a clear and easy-to-read summary about your proposed research. This is different from a scientific abstract. You must write a new version for your summary. Please do not copy and paste sections from your research plan. 

Your plain English summary will be read by people reviewing your application who may not have specialist knowledge of your research field. If your application is successful, your summary will be used on NIHR and other websites. If we feel your summary is not clear enough, we may ask you to amend it before we approve funding.

Please see our guidance on how to write a plain English summary

Research plan

The research plan is the main part of your application. You should ensure that the information you include is accurate, succinct, clearly laid out and provides sufficient methodological detail.

Please download the template 'Research plan' from within the awards management system. There are 3 sections within this template, which must all be completed. Section headings and margins should not be amended in any way.

An outline of what to include in each section is below. For detailed guidance on the requirements of the funding programme you are applying to, including any overall page and character limits for each section, please refer to the information on the specific funding opportunity page.

If necessary to clarify your research you may embed:

• schematics
• tables
• illustrations
• graphs
• other types of graphics

Images do not count towards the overall word count but inclusion of them to overcome limits is not permitted.

Please ensure that your research plan uses Arial size 12 font, and shows page numbers within the document footer. Once you have completed the 'Research plan' template offline, please re-upload into the system. You may wish to convert your research plan to PDF before uploading to ensure formatting is consistent.

Uploads

This information relates to the ‘Uploads’ tab in the application system. 

Please refer to the funding opportunity for information on what uploads you should provide as part of your application. You should only include uploads specified in the guidance for the funding opportunity you are applying for. Any additional documents will not be considered by the committee during its review and may be removed.

You should upload your documents into the awards management system once you have completed them. To do this, you can drag and drop documents, or click ‘browse files’ to locate them on your device.

Only the following document types can be uploaded: .doc, .docx, .xlsx and .pdf.

If you upload a Word document (.doc or .docx), the system will create a PDF version of it and both versions will be displayed in the ‘Uploads’ section. You may want to convert your completed document to PDF before uploading to ensure formatting is consistent. If you wish to remove or replace any of your uploads, you will need to delete both versions to remove it entirely.

All other document types will need to be converted to PDF format before uploading.

Flow diagram (if specified)

Please refer to the specific funding opportunity for guidance to determine whether this upload is required as part of your application.

Logic model (if specified)

Please refer to the specific funding opportunity for guidance to determine whether this upload is required as part of your application.

References (mandatory)

Upload 1 single-side A4 page .pdf document, using Arial size 12 font, listing references used throughout your application. Please include the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) of the main related publications. Please use the Harvard or Vancouver referencing style.

Flexible upload (optional)

Please refer to the specific funding opportunity for guidance on whether any additional uploads are required as part of your application.

Acknowledgement and conflicts

This information relates to the ‘Acknowledgement & conflicts’ tab in the application system. This is where you need to declare any potential conflicts and confirm you have read our terms and conditions.

Potential conflicts

Please declare any conflicts or potential conflicts of interest that you may have in undertaking the work as described. This includes any relevant, non-personal and commercial interest that could be perceived as a conflict of interest. If in doubt, you should err on the side of disclosure.

I have read and understood the terms of applying as lead applicant and accept this role

As lead applicant, please tick the box to confirm that the information entered into the application form is correct and that you take responsibility for overall management and delivery of the work described.