Set up my grant

Upon notification that your bid has been successful the following checks are undertaken by your faculty research support team before the award can be formally accepted:

• Awards Management System (AMS) – whether minor amendments to the details tab are required i.e., project dates.
• Budget – whether there are any changes between submitted and awarded amount, your faculty unit accountant will amend the budget if necessary.
• Contract – liaison with Legal Services for the following:
  • review and/or negotiation of the offer and contractual terms and conditions
  • drafting of any additional agreements such as collaboration or consortium agreements.

Accepting an award will be managed by the faculty research support teams and the Research, Enterprise and Scholarship Unit (RES).

Some funders require the institution to accept the award via the funder portal. In these instances, the award will be accepted by RES upon confirmation from you as Principal Investigator and the faculty that they wish to accept the award and confirmation on AMS from Legal Services that they are happy with the terms and conditions.

All legal agreements are drafted and signed by Legal Services, part of Finance, which has signatory authority on behalf of the University.

Research Managers can act as a liaison point between you and Legal Services (internal link only) and support the contracting process for both the:

• review of funder terms and conditions, and
• drafting of collaboration or consortium agreements.

As Principal Investigator, you need to have read and understood the grant/contract terms and conditions of award.

If collaboration or consortium agreements are not yet in place, either ask the Research Manager supporting your grant to email you a CLS Questionnaire (internal link only) or download a copy. Complete and return to the Research Manager. They will check and forward to Legal Services, who will then start the process of setting up the agreement.

If you are unsure whether a contract is required (e.g., where no money is involved but there will be obligations on the parties or issues re intellectual property (IP), please contact your faculty research support team who will seek advice from Legal Services.

The University has a duty to protect and exploit the Intellectual Property generated by its research activities. This is often a legal requirement from funding bodies, which seek not only to widely disseminate research findings, but also to optimise the commercial benefits for industry, the University and society as a whole. The framework that governs Intellectual Property at The Open University is the Research and Enterprise Intellectual Property policy.

The RES Research and Enterprise team is responsible for ensuring the University's research Intellectual Property is adequately protected and exploited. They can advise you on all aspects of Intellectual Property, including:

• keeping information confidential
• management of Intellectual Property in proposals and projects
• protection of your idea
• development of Intellectual Property strategies
• exploitation of Intellectual Property
• compliance with terms and conditions in funding and research agreements

The Open University requires ethics review of all research involving the collection of data and/or biological samples from human participants and research with non-human animals. It also requires risk assessment and consideration of research activity that poses ethical, legal/compliance and/or repuational risk for the University.

As Principal Investigator, you need to submit an application for ethics review prior to any data collection. For more information, policies, and contact details see the Research Ethics webpages. Approval can take up to four to six weeks. Partners need to get their own ethics approval.

If your research project involves the collection or use of personal data, the OU Data Protection (internal link only) site will help you assess if your research is considered high risk. The first step will be to complete a Data Protection Questionnaire which you can download from the site. If your questionnaire indicates that your research requires an impact and risk assessment by the information right team, this needs to be completed before you can start to process (viewing, editing, storing) data.

When you have made decisions about how your data is going to be processed you will need to register your data on the University's Information Asset Register (internal link only). Please do this via your Faculty Information Governance Liaison Officer.

If you are using a supplier to collect data, or will transfer data to a supplier, you will need to contact Information Security (see the Third Party Questionnaire (internal link only)).

As Pricipal Investigator, you will need to develop a Data Management Plan to describe how your data will be stored, documented, preserved and shared. The Library Services research support team can help you with this and all aspects of research data management throughout the research lifecycle.

In keeping with Open University (OU) principles of openness, it is expected that research data will be open and accessible to other researchers, as soon as appropriate and verifiable. Library Services administer the OU’s institutional data repository, Open Research Data Online.

In relation to research projects being undertaken by OU students and/or staff, the University holds liability covers with U.M. Association Ltd (UMAL).

Cover for Research (internal link only) is needed to provide safeguards against harmful events which could potentially be experienced by a human participant as a result of their participation in research.

Our expectation is that all such research is conducted according to appropriate ethical, legal and professional frameworks, obligations and standards. The safety and wellbeing of those involved, including participants and the project team is the paramount consideration in any activity. It is the responsibility of individual researchers and Executive Deans to ensure that research is always undertaken within the law and University Policy.

Export control may apply to the export of goods, materials, technology, information, software, data or know-how outside the UK or EU for your activity/project. Also, some controls exist for transfers within the UK, especially where US restrictions apply. Such controls may impact the design and delivery of your proposed research and therefore should be considered at the project design stage – refer to the Export Control intranet pages (internal link only) for information and guidance, or contact the export control team.

As set out in the OU’s Research Code of Practice, Section 11 Funding and Collaboration in Research and Enterprise (11.8), researchers supported by their faculties, are expected to work with collaborating organisations to ensure the agreement of, and compliance with, common standards and procedures for the conduct of collaborative research, including the resolution of any issues or problems that might arise and the investigation of any allegations of misconduct should they arise.

Researchers should seek agreement on the roles of researchers involved in the project and on issues relating to attending meetings with external bodies, managing communications, authorship, attribution and acknowledgement, publication and intellectual property, recognising that this may change over the course of the project, and ensure this is communicated to all members of the research team, including postgraduate research students. This is the responsibility of supervisors when a postgraduate research student project involves collaboration with third parties.

This is important for all research collaborations as it will help to develop a shared understanding of approaches to working and help to avoid potential misunderstandings as the research progresses. It is particularly strongly recommended for instances where there are co-principal investigators from different organisations.

Any such agreement is informal in nature and can be revisited at various points in the project. It is separate from the formal collaboration agreement between the organisations.

Each Collaboration Agreement will include a Dispute Resolution clause, which will lay out the process that partners should follow when a dispute arises during delivery of a project. Prior to any formal action, Pricipal Investigators should follow the process outlined in the Project contract dispute advice (internal link only).