Review Criteria

It is important to note that proposals will be anonymised prior to review by the Programme Advisory Board (PAB) (see page 9 of the AO). Please can I remind all applicants to anonymise their Case for Support.

The full review stage will be carried out following an ethical and transparent approach. Reviewers will be asked to declare any interest prior to review and the process will comprise:
1. The PAB will review the proposals (based on criteria below). This review will be informed by feedback from the UKUH Challenge PIs on the proposals' research excellence.
2. All proposals will be scored and ranked based on the PAB assessment.
3. The Programme Executive Board (PEB) will decide which projects receive funding.

Anonymised proposals will be assessed on merit on the following criteria:
- Research excellence (40%)
- Fit to Call (40%)
- Applicant track record and capability to deliver (20%)

Justification of Resources
This is a requirement of all full applications. It will be assessed as either ‘acceptable’ or ‘unacceptable’.

Eligibility
This is outlined in the AO and the NERC Handbook. It is incumbent upon individuals to check their own eligibility prior to submission of any Open Call application.
Note, PhD students are not eligible to apply as Co-Is.

Project Partners
Project Partners may be named on an Open Call application. Project Partners are defined as being integral to the project, however, they will not receive funding directly from the award. Minor Directly Incurred costs may be requested to facilitate collaboration. There is no limit to the number of Project Partners you can include, however, each Project Partner must provide a letter of support of up to 2 sides of A4 detailing their contribution to the project.

Subcontracting
NERC considers eligible institutions to be best placed to determine how their work is undertaken. If this involves sub-contracting aspects of the work to non-eligible institutions due, for example, to the lack of appropriate expertise in eligible institutions, this is acceptable. In such circumstances, NERC would pay the awarded eligible institution which in turn would sub-contract to the service provider as appropriate.

Terms & Conditions
Successful projects will be administered through Newcastle University; however, standard NERC Terms and Conditions will apply. All Open Call projects will be required to produce a 1-page summary of their project’s findings for publication on the UKUH website.

Note for UKRI facilities
As this Open Call is being administered through Newcastle University, PIs or Co-Is employed at UKRI facilities with pre-existing agreements with NERC to be funded at 100% FEC (e.g. the BGS) will not be eligible for their usual funding at 100% FEC for the Large Projects. In line with NERC Terms and Conditions, as this call is administered by Newcastle University, UKRI employees will only be eligible to receive funding at 80% FEC (for Large Projects). [Note, this does not affect those applying for Small Projects as all Small Projects will be funded at 100% FEC.]