Dictionary domainTrack E
Funding lifecycle and financial vocabulary
Calls, NCE, indirect costs, biosketch, current & pending.
For implementers
Operational deployment checklist for Funding lifecycle and financial vocabulary: prerequisites, five deploy steps, integration notes for Pure, Symplectic Elements, Worktribe, DSpace, and more, plus the pitfalls that recur in the field.
Terms in this domain
184 terms
K01 (NIH Mentored Research Scientist Development Award)
A K01 is an NIH individual, mentored career-development activity code (Mentored Research Scientist Development Award) that funds a research-doctorate-holding investigator's three-to-five-year transition toward independent, NIH-fundable research through protected effort (at least 75% of full-time professional effort), a qualified mentor, and a formal career-development plan. What distinguishes a K01 from other individual mentored K mechanisms: it requires a research doctorate (PhD or equivalent) rather than a clinical doctorate, carries no fixed postdoctoral-experience ceiling the way K99/R00 does, and runs as a single mentored phase for its full duration with no automatic transition into a separate independent-phase award.
Spencer Foundation
The Spencer Foundation is a private, non-federal U.S. foundation dedicated exclusively to funding research aimed at the understanding and improvement of education, broadly construed across disciplines, methodologies, and education levels. A project qualifies as Spencer-funded research if it is submitted under one of the Foundation's active grant mechanisms -- principally the Small Research Grants on Education program (budgets up to $50,000) or the Large Research Grants on Education program (budgets of $125,000 to $500,000) -- through an eligible non-profit or public administering institution, since the Foundation does not award grants directly to individuals. A related but separately administered mechanism, the NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship, supports individual doctoral candidates directly through the National Academy of Education rather than through Spencer's own research-grant portal.
SURF (Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship)
SURF (Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship) is a category of institutionally administered summer research program that places undergraduates into a mentored, full-time research placement -- typically 8 to 11 weeks -- under a faculty or staff scientist, usually with a stipend and often modeled on the grant-seeking process: the student writes a short research proposal to be accepted, conducts the project over the summer, and closes the program with a written report and an oral or poster presentation at a culminating symposium. 'SURF' is not one single national program; it is a naming convention independently adopted by dozens of individual institutions for their own summer undergraduate research fellowship, most prominently the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), whose SURF program is the oldest and most widely cited namesake of the term. A program counts as a SURF in the operational sense used here if it (a) is undergraduate-only, (b) runs as a discrete summer term rather than during the academic year, (c) pairs each student with an individual faculty/research mentor rather than a classroom instructor, and (d) issues a stipend or fellowship award rather than treating the position as employment paid hourly.
Leverhulme Trust
An independent UK charitable foundation, endowed under the will of William Hesketh Lever (founder of Lever Brothers, now part of Unilever) and operating since 1925, that funds academic research and personal fellowships across all disciplines -- including arts, humanities, and social sciences -- without the thematic remit restrictions that apply to UKRI's discipline-specific research councils.
Pharmaceutical Company Research Grants (Investigator-Initiated Studies)
A pharmaceutical company research grant, in the investigator-initiated study (IIS/ISS) sense, is funding a pharmaceutical or biopharmaceutical company provides for a research project that a physician, scientist, or other qualified investigator conceives, designs, and directs -- distinguishing it from company-sponsored clinical trials, where the company itself designs the protocol and directs the study through a sponsor or sponsor-CRO relationship. A grant counts as an investigator-initiated study grant, and not ordinary trial sponsorship, only when the funding company has no control over hypothesis, design, endpoints, or data interpretation -- its role is limited to scientific review of the proposal, funding decision, and (for studies involving its product) supply of drug or device as specified in the grant agreement.
MRC (Medical Research Council, UK)
<p>The <strong>MRC (Medical Research Council)</strong> is the UK statutory research council responsible for funding biomedical, clinical, and translational health research. It is one of the seven discipline-based research councils operating as constituent parts of <a href='/dictionary/term/ukri-funding-service'>UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)</a> — a project or researcher qualifies as "MRC-funded" when the award is made under an MRC scheme (an applicant-led responsive-mode grant, an MRC-badged fellowship, or funding to one of MRC's own institutes/units) and its subject matter falls within MRC's biomedical/clinical remit, as distinct from awards made by UKRI's other councils (ESRC for social science, BBSRC for biosciences, EPSRC for engineering/physical sciences, and so on) or by the separately governed National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).</p>
EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council)
<p>The <strong>EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council)</strong> is the UK statutory research council responsible for funding engineering, physical sciences, mathematics, and digital/AI research. It is one of the seven discipline-based research councils operating as constituent parts of <a href='/dictionary/term/ukri-funding-service'>UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)</a> — an award qualifies as "EPSRC-funded" when it is made under an EPSRC scheme (responsive-mode grants, EPSRC-badged fellowships and studentships, or EPSRC-led cross-council calls) and its subject matter falls within EPSRC's remit (engineering, physical sciences, mathematical sciences, chemistry, materials, digital technologies and AI), as distinct from awards made by UKRI's other councils (STFC for particle physics, astronomy and space science; MRC for biomedical/clinical research; BBSRC for biosciences; and so on) or by non-statutory private funders.</p>
BBSRC (Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council)
BBSRC is one of the seven discipline-based research councils inside UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), responsible for funding fundamental and applied bioscience research and postgraduate training in the UK -- from molecular and cellular biology through to agriculture, food security, engineering biology, and biotechnology. An award counts as BBSRC funding when it is made through a BBSRC-branded scheme (responsive-mode grants, fellowships, doctoral training partnerships, Institute Strategic Programme funding, or industry-partnered awards) rather than through one of UKRI's other six research councils, even though all UKRI councils share the same underlying application system, costing model, and outcome-reporting requirements.
William T. Grant Foundation
The William T. Grant Foundation (WTGF) is a private, non-federal U.S. foundation, headquartered in New York City, that funds research in the social sciences. Since 1936 it has supported studies aimed at reducing inequality in the outcomes of young people (ages 5-25) in the United States and, more recently, at improving how research evidence is used by the policymakers, agency leaders, and other decision-makers who shape youth-serving systems. A project qualifies as WTGF-funded research if it is submitted under one of the Foundation's active funding mechanisms — principally the <strong>Research Grants on Reducing Inequality</strong> program and the <strong>Research Grants on Improving the Use of Research Evidence</strong> program — and is reviewed and awarded through the Foundation's own letter-of-inquiry and full-proposal process, which runs on its own cycle and criteria rather than a federal grants system such as Grants.gov or NIH's eRA Commons.
ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council)
<p>The <strong>ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council)</strong> is the UK statutory research council responsible for funding economic, social, behavioural, and human data science research. It is one of the seven discipline-based research councils operating as constituent parts of <a href='/dictionary/term/ukri-funding-service'>UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)</a> — a body qualifies as "ESRC-funded" when its award is made under an ESRC scheme (responsive-mode grants, ESRC-badged fellowships and studentships, or ESRC-led cross-council calls) and its subject matter falls within ESRC's social-science remit, as distinct from awards made by UKRI's other councils (EPSRC for engineering/physical sciences, MRC for biomedical/clinical research, BBSRC for biosciences, and so on) or by non-statutory private funders.</p>
ARPA-H (Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health)
A U.S. federal award qualifies as ARPA-H funding when it is issued under a Program Manager-defined program announced via an Innovative Solutions Opening (ISO), rather than through NIH's standard investigator-initiated peer-review process -- typically structured as an Other Transaction agreement, contract, or cooperative agreement with funding disbursed against pre-negotiated technical milestones, and subject to Program Manager oversight and go/no-go performance review rather than a fixed project period awarded purely on initial peer-review score.
European Research Council (ERC)
The European Research Council (ERC) is the European Union's funding body for frontier basic research, established in 2007 and operating as part of the Horizon Europe programme (2021-2027). A funding instance qualifies as ERC-administered if it is awarded through one of the ERC's own investigator-driven grant schemes -- Starting, Consolidator, Advanced, or Synergy Grants, plus the smaller Proof of Concept top-up for existing grantees -- selected on scientific excellence alone via a bottom-up, discipline-blind peer review process, rather than through a thematic Horizon Europe call defined around a predetermined policy priority.
NIH Activity Codes
An NIH activity code is the two-to-three-character alphanumeric code -- one or two letters followed by two digits, such as R01, K08, T32, F31, U01, or P01 -- that NIH assigns to classify a specific type of funding mechanism (grant, cooperative agreement, or fellowship) by the kind of support it provides, independent of the awarding Institute or Center, the scientific topic, or the specific Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) issuing it. The activity code is the second element of a full NIH grant number (after the application-type digit and before the Institute/Center code and serial number), for example the 'R01' in '1 R01 CA123456-01.' A funding mechanism is correctly described as belonging to an activity code -- rather than being one -- when its scope, review criteria, budget structure, and duration are all defined NIH-wide (or Common-Fund-wide) by that code's own governing policy, rather than being invented ad hoc by a single NOFO.
Conference Travel Grant (Award)
A conference travel grant (also called a conference travel award) is a discrete funding mechanism -- distinct from a project's general travel budget line -- that pays some or all of the cost of a researcher attending and presenting at an academic or professional conference. It is an instance of this concept when: (1) the funds are awarded competitively or by defined eligibility criteria rather than simply drawn down from an existing project budget; (2) the covered costs are conference-specific (registration fee, travel, lodging, and sometimes per diem/subsistence) rather than general research expenses; and (3) eligibility and award size are set by a funder, professional society, or institution operating a named award program, not negotiated ad hoc. Three source types are common: (a) institutional travel funds administered by a graduate school, department, or office of research, typically capped per award ($300-$1,500 is a common range) and limited to one award per researcher per year; (b) professional-society travel awards tied to a specific annual meeting, frequently reserved for student, postdoctoral, or early-career members and conditioned on having an accepted abstract or paper; and (c) funder-level mechanisms built into a federal grant program, such as NIH's R13/U13 Support for Scientific Meetings and Conferences (Parent R13, e.g. PA-25-080) and comparable NSF conference/travel solicitations, which are typically awarded to the hosting institution or organization -- not to an individual researcher directly -- to subsidize the meeting itself and, within that award, the travel of students, trainees, and junior investigators attending it. This is a funding-mechanism concept, not a cost-allowability concept: whether a specific expense charged against any of these awards is allowable follows ordinary sponsor cost policy (2 CFR 200.475, the Fly America Act for federally funded international air travel, per diem rules) -- see <a href='/dictionary/term/travel-cost-grant'>Travel cost (grant)</a> for that separate question.
NIH Director’s New Innovator Award (DP2)
The NIH Director's New Innovator Award (DP2) is a Common Fund High-Risk, High-Reward Research grant that funds early-career investigators (Early Stage Investigators, within 10 years of their terminal degree or clinical training) proposing exceptionally creative, high-risk research, without requiring the extensive preliminary data a standard R01 application expects. It provides a single award, historically up to $1.5 million and more recently up to $2.375 million in total direct costs, over a five-year project period.
NIH R03 (Small Grant Program)
An <strong>R03</strong> is an NIH research-grant activity code — the <strong>Small Grant Program</strong> — that funds modest, short-term, self-contained research projects rather than the extended, larger-scale programs an R01 supports. R03 budgets are capped at <strong>up to $50,000 in direct costs per year</strong>, over a project period of <strong>up to two years</strong> (commonly cited as up to $100,000 in direct costs total across the period). No preliminary data are required to apply, though supporting evidence can strengthen an application. NIH designates the R03 mechanism for a defined set of uses: pilot or feasibility studies, secondary analysis of existing data, small self-contained research projects, development of new research methodology, and development of new research technology. The mechanism has no Type 2 competing-renewal option, and not every NIH Institute or Center (IC) participates in the Parent R03 Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) — applicants must confirm the specific IC's current participation and any IC-specific R03 announcement before applying.
Open Access Publishing Fund
An open access publishing fund is a dedicated pool of money, typically administered by a university library, that pays or reimburses Article Processing Charges (APCs) on behalf of researchers at that institution who have no other funding source available to cover them. Awards are usually capped per article and per researcher, contingent on the article having no other eligible funding, and available only until the fund’s annual allocation is exhausted — distinguishing it from institutional-level Read & Publish or transformative agreements, which cover OA publishing through a negotiated publisher license rather than an individually applied-for grant.
Equipment (2 CFR 200.1 Definition)
Under 2 CFR 200.1 (Uniform Guidance), "Equipment" is tangible personal property, including IT systems, with (1) a useful life of more than one year AND (2) a per-unit acquisition cost equal to or exceeding the lesser of the institution's own capitalization level or $10,000 (raised from a $5,000 federal floor in a 2024 Uniform Guidance revision, effective for awards issued on/after October 1, 2024). NIH applies this same government-wide definition to its own awards rather than a separate NIH-specific threshold. Items failing either prong are classified as "Supplies" instead.
Time and Effort Reporting
The institutional system for documenting that salary and wages charged to, or cost-shared against, a federal award correspond to the effort an employee actually performed on that award, satisfying the internal-control standard at 2 CFR 200.430(g). It covers the full cycle -- budgeting effort at proposal stage, recording/monitoring effort during the award period, and after-the-fact review or confirmation (often called effort certification) that reconciles charged percentages against actual activity -- and does not correspond to any single federally mandated form; institutions design their own compliant forms or systems (Plan Confirmation, After-the-Fact Activity Records, Multiple Confirmation Records, or electronic effort-reporting platforms) as long as the underlying system provides reasonable assurance charges are accurate, allowable, and properly allocated based on records reflecting total compensated activity not exceeding 100 percent.
NSF Broadening Participation
NSF Broadening Participation is the National Science Foundation's coordinated set of programs, funding requirements, and strategic goals aimed at increasing the involvement of individuals, institutions, and geographic regions historically underrepresented in STEM research and education. NSF defines the target groups as individuals -- women, underrepresented racial and ethnic minorities, and persons with disabilities -- plus institutions (women's colleges, minority-serving institutions, institutions primarily serving persons with disabilities) and geographic areas (rural, urban, and EPSCoR jurisdictions) that participate in NSF programs at rates lower than their overall representation in the relevant population. Something is a genuine Broadening Participation activity -- rather than just any diversity-adjacent outreach -- when it is a specific, funded NSF program, plan requirement, or reporting element built around this defined set of target groups, not a generic institutional DEI initiative NSF happens to be aware of.
CRC-P Grants (Cooperative Research Centres Projects)
A funding arrangement qualifies as a CRC-P (Cooperative Research Centres Projects) Grant when it is an Australian Government matched-funding grant, administered under the Cooperative Research Centres Program by the Department of Industry, Science and Resources, awarded to a short-term (up to three years), industry-led research collaboration whose lead applicant is a small to medium enterprise (SME) partnered with at least one additional Australian industry organisation and at least one Australian research organisation, to develop a product, service, or process that solves an identified industry problem. It is distinguished from the flagship, multi-year Cooperative Research Centres (CRC) grants by its shorter duration, smaller and more flexible partner structure, and its explicit industry-led (rather than research-organisation-led) governance.
NRSA (National Research Service Award)
An award is an NRSA (National Research Service Award, formally the Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA) if it is made under the statutory authority created by Title I of the National Research Act of 1974 (Public Law 93-348) to support predoctoral or postdoctoral research training rather than to fund a specific research project directly. NRSA support is stipend-based (a training allowance to the trainee/fellow, set annually by NIH notice) rather than a PI salary drawn against direct research costs, and it comes in two structural forms: institutional awards (the 'T' series -- T32, T90, TL1, and related mechanisms -- where an institution or program holds the grant, is the grant's PD/PI of record, and nominates individual trainees into funded training slots) and individual fellowships (the 'F' series -- F30, F31, F32, and related mechanisms -- where the trainee or fellow themselves is the named PD/PI, applying with a specific faculty sponsor and research training plan). A postdoctoral NRSA recipient (T- or F-series) also incurs a service payback obligation for the first 12 months of postdoctoral NRSA support, discharged through subsequent NRSA-supported training, health-related research, health-related teaching, or a combination, averaging at least 20 hours per week; predoctoral NRSA recipients incur no payback obligation.
R34 (NIH Planning Grant)
An R34 is an NIH grant activity code for a Planning Grant: a time-limited, relatively small award used to fund the preparatory work needed before a larger study can be competitively proposed, rather than to fund the study itself. Typical R34-supported activities include finalizing a clinical trial design and protocol, developing a manual of procedures, drafting informed consent forms and case report forms, establishing multi-site or community partnerships, piloting recruitment feasibility, and producing milestone and timeline plans. There is no single standing parent funding opportunity announcement (FOA) for the R34 across all of NIH; instead, individual NIH Institutes and Centers (ICs) issue their own R34 Notices of Funding Opportunity (NOFOs) -- as Program Announcements (PAs/PARs) or Requests for Applications (RFAs) -- each with its own scope, eligibility, and review criteria, so whether an R34 is currently open, and for what, depends entirely on which IC's NOFO an applicant is applying under.
Effort Certification
The process by which an individual with direct, first-hand knowledge of the work performed -- historically the employee themselves or a person with suitable means of verification, such as a supervisor -- attests, after the fact and typically on a periodic basis, that the percentage of salary charged to a sponsored award reasonably reflects the actual effort that person expended on that award during the certification period. Under 2 CFR 200.430 (the Uniform Guidance, effective December 26, 2014), effort certification is no longer a federally mandated, one-size-fits-all form -- it is one acceptable method an institution may build into the 'system of internal control' the regulation actually requires, which must provide reasonable assurance that salary charges are accurate, allowable, and properly allocated, and must be based on records reflecting the total activity for which the employee is compensated (not exceeding 100 percent). Institutions may instead rely on budget estimates on an interim basis, provided the estimation process produces reasonable approximations of actual activity, significant changes in work distribution are documented promptly, and the internal-control system includes periodic after-the-fact review with adjustments where needed. A federal awarding agency retains the authority to require personnel activity reports or prescribed certifications from a specific recipient if that recipient's own internal controls fall short of the standard.
FAR 52.227-11 (Patent Rights — Ownership by the Contractor)
FAR 52.227-11, “Patent Rights—Ownership by the Contractor,” is the patent-rights clause the Federal Acquisition Regulation requires contracting officers to insert into federal procurement <a href='/dictionary/term/federal-contract'>contracts</a> awarded to small business firms and nonprofit organizations (including universities) for experimental, developmental, or research work. It is prescribed by FAR 27.303(b)(1) and is the FAR's own codification of the Bayh-Dole Act's contractor-ownership default — the contract-instrument counterpart to the 37 CFR 401.14 Standard Patent Rights Clause used in grants and cooperative agreements. A federally funded project is governed by 52.227-11, rather than 37 CFR 401.14, specifically because of which funding instrument was used (a procurement contract) rather than because the underlying substantive rights differ.
NIGMS Payline
A NIGMS payline, as commonly asked about by analogy to other NIH institutes, does not refer to a published percentile-rank cutoff the way it does at NINDS, NHLBI, or NIAID -- NIGMS is distinctive among NIH institutes for not publishing a fixed payline figure for its standard grant mechanisms. NIGMS has instead described its funding decisions as weighing an application's percentile score, assigned after peer review at an NIH study section, alongside factors including the investigator's current level of NIH support and the balance of NIGMS's overall funded research portfolio, rather than ranking applications strictly against a single published threshold. This is further complicated for NIGMS's flagship Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (MIRA, activity code R35), which consolidates an investigator's overall NIGMS-supported research program into one award and is reviewed on that basis rather than as a single discrete project, making a simple percentile payline concept fit even less naturally than it does for NIGMS's R01 funding generally. As of late 2025, NIH signaled that its payline-publishing institutes and centers would move toward a more holistic, portfolio-aware approach -- directionally similar to how NIGMS has operated for years -- rather than continuing to publish fixed percentile cutoffs; confirm current institute-specific practice against NIGMS's own current guidance rather than assuming a specific figure applies.
NSF CISE (Computer and Information Science and Engineering)
NSF CISE (the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering) is one of the National Science Foundation's major organizational directorates. It is a budgetary and administrative unit, not a single funding program or solicitation: CISE funds fundamental research and education across computer science, information science, and computer engineering, and proposals are routed to specific thematic program areas within it based on subject matter. Following NSF's agency-wide reorganization announced in December 2025, CISE's internal structure moved from its long-standing division model to six current thematic program areas.
CIHR Catalyst Grant
A CIHR Catalyst Grant is a short-term (typically up to one year), relatively small (typically capped in the tens of thousands up to roughly CA$125,000 per award, set per competition) seed-funding mechanism issued periodically by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research under various themed funding opportunities, used to support planning, pilot work, feasibility testing, or generation of preliminary data as a first step toward a larger, longer operating grant such as the CIHR Project Grant.
CRADA (Cooperative Research and Development Agreement)
A formal, written collaborative R&D agreement between one or more federal laboratories and one or more non-federal parties, authorized under the Federal Technology Transfer Act (15 U.S.C. 3710a), under which the federal laboratory may contribute personnel, services, facilities, equipment, or intellectual property (but never funds) while the non-federal partner may contribute funding, personnel, or other resources toward a jointly performed, mission-consistent research effort.
T32 (NIH Institutional Research Training Grant)
A T32 is an NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA institutional research training grant: NIH funds a university department or program (not an individual) to run a structured predoctoral and/or postdoctoral research training program, and the program's PD/PI selects and appoints trainees into the grant's funded slots. It is distinct from an individual fellowship (F31/F32), where the trainee themselves applies and holds the award.
ARC Linkage Project
A grant awarded under the Australian Research Council's Linkage Program that funds collaborative research between a university-based team and at least one external Partner Organisation (industry, government, or community body), where the Partner Organisation(s) must contribute cash and/or in-kind resources whose combined value at least matches the funding requested from the ARC, with cash alone required to be at least 25% of the ARC request.
CIHR Planning and Dissemination Grant
A CIHR Planning and Dissemination Grant is a small, short-duration award funded through CIHR's Institute/Initiative Community Support (ICS) mechanism to support planning activities (for example, convening partners to design a future research program or initiative) or dissemination events (for example, a workshop, symposium, or knowledge-translation event that communicates health research evidence to researcher or knowledge-user audiences). It is distinguished from CIHR's research-funding mechanisms by what it explicitly excludes: it does not fund the direct cost of research, including pilot projects, feasibility studies, primary data collection, or principal/co-investigator salaries. A given competition is 'in scope' for this grant type if its funds are being used to organize an event or plan a future initiative rather than to conduct or seed research itself.
NIH Administrative Supplement
An NIH administrative supplement is non-competing supplemental funding added to the current budget period and project period of an already-active NIH grant or cooperative agreement, requested by that award's PI/PD, to cover unforeseen cost increases or add new research activities that stay within the scope NIH's peer reviewers already approved. It is evaluated administratively by NIH program/grants management staff, not through new scientific peer review, and cannot extend beyond the parent award's existing project period.
Grant-in-Aid
A grant-in-aid is a payment of funds from one level of government, a government department, or a funding body to another organization to support a defined activity, program, or body of ongoing operations, typically under conditions the recipient must satisfy (eligible use of funds, reporting, sometimes matching or cost-sharing). It is a broader, more programmatic category than a single research project grant: a grant-in-aid can fund an entire program area, an institution's core operations, or a recurring formula-based allocation, whereas a research/project grant funds one specific, time-bound piece of research with a defined scope of work. In UK and Commonwealth public finance, 'grant-in-aid' has a specific technical meaning: funding voted by Parliament (or the relevant legislature) and paid by a sponsoring government department to an arm's-length public body -- most commonly a non-departmental public body -- to finance that body's approved programs and net running costs, governed by the terms set out in the body's framework document. In US federal usage, 'grants-in-aid' is the umbrella term public-finance and public-administration literature uses for the whole family of federal transfers to state and local governments, which is further split into categorical grants (purpose-restricted, project or formula) and block grants (broad-purpose, high recipient discretion).
P01 Grant (NIH Research Program Project Grant)
A P01 (Research Program Project Grant) is an NIH activity code funding one award that supports multiple independent but scientifically interrelated research projects unified by a single central theme, plus shared infrastructure (an Administrative Core and, often, additional scientific cores) that serves all of the projects. It is a grant (not a cooperative agreement), meaning NIH does not anticipate substantial involvement in directing the funded science, and it is distinguished from R01s by its multi-project, cross-project-synergy structure rather than by award size alone.
Research Council
A research council is a government-established public funding body — typically a national, arm's-length or quasi-autonomous statutory agency — whose core function is to award competitive, peer-reviewed research funding to external researchers and institutions rather than to conduct research itself. It sits between direct ministerial/departmental research funding, philanthropic foundation funding, and government mission agencies that both fund and directly perform research (e.g., NIH's intramural program). The name is a category of funding body, not a single organization: the UK's seven discipline research councils, Canada's NSERC/SSHRC/CIHR, and Australia's ARC/NHMRC are all specific instances of this same institutional model.
NIH Payline
An NIH payline is the percentile-rank (occasionally priority-score) threshold that a given National Institutes of Health institute or center (IC) publishes for a fiscal year as its planning guideline for which peer-reviewed grant applications it expects to fund. It is set independently by each of NIH's 27 ICs -- there is no single, NIH-wide payline -- and is recalculated annually against that year's appropriation, application volume, and research priorities. A payline is a budgeting and planning benchmark, not a binding rule: ICs retain discretion to fund some applications scoring outside the published payline (commonly called "select pay" or "exception pay") and to decline some scoring inside it, based on advisory council input and program priorities. As of late 2025, NIH has directed its ICs to move away from publishing fixed paylines in favor of weighing peer-review scores against institute priorities and budget more holistically -- treat any specific payline figure as time- and institute-bound, and confirm current practice against the awarding IC's own guidance.
R21 (NIH Exploratory/Developmental Research Grant)
An NIH R-series research grant activity code — Exploratory/Developmental Research Grant Award — that funds early-stage, high-risk research not yet ready for the scale and preliminary-data expectations of an R01. R21 support is capped NIH-wide at $275,000 in total direct costs over a project period of no more than two years, with no more than $200,000 in any single year; most R21 Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs) explicitly do not require preliminary data. An R21 can stand alone or serve as the first, exploratory phase of a milestone-gated two-phase award paired with an R33 (the combined "R21/R33" mechanism).
R25 Grant (NIH Education/Research-Related Grant)
An NIH activity code for a research-education award, not a research-project grant: R25 funds are used to develop and/or deliver educational activities -- courses, curricula, mentored or short-term research experiences, and outreach or career-transition programs -- intended to strengthen the biomedical, behavioral, or clinical research workforce, rather than to fund a PD/PI's own independent research program. A given award is an R25 if its Notice of Award activity code reads 'R25,' its Funding Opportunity Announcement was issued under the NIH Research Education Program mechanism (parent FOAs such as PAR-27-034), and its aims describe an education/training program rather than a hypothesis-driven research plan.
Program Officer
<p>A <strong>program officer</strong> (sometimes called a <strong>program director</strong> or <strong>program official</strong>, depending on the funder) is the funding-agency or foundation staff member who manages a defined portfolio of grants within a scientific, technical, or thematic program area and serves as the primary point of contact between the funder and applicants/awardees throughout the funding lifecycle — before submission (fit-to-program questions, letters of intent), during review (assembling panels, contextualizing scientific merit for funding decisions), and after award (progress-report monitoring, no-cost extensions, scope changes, and, at many agencies, the funder's side of pre-award and post-award programmatic decisions). A person or role counts as a program officer when three things are true together: they hold programmatic (not purely administrative/financial) authority over which proposals get recommended for funding within their portfolio; they are the named contact awardees are expected to reach for scientific or programmatic questions about an active or prospective award; and their responsibility is bounded to a defined subject area, directorate, or program rather than the funder's entire portfolio.</p>
MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship
An MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship is an individually held European Union research grant, funded under Horizon Europe's Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), awarded jointly to a researcher who already holds a doctoral degree (or has defended a thesis, not yet formally awarded) and a host organisation that will supervise and train them. It is not a consortium grant: unlike MSCA Doctoral Networks, which fund multi-partner training partnerships for pre-PhD doctoral candidates, a Postdoctoral Fellowship is competed for and held by one named researcher at one host institution (with optional short secondments elsewhere). Eligibility is capped at a maximum of eight years of full-time-equivalent research experience since the award of the PhD, excluding documented career breaks, and subject to MSCA's standard mobility rule (the researcher must not have resided or carried out their main activity in the host country for more than 12 of the 36 months immediately before the call deadline). The action comes in two tracks -- European Postdoctoral Fellowships (1-2 years, host in an EU Member State or Horizon Europe Associated Country, open to researchers of any nationality) and Global Postdoctoral Fellowships (2-3 years total: an outgoing phase of 1-2 years at a host in a non-associated Third Country, followed by a mandatory 1-year return phase at a European host, restricted to nationals or long-term residents of an EU Member State or Associated Country). Funding is paid as EU-wide unit costs -- a living allowance, mobility allowance, and, where applicable, family, long-term leave, and special needs allowances, plus separate research/training/networking and management/indirect-cost contributions to the host -- rather than as an institution-set salary. “MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships” is the Horizon Europe (2021-2027) name for what was called “Individual Fellowships (IF)” under Horizon 2020; the underlying individually-held, PhD-holder-only mechanism carried over largely unchanged through the rename.
U54 Grant (NIH Specialized Center Cooperative Agreement)
A U54 (Specialized Center Cooperative Agreement) is an NIH activity code for a single award that funds a multi-project, multidisciplinary research center built around one specific disease or biomedical problem area, funded as a cooperative agreement rather than a grant. That means NIH anticipates substantial, ongoing programmatic involvement in the funded center after award -- NIH staff assist, guide, coordinate, or participate in center activities -- distinguishing it from the P01 Research Program Project Grant, which funds a similarly multi-project, multi-core structure without that level of federal involvement.
Unliquidated Obligations (ULO)
An unliquidated obligation (ULO) is the portion of a federal award's obligated funds that has been legally committed through an obligating action -- such as a purchase order, contract, or subaward agreement -- but for which payment has not yet been made (on a cash-basis report) or the corresponding expenditure has not yet been recorded (on an accrual-basis report). Under 2 CFR 200.1, a 'financial obligation' is created by orders placed for property and services, contracts and subawards made, and similar transactions requiring payment under a Federal award. An 'unliquidated financial obligation' is that same committed amount before it is liquidated -- i.e., before the recipient or subrecipient actually pays it (cash basis) or records the expenditure (accrual basis). A dollar only becomes a ULO once an obligating action has occurred; funds that are merely available but not yet committed to any specific order, contract, or subaward are instead part of the award's unobligated balance, not a ULO.
VC Term Sheet
A VC term sheet is a short, non-binding document, proposed by a venture capital investor and negotiated with a company's founders, that lays out the key economic and control terms of a proposed equity investment before the parties draft the full, binding financing documents (a stock purchase agreement, an amended certificate of incorporation, an investors' rights agreement, and related ancillary documents). A document qualifies as a VC term sheet if it specifies, at minimum, the round's valuation (pre-money and post-money) and the resulting price per share, the class of stock being issued (almost always preferred stock rather than common), the size of the investment, and the investor's proposed rights over the company post-closing -- typically including a liquidation preference, anti-dilution protection, board composition, and pro-rata (or preemptive) rights for future rounds. Because it is explicitly non-binding on the substantive deal terms (most term sheets carry binding provisions only for a narrow set of housekeeping clauses -- confidentiality, exclusivity/no-shop, and governing law -- while everything else is subject to definitive documentation and due diligence), signing one commits a founder to negotiate on the stated terms in good faith, not to close the round on those terms.
Full Economic Costing (fEC)
Full economic costing (fEC) is the UK methodology, calculated via the Transparent Approach to Costing (TRAC), that institutions must use to cost UKRI grant applications. It sums directly incurred costs, directly allocated costs, and indirect (estates/overhead) costs to state a project's true full cost; UKRI Research Council grants then fund 80% of that fEC figure, with the institution finding the remaining share elsewhere -- in England, substantially via Research England's QR block grant.
ARC Industry Fellowships
A fellowship funded under the Australian Research Council's Linkage Program that provides salary and project-cost support for an individual researcher to work across the academia-industry boundary -- either an academic researcher taking up a placement with an industry Partner Organisation, or an industry-based researcher taking up a placement at a university -- rather than funding a defined project team as an ARC Linkage Project does. The scheme comprises three career-stage streams (Early Career, Mid-Career, and Industry Laureate Industry Fellowships), each with its own salary contribution, duration, and project-cost allowance.
March-In Rights
March-in rights are the authority under 35 U.S.C. § 203 letting a federal funding agency require the holder of a patent on a federally funded “subject invention” to grant additional licenses to a responsible third party -- or grant one itself -- when the holder isn't achieving practical application, isn't meeting unmet health/safety needs, isn't satisfying regulation-specified public-use requirements, or hasn't met the Section 204 U.S.-manufacturing agreement. Title is not transferred or revoked; only additional licensing is compelled, and only at the funding agency's discretion after a petition and agency review.
NINDS Payline
A NINDS payline is the percentile-rank threshold that the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke publishes for a given fiscal year and grant mechanism as its planning guideline for which peer-reviewed applications it expects to fund. It is NINDS's own institute-specific application of the general NIH payline mechanism, set independently of every other NIH institute or center against NINDS's own appropriation, application volume, and research priorities. NINDS also publishes a separate, more generous extended payline for Early Stage Investigators, aimed at giving early-career researchers a comparable success rate to established investigators applying for the same mechanism. A NINDS payline is a budgeting and planning benchmark, not a binding rule: NINDS retains discretion to fund some applications scoring outside its published payline (select pay / exception pay) and to decline some scoring inside it, based on advisory council input and program priorities. As of late 2025, NIH signaled its institutes and centers would move away from publishing fixed paylines in favor of weighing peer-review scores against institute priorities and budget more holistically -- confirm current NINDS practice against its own current guidance rather than assuming a specific figure still applies.
ARC Discovery Project
An ARC Discovery Project is a competitively awarded research grant funded under the Australian Research Council's Discovery Program, one of the two programs that make up the ARC's National Competitive Grants Program (NCGP) (the other being the Linkage Program). Discovery Projects fund investigator-driven basic, strategic basic, and applied research across all disciplines except clinical and other medical research (which sits with Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council, NHMRC). Funding runs at $30,000 to $500,000 per year, for project durations of one to five years, administered through the ARC's Research Management System (RMS). Unlike the ARC's dedicated fellowship schemes -- the Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) and the ARC Future Fellowship -- a Discovery Project grant is not restricted to a particular career stage: it can be held by an individual researcher or, more commonly, a team of investigators spanning early-career to senior levels, and the grant funds a defined research project rather than a single person's salaried fellowship. This is the defining operational distinction: DECRA and Future Fellowship exist to support a person at a specific career point; a Discovery Project exists to fund a specific piece of research, regardless of who on the team is at what career stage.
CIHR Postdoctoral Fellowship
The CIHR Postdoctoral Fellowship was the Canadian Institutes of Health Research's individually held, individually competed award funding up to two years of mentored postdoctoral research in a health-research field within CIHR's mandate, providing the fellow with a stipend (most recently harmonized at $70,000 per year) portable to an eligible Canadian or international host institution. CIHR has discontinued this standalone program: it has been folded, together with NSERC's and SSHRC's equivalent individual postdoctoral fellowship programs, into the jointly administered Canada Postdoctoral Research Award (CPRA) -- part of the Tri-Agency's Canada Research Training Awards Suite (CRTAS), which also replaces the three councils' separate master's and doctoral scholarship programs. A researcher researching 'CIHR Postdoctoral Fellowship' or 'CIHR Fellowship' today needs the CPRA application process, applied for through CIHR for health-research proposals.
Discretionary Grant
A federal award in which the awarding agency exercises statutory judgment ('discretion') in selecting the recipient and/or setting the funding amount, typically through a competitive, merit-reviewed process, as distinguished from a mandatory (formula) grant, where funds are allocated automatically to every entity meeting predetermined statutory eligibility criteria with no agency selection judgment involved.
NSF Merit Review Panel
An NSF merit review panel is the group of external subject-matter experts (or, for ad hoc/mail review, individual experts working independently) that the National Science Foundation convenes under PAPPG Chapter III to evaluate a proposal against the two NSB-mandated criteria, Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts, producing individual Excellent-to-Poor ratings and written reviews that an NSF program officer weighs, alongside program-level considerations and Division Director concurrence, when recommending a funding decision.
Person Months (Horizon Europe)
<p>In <strong>Horizon Europe</strong>, a person-month is the unit used in a proposal's work plan (Gantt chart and effort tables) to show how much staff time each beneficiary allocates to a work package or task. It is an <em>estimation and planning</em> unit, not the basis the European Commission actually pays on — that is a distinct point of confusion with NIH's identically-named unit. Actual personnel costs at reporting time are calculated in <strong>person-days</strong> against a capped standard number of working days per year, not directly in person-months, and beneficiaries using the Commission's average personnel cost (unit-cost) option may not need to track individual days at all.</p><p>The European Commission's own indicative conversion, used for translating between days and months at proposal stage, is <strong>220 working days per year = 12 person-months</strong> (so 1 person-month ≈ 18.3 working days). This 220-day planning figure is different from the <strong>215 working days per year</strong> figure that is the operative ceiling for <em>actual-cost</em> personnel reporting under the Horizon Europe Annotated Model Grant Agreement (AGA), Article 6.2.A — the maximum number of day-equivalents a beneficiary may charge to the action in a given period is calculated as (215 ÷ 12) × number of months in the reporting period, pro-rated by a working-time (FTE) factor for part-time staff. The 220 and 215 figures serve different purposes (proposal planning vs. reporting ceiling) and should not be interchanged.</p>
Audit Corrective Action Plan (Grants)
An audit corrective action plan is the document a grantee institution (the auditee) prepares under 2 CFR 200.511(c) responding to each finding in its Single Audit's Schedule of Findings and Questioned Costs. For every current-year finding, it must name the contact person(s) responsible for the corrective action, describe the corrective action to be taken, and give the anticipated completion date; if the auditee disagrees with a finding, it must instead include a detailed explanation of the reasons for disagreement. It is prepared by the auditee, not the auditor, and is submitted as a required component of the Single Audit reporting package -- distinct from the auditor's own findings and from a clinical-research quality-system CAPA.
NIH Shared Instrumentation Grant (S10)
The NIH Shared Instrumentation Grant (SIG) is a National Institutes of Health funding mechanism, identified by activity code S10, that pays for a single high-cost, commercially available scientific instrument (or integrated instrumentation system) for shared use by a group of NIH-funded investigators at one institution -- it is not a project grant to any individual principal investigator. An award counts as an S10/SIG (rather than some other equipment line item) when: the institution, not an individual researcher, is the formal applicant; the requested instrument costs between $50,000 and $750,000; the application documents a defined 'Group of Major Users' of at least three investigators, each the PD/PI of a distinct, active NIH research award with a demonstrated need for the instrument; and the group's combined projected use meets NIH's Accessible Usage Time thresholds. A companion, higher-cost mechanism -- the High-End Instrumentation (HEI) Grant, also under the S10 activity code -- covers the $750,001 to $2,000,000 range using the same group-application model. Both are administered by NIH's Office of Research Infrastructure Programs (ORIP), part of the Division of Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives (DPCPSI).
NIH Priority Score
An NIH priority score (overall impact score) is the numerical merit rating -- 10 (best) to 90 (worst) -- that a study section assigns a discussed grant application, calculated by averaging each voting reviewer's independent 1.0-9.0 overall impact rating and multiplying by 10. Where percentiling applies, that score is further converted into a percentile rank comparing the application against others reviewed by the same or a related study section over its three most recent meetings. Applications a study section does not select for full discussion (typically those projected to fall in the lower half of the range) receive no overall impact score. Not every scored application is percentiled -- some mechanisms and small comparison groups are scored but not percentiled by policy. The priority score and percentile feed into, but do not by themselves determine, the funding institute's payline-based funding decision.
Stevenson-Wydler Technology Innovation Act
A 1980 federal statute (Public Law 96-480, codified at 15 U.S.C. Chapter 63, Sections 3701 et seq.) that made technology transfer an explicit mission of every federal laboratory, requiring labs to actively work to transfer federally developed technology to state and local governments and the private sector -- as distinct from Bayh-Dole, enacted the same year, which governs patent title for inventions made by universities, nonprofits, and small businesses under federal funding agreements, not the labs' own technology-transfer obligations.
Period of Performance
Period of performance is the specific time interval -- defined at 2 CFR 200.1 as "the time interval between the start and end date of a Federal award, which may include one or more budget periods" -- during which a recipient or subrecipient is authorized to incur allowable costs and carry out the substantive programmatic work of a federal award. Under 2 CFR 200.309, a non-Federal entity may charge to the award only costs incurred within this window, plus any pre-award costs specifically authorized in advance by the Federal awarding agency or pass-through entity, and a narrow publication/printing-cost exception at 2 CFR 200.461. Costs incurred before the start date or after the end date are not allowable charges to the award outside those exceptions. A multi-year award's single period of performance may be divided into one or more budget periods (annual funding increments, also defined at 2 CFR 200.1), and the period of performance's end date can be modified -- most commonly extended -- through a No-Cost Extension under 2 CFR 200.308(d)(2).
R15 (NIH Academic Research Enhancement Award / AREA)
The R15 Research Enhancement Award (activity code R15, most commonly encountered via its Academic Research Enhancement Award / AREA sub-program, or its REAP sub-program for health professional and graduate schools) is an NIH grant mechanism restricted to institutions that have NOT been major recipients of NIH research funding: a qualifying institution (or its relevant non-health-professional components) must have received no more than $6 million per year in total NIH support in 4 of the last 7 fiscal years. It is designed to fund meritorious research at smaller, teaching-focused institutions while requiring that the research team be composed primarily of students, with a capped budget (currently up to $375,000 in direct costs) over a project period of up to 3 years.
F&A Waiver
An F&A waiver (indirect cost rate waiver) is an institution's agreement to recover indirect costs on a specific award at less than its full federally negotiated F&A rate -- ranging from a partial reduction to a full waiver to 0%. It is an exception applied award-by-award, not a change to the institution's underlying Negotiated Indirect Cost Rate Agreement (NICRA), which continues to state the institution's full rate for every other award. A waiver is distinct from the de minimis rate (a flat substitute for organizations that have never negotiated a rate at all) and from a sponsor's own published rate cap, though a sponsor cap is the single most common reason institutions grant one.
Person Months
Person months is NIH's standard unit for expressing the effort a PD/PI, faculty member, or other senior/key personnel devotes to a specific project. It is calculated by multiplying the percentage of a person's total professional effort committed to the project by the number of months in that person's appointment type: calendar year (CY, 12 months), academic year (AY, the institution's defined academic-year length -- commonly 9 months, sometimes 9.5 or 10), or summer term (SM, the institution's defined summer period, commonly 2-3 months). The figure appears in the Senior/Key Person Profile of an NIH budget, in Other Support disclosures, and in the annual Research Performance Progress Report (RPPR), and it must reflect a genuine share of total professional effort -- not clock hours worked or a share of a 40-hour week.
NSF GRFP (Graduate Research Fellowship Program)
The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) is a competitively awarded, individually-held fellowship funding three years of graduate study and research (within a five-year eligibility window) for early-career graduate students -- and eligible undergraduate seniors applying in advance -- pursuing full-time, research-based STEM or STEM-education master's or doctoral study. It provides a $37,000 annual stipend to the fellow plus a separate $16,000 Cost of Education allowance paid to the fellow's institution. Eligibility is restricted to U.S. citizens, U.S. nationals, and U.S. permanent residents; applicants must not already hold a doctoral or equivalent terminal degree.
NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts
The NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts (grants.nih.gov/guide) is NIH's official publication of record for grants-related announcements: every NIH Institute, Center, and Office is required to publish its official Notices there, each assigned a unique NOT-prefixed number, and a weekly Table of Contents lists everything posted that week. Before FY2026 it was also the official channel for Notices of Funding Opportunity (NOFOs, formerly FOAs) themselves; since FY2026, per NOT-OD-25-143, new NOFOs are posted on Grants.gov instead, while the Guide continues to carry every other Notice type -- policy changes, administrative supplements, requests for information, correction notices, and pre-application announcements.
ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship
An ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship is a UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) award, funded through the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) but applied for and administered through an ESRC-recognised Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP), not directly through ESRC or UKRI's central funding service. It supports a single named early-career researcher for up to nine months full-time (or up to 18 months part-time, pro-rated) immediately after completing a UK-based PhD, covering the fellow's salary plus additional funds for research and training costs. Eligibility is tightly bounded: the applicant's PhD must have been undertaken at a research organisation inside the ESRC doctoral training network, and no more than 15 months of active postdoctoral experience (full-time equivalent, measured from the viva to the competition closing date) can have elapsed. Fellowship activity must sit at least 50% within the social sciences even where the underlying research is genuinely interdisciplinary, and an applicant may submit to only one DTP per competition round.
Institutional Base Salary (IBS)
The annual compensation an institution itself pays a faculty or staff member for the appointment covering their full professional effort -- whatever mix of research, teaching, clinical, administrative, or other institutional duties that appointment involves -- regardless of how many separate funding sources (federal, non-federal, institutional) ultimately pay portions of it. Per the NIH Grants Policy Statement (Section 12.8.1, Salaries and Fringe Benefits), IBS excludes any income an individual is permitted to earn outside their duties to the institution (e.g., outside consulting, honoraria, board fees) and excludes discretionary items such as bonuses or incentive pay that are not a fixed part of the base appointment. IBS cannot be inflated after the fact by substituting grant funds for institutional salary funds. IBS is the institution's own determination -- there is no federal formula for calculating it -- but once set, it becomes the base figure federal sponsors require for two distinct purposes: (1) as the denominator for converting a person's percentage of effort on a project into a dollar salary request, and (2) as the figure against which a cap such as the NIH salary limitation is applied, when one exists.
Je-S (Joint Electronic Submission)
Je-S (Joint Electronic Submission), hosted at je-s.rcuk.ac.uk, is UK Research and Innovation's (UKRI) legacy online system for submitting grant applications and administering research council awards. UKRI's seven research councils used Je-S for close to two decades before progressively replacing it with the UKRI Funding Service (funding-service.ukri.org) from 2023 onward. A form, account, or award is 'in Je-S' when it was created on, or is still being administered through, that older platform rather than the current Funding Service.
NSF AI Institutes (National AI Research Institutes)
The NSF AI Institutes -- formally the National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes -- are a cohort of large, multi-year, multi-institution research centers funded through cooperative agreements led by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), typically in partnership with one or more other federal agencies or private-sector funders. An award qualifies as one of these institutes if it (1) was made under an NSF AI Institutes solicitation (the program has issued several since its first, NSF 20-503, in 2019-2020), (2) funds a single institute at roughly $20 million over a five-year period of performance, (3) spans multiple partner institutions organized around a lead awardee, and (4) is scoped around foundational AI research paired with a specific application domain (e.g., agriculture, astronomy, education, cybersecurity, weather) rather than AI research in the abstract. It is administratively distinct from a standard NSF research grant (see NSF PAPPG) both in award mechanism (cooperative agreement, which gives NSF a more active oversight role than a standard grant) and in scale.
Proof-of-Concept Funding
<p><strong>Proof-of-concept (PoC) funding</strong> is a category of small, milestone-based, non-dilutive awards used to test and demonstrate the technical and/or commercial feasibility of a discovery that has already been made -- bridging the gap between a research finding and a patentable, licensable, or investable technology. It is distinguished from earlier-stage <a href='/dictionary/term/seed-funding'>seed funding</a> by its purpose and starting point: PoC funding assumes a specific invention or result already exists (often already the subject of an invention disclosure or provisional patent filing) and uses the award to move that specific result forward -- validating a prototype, running freedom-to-operate or IP-strategy work, generating the data needed for a licensing conversation, or engaging early industry/investor interest -- rather than to generate the preliminary data needed to justify a larger research grant in the first place. PoC funding is typically administered by, or run in close coordination with, a university technology-transfer office (TTO), a national/regional funder's dedicated PoC scheme, or a translational funding agency, and award activity is usually reported against a technology readiness level (TRL) or an equivalent milestone framework rather than conventional research-progress metrics.</p>
Indirect Cost Rate Proposal
An indirect cost rate proposal is the documentation package an institution of higher education compiles and submits to its cognizant federal agency for indirect costs, under 2 CFR Part 200 Appendix III, to support negotiation of an indirect (F&A) cost rate. It identifies and assigns indirect costs to defined cost pools, selects an allocation base for each pool (or, for small institutions using the simplified method, a single base for total indirect costs), calculates proposed rates, and includes a signed Certificate of Indirect (F&A) Costs. The proposal is the institution's submitted request; the resulting signed document the cognizant agency issues after negotiation is the Indirect Cost Rate Agreement (NICRA), a distinct artifact.
Letter of Intent (NIH)
An NIH Letter of Intent (LOI) was a short, non-binding, typically one-page pre-application notice -- naming the PI, participating institution(s), and the funding opportunity number/title -- that some (not all) NIH funding opportunity announcements asked prospective applicants to submit, generally around 30 days before the application due date, so NIH staff could estimate peer-review workload and recruit reviewers. It never obligated the sender to apply, was never scored or considered in peer review, and never counted against the application's own page limits. Effective December 3, 2025, NIH discontinued the LOI process NIH-wide via Guide Notice NOT-OD-26-019: NIH no longer requests or accepts letters of intent as part of the standard application process.
TRAC (Transparent Approach to Costing)
TRAC (Transparent Approach to Costing) is the sector-wide activity-based costing methodology UK higher education providers are required to operate to calculate, on a consistent and auditable basis, what their teaching, research, and other activities actually cost to deliver. It is the named system and annual reporting process -- not a single number -- and it produces several distinct outputs: the Annual TRAC return (institution-wide cost and sustainability data submitted to the Office for Students and, for research, to UKRI/Research England), TRAC for research (the basis for Full Economic Costing, fEC, used on individual grant applications), and TRAC(T) (TRAC for Teaching, used to inform teaching funding). A costing exercise is a genuine TRAC exercise only if it follows the published TRAC methodology and guidance and feeds the institution's formal annual return; an internal cost estimate that isn't built on TRAC-derived rates and doesn't feed that return is not TRAC, whatever else it resembles.
Collaborative Research Agreement (CRA)
A Collaborative Research Agreement (CRA) is the umbrella contract that governs a joint research project between two or more independent parties -- typically universities, non-profit research institutes, hospitals, and/or companies -- none of which is a federal laboratory acting under statutory authority. A CRA is the instance of this instrument whenever the document (regardless of its exact title, which varies by institution -- 'Collaborative Research Agreement,' 'Joint Research Agreement,' 'Research Collaboration Agreement,' or 'Consortium Agreement' for 3+ parties) sets out, for a defined project and term: (1) a scope of work and each party's respective research contributions (personnel, facilities, funding, data, or existing background IP); (2) ownership and licensing of resulting (foreground) IP, including how jointly-made inventions are handled; (3) publication rights, including any sponsor/partner review period before a paper is submitted; and (4) confidentiality obligations covering information shared in the course of the collaboration. It is the parent agreement under which narrower, single-purpose instruments -- a Material Transfer Agreement (MTA) for a specific biological or physical material, a Confidential Disclosure Agreement (CDA/NDA) for pre-agreement or ancillary confidentiality, or a Data Use Agreement (DUA) for a specific dataset -- are frequently executed as subordinate or referenced agreements for one particular exchange within the larger project.
NHMRC Personnel Support Package (PSP)
A Personnel Support Package (PSP) is the fixed, banded salary-and-on-cost rate that Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) sets for specified categories of research personnel — technical support staff, research assistants, and junior postdoctoral researchers — employed on NHMRC Research Support-type grants (such as Ideas Grants and other project-based schemes). Rather than reimbursing an institution's actual salary cost for a named staff member, NHMRC pays a fixed rate tied to the role's level (PSP1, PSP2, PSP3, and so on), published in an annual PSP rate table and indexed periodically. A cost is a PSP, rather than some other NHMRC budget line, when it is (a) salary for personnel other than a named Chief Investigator A on an Investigator Grant, and (b) claimed at NHMRC's published fixed band rate for that role rather than the individual's actual on-costed salary.
Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA)
The Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) was the government-wide, program-by-program listing of every US federal grant, loan, and other domestic assistance program, established under the Federal Program Information Act of 1977 and maintained by the General Services Administration (GSA). Each program was assigned a unique identifying number in the format XX.XXX -- a two-digit federal agency code followed by a three-digit program code. In June 2021, GSA retired the standalone CFDA.gov site and the CFDA name, moving the same program listing to SAM.gov under the new name 'Assistance Listings.' The XX.XXX numbering scheme itself did not change -- only the label did -- so the legacy CFDA number and the current Assistance Listing Number (ALN) identify exactly the same program-level number, and the two terms are used interchangeably in practice, including in current federal regulation.
Indirect Cost Rate Agreement (NICRA)
An Indirect Cost Rate Agreement -- commonly called a NICRA (Negotiated Indirect Cost Rate Agreement) -- is the formal document issued by an organization's cognizant federal agency under 2 CFR 200.414 and its supporting appendices, setting out the specific indirect cost (F&A) rate(s), the distribution base each rate applies to, the rate type (provisional, predetermined, fixed, or final), and the period for which each rate is authorized for use on federal awards.
NIAID Payline
A NIAID payline is the percentile-rank threshold that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), one of NIH's 27 institutes and centers, sets for a fiscal year and grant mechanism as its planning guideline for which peer-reviewed applications it expects to fund. It is NIAID's own institute-specific application of the general NIH payline mechanism, set independently of every other NIH institute or center against NIAID's own appropriation, application volume, and research priorities -- so a NIAID figure should never be assumed to match NINDS's, NHLBI's, or any other institute's figure for the same fiscal year and mechanism. NIAID historically published interim paylines early in the fiscal year, updated them as budget and application volume became clearer, and set a more generous extended payline for Early Stage Investigators. Following NIH's November 2025 Unified Funding Strategy announcement, NIAID's own paylines page has been retitled to reflect a shift away from a single published percentile cutoff toward weighing peer-review scores against institute priorities and budget more holistically -- confirm current NIAID practice against its own current guidance rather than assuming a specific figure or format still applies.
OIG Work Plan
An <strong>OIG Work Plan</strong> is the forward-looking list an agency's Office of Inspector General maintains of audits, evaluations, and inspections it has planned or has underway for the coming period. Unlike an <a href='https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/oig-reports'>OIG report</a>, which documents a completed piece of work and its findings, a Work Plan entry is a statement of intent -- it names a program area, population, or compliance topic the OIG has decided to examine, before the examination has produced any findings. For research administrators, the Work Plan is the single clearest public signal of where a funding agency's oversight attention is headed next, which is why sponsored-programs and compliance offices routinely cross-check active Work Plan items against their own institution's award portfolio.
UKRI PhD Stipend
The UKRI minimum doctoral stipend is the annual, tax-free subsistence allowance UK Research and Innovation sets each year as the floor payment for students on a UKRI-funded PhD studentship, applied uniformly across all seven research councils, with a fixed £2,000/year supplement for London-based host institutions; it is set centrally by UKRI, reviewed roughly annually, and takes effect each 1 October.
SSHRC Partnership Grant
An SSHRC Partnership Grant is the largest and longest-running funding instrument in the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada's partnership-funding stream: a two-stage, competitively adjudicated award of up to $2.5 million over 4 to 7 years, supporting a formal, already-substantiated research partnership between an academic team and one or more non-academic partner organizations. What distinguishes it operationally from SSHRC's smaller partnership instruments (Partnership Engage Grants, Partnership Development Grants) is scale and maturity: a Partnership Grant funds an established collaborative governance structure -- shared intellectual leadership, a defined program of research, training, and knowledge-mobilization activities, and a mandatory minimum cash/in-kind contribution from partners -- rather than a first-time or exploratory partnership still being tested or built.
SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship
The SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship was the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada's individually held, individually competed award funding mentored postdoctoral research in the social sciences and humanities. Like its counterparts at Canada's other two federal research funders, SSHRC has discontinued this standalone program: it has been folded, together with the equivalent individual postdoctoral fellowship programs previously run separately by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), into the jointly administered Canada Postdoctoral Research Award (CPRA) -- part of the Tri-Agency's new Canada Research Training Awards Suite (CRTAS), which also replaces the three councils' separate master's and doctoral scholarship programs. A researcher researching 'SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship' today needs the CPRA application process, applied for through whichever of the three agencies best matches the proposed research area -- SSHRC for the social sciences and humanities.
NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship
There is no single 'NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship' program at the U.S. National Science Foundation. NSF funds postdoctoral researchers through a family of separately named, directorate- or division-specific fellowship competitions -- each with its own NSF publication number, solicitation, eligibility rules, term length, and stipend -- rather than one central award a researcher applies to directly. Current examples include the Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biology (PRFB, NSF 26-504), the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Ascending Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (MPS-Ascend), the Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (MSPRF), the SBE Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF), the NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowships (AAPF), the Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (AGS-PF), an Engineering Directorate postdoctoral fellowship, and the Innovative Postdoctoral Entrepreneurial Research Fellowship (I-PERF). All are individually held, individually competed awards -- the fellow, not their host institution, is the recipient -- which is the trait that distinguishes any of them from a postdoctoral researcher paid as staff out of a principal investigator's NSF research grant.
Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF)
The Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) is the Australian Government's dedicated long-term financing vehicle for health and medical research and innovation, established under the Medical Research Future Fund Act 2015. A grant is an MRFF grant when its funding is drawn from the investment earnings of the MRFF's invested capital (rather than from annual Budget appropriations, as with most NHMRC National Competitive Grants Program funding) and is disbursed against a specific MRFF grant opportunity listed on GrantConnect, typically under one of the MRFF's Research Missions or the broader MRFF Strategy and Priorities set by the Australian Medical Research Advisory Board (AMRAB) — even where the grant opportunity is administered day-to-day by NHMRC, a Business Grants Hub, or another delegated body on the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing's behalf.
NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship
The NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship was the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada's individually held, individually competed award funding two years of mentored postdoctoral research in the natural sciences and engineering, providing the fellow with a stipend (most recently $70,000 per year) portable to an eligible Canadian or international host institution. NSERC has discontinued this standalone program: it has been folded, together with CIHR's and SSHRC's equivalent individual postdoctoral fellowship programs, into the jointly administered Canada Postdoctoral Research Award (CPRA) -- part of the Tri-Agency's new Canada Research Training Awards Suite (CRTAS), which also replaces the three councils' separate master's and doctoral scholarship programs. A researcher researching 'NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship' today needs the CPRA application process, applied for through whichever of the three agencies best matches the proposed research area.
National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC)
The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) is the Australian Government's independent statutory authority for health and medical research funding, research translation, and health/medical research ethics guidance, established under the National Health and Medical Research Council Act 1992. A grant, ethics guideline, or research-translation activity falls within NHMRC's remit when it concerns health or medical research — the causes, treatment, diagnosis, monitoring, management, or prevention of human disease — administered through NHMRC's own National Competitive Grants Program (via its Sapphire platform) or through NHMRC's ethics-guidance function (e.g. the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research), rather than through the Australian Research Council's (ARC) National Competitive Grants Program, which covers all other fields of research.
NSERC Discovery Grant
An NSERC Discovery Grant is Canada's core, investigator-held operating-funds award for research programs in the natural sciences and engineering: a competitively evaluated grant, held individually by a faculty researcher (or a small team on a joint application) at an NSERC-eligible Canadian institution, that funds an ongoing program of research — not a single fixed-scope project — for up to five years, renewable through a subsequent competition. It is administered by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), one of Canada's three federal granting councils alongside CIHR and SSHRC.
NSF Dear Colleague Letter (DCL)
A Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) is a formal written communication issued by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) — typically by a directorate, division, or cross-cutting NSF initiative — to inform the research community of a matter that does not require the structure of a full program solicitation. Per NSF's Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG), Chapter I, a DCL is used to provide general information to the community, clarify or amend an existing NSF policy or document, or inform prospective proposers about upcoming funding opportunities and areas of programmatic interest. A communication counts as a DCL, rather than a program solicitation, when it does NOT itself impose a distinct set of eligibility restrictions, proposal-preparation instructions, or a dedicated review process beyond what already exists under NSF's standing proposal types and the PAPPG — a DCL points proposers toward using an existing mechanism (most often Rapid Response Research (RAPID), EArly-concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER), Rapid Assessment of Immediate/Systemic Effects (RAISE), Planning Grants, or Conference/Workshop proposals) rather than creating a new one. If a document instead establishes its own eligibility criteria, submission deadlines, and a standalone competitive review framework, it is a program solicitation (or, more broadly, a funding opportunity announcement), not a DCL, regardless of what it is titled.
National Science Foundation (NSF)
An independent agency of the United States federal government, established by the National Science Foundation Act of 1950 (Public Law 81-507), that funds basic research and education in non-medical fields of science and engineering. NSF is not part of a cabinet department -- it reports directly to the President and Congress, governed by a Director (who runs day-to-day operations) and the presidentially-appointed, 24-member National Science Board (NSB), which sets policy and must approve awards or actions above certain dollar thresholds. An entity qualifies as "NSF" for research-administration purposes when it is the specific federal agency headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia that issues funding opportunities, applies the Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) to its awards, and organizes its research portfolio through a set of subject-based directorates rather than through the disease- or institute-based structure NIH uses. NSF's stated mission, carried over from its founding legislation, is to "promote the progress of science," "advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare," and "secure the national defense." As of the current NSF organizational structure, the agency's research and education activity is organized into seven research directorates -- Biological Sciences (BIO); Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE); Engineering (ENG); Geosciences (GEO); Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS); Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE); and Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (TIP, established 2022, the first new directorate in three decades) -- plus a STEM Education directorate and offices including International Science and Engineering and the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. NSF funds roughly 11,000 competitive awards a year and, by its own account, its investments make up approximately a quarter of federal support for basic research at U.S. colleges and universities.
Partnership Development Grant
A funding request qualifies as a SSHRC Partnership Development Grant when it is submitted by a researcher affiliated with an eligible Canadian postsecondary institution to Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), and involves a genuine non-academic partner organization that will help shape (not merely receive the outputs of) a bounded, developmental research or knowledge-mobilization activity. The mechanism funds $75,000 to $250,000 over 1 to 3 years (2026 competition figures) and is explicitly developmental in purpose — testing or building a partnership approach rather than sustaining an already-mature, large-scale collaboration.
NSF REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates)
An NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) award is either an REU Site — an independently proposed, competitively awarded institutional program (under NSF solicitation 23-601) that brings a cohort of undergraduates, typically 8–10 per year, to conduct mentored research over a defined period, most often an 8–10 week summer program — or an REU Supplement — additional funding added to a new, renewal, or already-active NSF research grant or cooperative agreement specifically to support undergraduate participants in that project's existing research. Eligible student participants must be U.S. citizens, U.S. nationals, or U.S. permanent residents; each Site or Supplement runs its own application and selection process independently of NSF.
NRSA Stipend Levels
NRSA stipend levels are the fixed, NIH-mandated annual stipend amounts published (roughly annually, via a Notice in the NIH Guide) for individuals supported on a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award -- whether held as an individual fellowship (F30/F31/F32) or an institutional training grant slot (T32/T90/TL1). What determines the applicable level: career stage (predoctoral vs. postdoctoral) and, for postdoctoral trainees/fellows only, full years of relevant prior postdoctoral research experience at the time the award is issued. Predoctoral levels are a single flat rate regardless of year in the doctoral program; postdoctoral levels step up across eight tiers (Level 0 through Level 7+) by experience year. The published level is a floor the federal award must provide, not a ceiling institutions are barred from supplementing under NIH's own rules.
OMB Compliance Supplement
The OMB Compliance Supplement is the annual publication, issued by the US Office of Management and Budget and codified as 2 CFR Part 200, Appendix XI, that gives independent auditors the compliance requirements and suggested audit procedures to test, program by program, when conducting a Single Audit of a non-federal entity under 2 CFR 200 Subpart F.
ARC Future Fellowship
An ARC Future Fellowship is a competitively awarded, individually held four-year fellowship from the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Program that funds an outstanding mid-career researcher’s salary plus a flexible, non-project-specific pool of research support (reported at up to A$60,000/year), held through an eligible Australian Administering Organisation. Eligibility is set by a PhD-award-date window (adjusted for allowable career interruptions) that shifts with each funding round, not by job title, and the scheme excludes any research meeting the ARC/NHMRC definition of medical research.
NIH Study Section
An NIH study section (formally a Scientific Review Group, SRG) is a peer-review panel — chartered/standing or a temporary Special Emphasis Panel (SEP) — convened by NIH’s Center for Scientific Review (or, for RFAs and some program-specific competitions, by the awarding Institute/Center) to evaluate the scientific and technical merit of grant applications assigned to it, producing a priority score and summary statement as the first of NIH’s two required levels of peer review.
NIH Standard Due Dates
NIH Standard Due Dates are the recurring, government-published submission deadlines NIH sets for applications to its standing funding opportunities (Parent Announcements, PARs, and PAS) — three annual receipt dates per calendar year, occurring on the same months for every cycle, with the exact day varying by activity code (R01; R03/R21/R33/R34/R36/U34/UH2/UH3; K series; F series; T/D series; R15/AREA) and by application type (new vs. renewal, resubmission, or revision, which are typically offset one month later). They are set by NIH policy notice and apply automatically to every standing announcement that references them, in contrast to an RFA's own single, non-recurring receipt date, which each RFA sets independently.
Fly America Act
The requirement, under 49 U.S.C. § 40118 and its implementing Federal Travel Regulation (41 CFR part 301-10, subpart B), that air transportation paid for with U.S. government funds -- including federal grants and cooperative agreements -- be provided by a U.S. flag air carrier, unless a specific, narrowly defined exception applies (an Open Skies bilateral/multilateral agreement, documented necessity, or a defined travel-time/connection threshold).
Research fellowship
A research fellowship is a competitively awarded, individually held package of support for a defined program of research -- distinguished from staff pay on a principal investigator's grant, an institutionally-held training slot, or a titled faculty position by who holds the award and why, not by career stage or seniority. It funds a fixed period (commonly one to five years, depending on stage) of research, structured as a stipend, salary-replacement, or salary-plus-allowance package tied to the research itself rather than wages for institutional duties. The same test applies across career stages -- graduate/doctoral fellowships (e.g. NSF's GRFP), postdoctoral fellowships (e.g. NIH F32, NSF postdoctoral programs, MSCA), and senior/faculty fellowships (e.g. Guggenheim, ACLS, Fulbright Scholar) -- though the specific mechanics differ: predoctoral and postdoctoral fellowships are typically portable to a funder-approved host institution, while senior-stage fellowships more often fund a period of leave from an existing faculty position rather than a portable appointment.
SBIR Phase II
The second stage of the U.S. Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program: a full research-and-development award, typically up to two years and substantially larger than a Phase I feasibility award, funding prototype development and validation toward commercialization. At most participating agencies a business must have already been awarded (and largely completed) a Phase I award for the same project to be eligible, though a handful of agencies allow a Direct-to-Phase-II exception for firms that can document equivalent feasibility results using non-SBIR funds.
F32 (NIH Postdoctoral Individual NRSA Fellowship)
An F32 is an NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) individual fellowship that funds a postdoctoral researcher's own mentored training plan under a named faculty sponsor, typically at an institution other than the one that granted their doctorate. What makes an award an F32 rather than another NRSA/career-development mechanism: the applicant already holds a qualifying doctoral degree and applies directly for their own mentored postdoctoral training support -- as opposed to a predoctoral F31, an institution-held T32 training-grant slot, or a K99/R00 bridge-to-independence award that funds independent research once a faculty position is secured.
NSF PAPPG (Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide)
NSF's primary, comprehensive statement of the policies and procedures governing NSF proposal preparation, submission, review, and award administration; specific sections become binding on a given award when referenced in that award's Notice of Award or NSF's Grant General Conditions (GC-1). Organized into Part I (Proposal Preparation and Submission Guidelines, Chapters I-V) and Part II (Award, Administration and Monitoring of NSF Assistance Awards, Chapters VI-XII). Current base edition is NSF 24-1 (effective May 20, 2024), supplemented by targeted policy notices (Supplement 1, NSF 26-200; Supplement 2, NSF 26-202) rather than a full renumbered edition.
NIH Grants Policy Statement (NIH GPS)
NIH's primary, comprehensive statement of the policy requirements that serve as the terms and conditions of NIH grant and cooperative agreement awards, incorporated by reference into every NIH Notice of Award; organized into Part I (general information), Part II (terms and conditions, split into Part IIA general and Part IIB award-specific), and Part III (points of contact), and revised periodically to consolidate NIH Guide Notices issued since the prior edition.
Open Innovation Networks
An open innovation network is a multi-party, ongoing arrangement in which a university (typically through its technology transfer office) intentionally sources and shares R&D and intellectual property across organizational boundaries, per Henry Chesbrough's open innovation framework (2003) -- rather than relying solely on internally generated, exclusively-held R&D. Three elements distinguish it from an ordinary bilateral deal: (1) multiple external parties (not a single sponsor), (2) a standing, often membership-based structure rather than a one-off transaction, and (3) non-exclusive or shared IP access as the default rather than one party holding exclusive rights. Common forms at research universities include NSF-style Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers (IUCRC), university innovation hubs and accelerators, open-source hardware/software collaborations, and pre-competitive research consortia.
NIH Salary Cap
The NIH salary cap is the maximum annual rate of institutional base salary that NIH (and other HHS agencies applying the same limitation, including CDC, AHRQ, and SAMHSA) will reimburse against a grant, cooperative agreement, or contract. It is not a limit on what an institution may pay an investigator — it is a limit on what federal grant funds may reimburse. The cap is set each year by statute at the rate for Executive Level II of the Federal Executive Pay Schedule. For FY2026, effective January 1, 2026, NIH set the cap at $228,000 for a full-time, 12-month appointment (up from $225,700), per Guide Notice NOT-OD-26-034, with related implementation guidance in NOT-OD-26-038. For a 9-month academic-year appointment, the proportional equivalent is approximately $171,000. Any portion of an investigator's institutional base salary above the cap, for the percentage of effort charged to an NIH award, cannot be charged to that award — the institution must either cost-share the excess from non-federal funds or reduce the effort percentage charged to stay within the capped amount.
Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI)
The Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) is an independent, not-for-profit corporation established by the Government of Canada in 1997 (Budget Implementation Act, 1997) that funds research infrastructure — facilities, major equipment, computing hardware, software, and databases — at Canadian universities, colleges, research hospitals, and non-profit research institutions; it does not fund research operating costs, personnel, or stipends, which is what distinguishes it from Canada's Tri-Agency granting councils (CIHR, NSERC, SSHRC).
OIG Reports
An OIG report is any audit, evaluation, investigation, or periodic report published by a federal agency's Office of Inspector General (OIG) -- an independent oversight unit created under the Inspector General Act of 1978 -- documenting findings, recommendations, questioned costs, or enforcement referrals concerning that agency's own programs, operations, grantees, or contractors.
Cost-Reimbursable Contract
A FAR Subpart 16.3 contract type in which the federal government pays a contractor's allowable, allocable costs actually incurred, up to a negotiated ceiling, plus a fee. Used instead of a fixed-price contract when requirements or costs cannot be estimated with sufficient accuracy at award (FAR 16.301-2) — most commonly for research and development work whose technical approach is not yet firmly established (FAR 35.006).
Dimensions (Research Database)
A record is part of Dimensions when Digital Science's Dimensions platform has ingested it — as a publication, grant, patent, clinical trial, dataset, or policy document — through its largely automated ingestion pipeline (funder data feeds, publisher metadata, patent-office records, clinical-trial registries, and full-text/acknowledgment mining), rather than through the title-by-title editorial selection Scopus and Web of Science apply. Where a funding relationship between a grant and the outputs it produced can be identified, Dimensions represents that link directly in its data model — this explicit funding-to-output linkage is the feature that most consistently distinguishes a Dimensions record from an equivalent Scopus or Web of Science record.
Cooperative Agreement
The federal legal instrument (31 U.S.C. § 6305; 2 CFR 200.1) used instead of a grant when the awarding agency anticipates substantial involvement -- active agency participation in carrying out the funded activity, such as approving a work plan, sitting on a steering committee, or holding milestone go/no-go authority -- not just routine grants-management oversight.
NHMRC Ideas Grant
An NHMRC Ideas Grant is a competitive, project-specific research funding scheme administered by Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), open to a team of up to ten Chief Investigators pursuing one or more defined research questions across any area of health and medical research, from discovery to implementation. It funds the project itself — a fixed-term, budgeted piece of research work of one to five years, assessed up to roughly A$750,000 — rather than a researcher's salary or an open-ended program of research; that project-specific scope is what separates it from the NHMRC Investigator Grant, which instead funds a researcher's Salary Support Package plus a flexible, evolving program of research. An application counts as an Ideas Grant, not an Investigator Grant, when its ask is to fund a bounded piece of research work rather than a person's ongoing research direction, and it must not have a clinical trial or cohort study as its primary objective (NHMRC directs those proposals to its separate Clinical Trials and Cohort Studies scheme).
NHMRC Investigator Grant
An NHMRC Investigator Grant is a five-year Australian National Health and Medical Research Council award that consolidates an individual researcher's salary support (where needed) and a Research Support Package (RSP) into a single scheme funding that investigator's broader multi-year research program, rather than a single discrete project. Applicants are assessed and funded at one of five levels across two categories — Emerging Leadership (EL1, EL2, for researchers within 10 years post-PhD) and Leadership (L1, L2, L3) — with the RSP fixed per level ($75,000 p.a. at EL1, $200,000 p.a. at EL2, and $400,000 p.a. across L1-L3) and salary support scaled separately to the CI's seniority. A Chief Investigator (CI) may hold at most one Investigator Grant, and may submit only one Investigator Grant application per NHMRC funding round.
Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA)
A Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is NIH's (legacy, pre-April-2023) umbrella term for a formal, published solicitation of grant or cooperative agreement applications in a defined scientific area. Every NIH FOA is one of two sub-types: a standing, recurring Program Announcement (PA, including Parent Announcements, PARs, and PAS) with no dedicated funds and standard due dates, or a one-time Request for Applications (RFA) with set-aside funds and, usually, a single receipt date. Since April 2023 (NOT-OD-23-109), NIH itself calls new announcements Notices of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) instead, matching the government-wide term standardized in the April 2024 revision to 2 CFR Part 200 -- the document type and its two sub-types are unchanged by the rename.
Cost Accounting Standards (CAS)
A cost accounting practice at a US institution of higher education is governed by the Cost Accounting Standards (CAS) when the institution has received $50 million or more in federal awards subject to 2 CFR Part 200 Subpart E in its most recently completed fiscal year, triggering compliance with CAS 501, 502, 505, and 506 (48 CFR 9905.501/.502/.505/.506) as incorporated via 2 CFR 200.419 and Appendix III. The operative test is consistency, not any single accounting method: the same institution must use the same cost-accounting practice when it estimates a cost in a proposal, when it accumulates that cost in its books, and when it reports that cost on an award, and it must apply the same direct-vs-indirect classification to like costs in like circumstances institution-wide. An institution below the $50 million threshold is not CAS-governed in this sense, even though it still must satisfy the separate, universally applicable cost-principle tests of allowability, allocability, and reasonableness.
Postdoctoral fellowship
A postdoctoral fellowship is an award of research-training support that is individually competed for and held in the name of the doctorate-holder themselves -- typically with a named faculty sponsor or mentor -- rather than paid to them as staff out of a principal investigator's grant or held by their department as an institutional training-grant slot. It funds a fixed, time-limited period (commonly two to three years) of mentored postdoctoral research, usually via a stipend or salary plus a separate research/travel/relocation allowance, and because the award belongs to the individual rather than the institution, it is typically portable to a different funder-approved host institution. Examples include NIH's F32, NSF's family of directorate-specific postdoctoral fellowship programs, foundation fellowships (e.g. HFSP, EMBO, Damon Runyon), and the EU's MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships.
Office of Extramural Research (OER)
The NIH Office of Extramural Research (OER) is the National Institutes of Health's Office of the Director component that owns the corporate, NIH-wide infrastructure, policy, and systems for extramural (externally performed, grant-funded) research administration — the functions shared across all grant-awarding NIH Institutes and Centers (ICs) rather than any single IC's own programmatic decisions. A policy, notice, or system belongs to OER when it applies NIH-wide: eRA (Commons, ASSIST, Reporter), the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts (the venue for NOT-OD-YY-### Guide Notices), the NIH Grants Policy Statement, and cross-cutting extramural workforce, data-sharing, and research-integrity policy. It does not include an individual IC's own funding priorities or program-officer decisions, and it does not include the scientific peer review of applications, which since 2025 has been centralized in the separate Center for Scientific Review (CSR).
F31 (NIH Predoctoral Individual NRSA Fellowship)
An F31 is an NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) individual fellowship that funds a doctoral student's own dissertation research training under a named faculty sponsor. What makes an award an F31 rather than another NRSA/career-development mechanism: the applicant is an individual predoctoral student (not a department), enrolled in a research doctoral program and at the dissertation-research stage, applying directly for their own mentored training support -- as opposed to a slot inside an institution-held T32 training grant, a postdoctoral F32/F30, or a career-development K award.
Categorical grant
A grant restricted by the awarding government to a narrowly defined purpose or category of activity, as set out in the authorizing statute, program regulations, or notice of funding opportunity — the recipient may spend the funds only on the specified purpose and cannot redirect them to other uses at its own discretion. This is a term from US public administration and fiscal federalism, applied here to federal research funding: most federal research grants (an NIH R01, an NSF standard award) are categorical in this sense because the award funds the specific proposed project defined in the application, not general institutional research activity.
Allocability
A cost is allocable to a federal award under 2 CFR 200.405 if it is assignable to that award in proportion to the relative benefit received — because it was incurred specifically for the award, benefits both the award and other work in proportions that can be reasonably determined, or is necessary to the organization's overall operation and assignable to the award under the applicable cost-accounting principles. Allocability is distinct from, but works alongside, allowability (200.403) and reasonableness (200.404) as part of the three-part test for whether a cost can be charged to a federal award.
R33 (NIH Exploratory/Developmental Grant)
An NIH R-series research grant activity code that funds the second, expanded-development phase of a milestone-driven, two-phase award — typically paired with an R21 or R61 exploratory first phase (as "R21/R33" or "R61/R33") — where transition into R33 funding depends on NIH confirming predefined go/no-go milestones were met, rather than a new competing application.
Canada Research Chair (CRC)
A Canada Research Chair (CRC) is a Tier 1 or Tier 2 professorship funded through the Government of Canada's Tri-Agency Canada Research Chairs Program (CIHR, NSERC, and SSHRC) and held at an eligible Canadian postsecondary institution; only the institution, not the individual researcher, nominates a candidate for a chair, against a fixed allocation of chairs assigned to that institution.
Technology Readiness Level (TRL)
A rating on a standardized 1-9 scale describing how mature a specific technology is, from basic scientific principles observed and reported (TRL 1) through an actual system proven through successful operations in its real deployment environment (TRL 9). Originally developed at NASA in the 1970s and formalized as a nine-level scale in the early 1990s, TRL (used interchangeably with the phrasing "technical readiness level") is assigned to a technology based on demonstrated physical/functional maturity alone -- what has actually been built and tested, and under what conditions -- independent of funding source, patent status, or commercial promise. The U.S. Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, the European Commission (Horizon Europe), and university technology transfer offices (TTOs) all use the same nine-level scale, with only minor wording differences at the upper levels.
Bayh-Dole Act
The Bayh-Dole Act (Public Law 96-517, enacted December 12, 1980, codified at 35 U.S.C. §§ 200–212) is the federal statute allowing universities, nonprofit institutions, and small businesses to retain title to inventions made under federal funding agreements -- grants, cooperative agreements, or contracts -- in exchange for disclosing the invention to the funding agency, electing within a set window whether to keep title, filing a patent application, and accepting the government's retained rights, including a nonexclusive government-use license, march-in rights (35 U.S.C. § 203), and a U.S. manufacturing preference on exclusive licenses (35 U.S.C. § 204). It applies only to a 'subject invention' conceived or first reduced to practice under a qualifying federal award held by an eligible recipient; it does not apply to inventions made without federal funding.
Gateway to Research (GtR)
UKRI's free, public web portal (gtr.ukri.org) that publishes structured data on UKRI-funded research and innovation projects -- overview, organisations, people, publications, and outcomes -- for all seven UKRI research councils and Innovate UK, distinct from Researchfish, the grantee-facing system through which much of that outcome data is originally submitted.
UKRI Funding Service
The UKRI Funding Service is the single online platform (funding-service.ukri.org) that UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and its seven research councils use to advertise funding opportunities, receive applications, and manage awards through to reporting. An application, account, or award is 'on the Funding Service' when it was created and processed through this platform rather than UKRI's retired Joint Electronic Submission (Je-S) system, which the Funding Service progressively replaced for competitive research council funding from 2023.
Australian Research Council (ARC)
The Australian Research Council (ARC) is the Australian Government statutory agency that funds and, historically, evaluates research across all disciplines except clinical medicine and dentistry — a boundary set out in the ARC's own Medical Research Policy, which reserves funding for research into the causes, treatment, prevention, diagnosis, monitoring, or management of human disease for the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) instead. A grant, fellowship, or infrastructure award falls within the ARC's remit if it is administered through the ARC's National Competitive Grants Program (NCGP) — delivered via the Discovery Program or the Linkage Program — rather than through NHMRC's separate, parallel national competitive grants program.
SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research)
A U.S. federal program, established by the Small Business Innovation Development Act of 1982, that reserves a statutory share of participating agencies' extramural R&D budgets for phased, non-dilutive (no equity, no government IP claim) Phase I/II awards to small, for-profit businesses developing technology with both federal-mission relevance and commercial potential; the awardee of record must always be the small business itself, never a university.
Cost Accounting Standards Disclosure Statement (DS-2)
A formal document, tied to 2 CFR 200.419 and reproduced as Appendix III to 2 CFR Part 200, in which an institution of higher education (IHE) describes how it accounts for costs charged to federally sponsored awards -- how it distinguishes direct costs from Facilities & Administrative (F&A/indirect) costs, and how it treats items such as depreciation, leave, and deferred compensation. Any IHE receiving an aggregate total of $50 million or more in federal awards subject to Subpart E of the Uniform Guidance during its most recently completed fiscal year is subject to the Cost Accounting Standards Board's standards CAS 501, 502, 505, and 506 (48 CFR 9905.501, .502, .505, .506) -- consistency in estimating/accumulating/reporting costs, consistency in allocating costs incurred for the same purpose, accounting for unallowable costs, and cost accounting period, respectively. Before 1 October 2024, crossing that same $50 million threshold also created a standalone obligation to file a DS-2 with the institution's cognizant federal agency for indirect costs (usually HHS or the Department of Defense's Office of Naval Research, assigned by whichever agency provides the majority of the institution's federal funding). OMB's April 2024 revision to the Uniform Guidance, effective for awards made on or after 1 October 2024, removed the standalone DS-2 filing requirement from the regulatory text -- the underlying obligation to comply with CAS 501/502/505/506 at the $50 million threshold was not removed, only the separate mandate to submit a dedicated disclosure form documenting it. In practice, many institutions still maintain a DS-2-format document as their internal cost-accounting governance record and as the basis for F&A rate negotiations, even though a fresh regulatory filing is no longer independently required.
Financial report (grant)
A structured statement of grant expenditure submitted to the sponsor at defined reporting periods, presenting actual costs against the approved budget by category and supporting reimbursement or continuation decisions.
Final report
The concluding report submitted to the sponsor at or shortly after the end of the period of performance, summarising the entire project's achievements, deliverables, publications, financial summary, and outcomes.
Interim report
A progress and/or financial report submitted to the sponsor during a multi-period grant, covering activities up to a defined intermediate point and supporting continuation decisions.
Reporting period (grant)
A defined time window within a multi-period grant for which the recipient must submit progress and/or financial reports to the sponsor, often aligned with budget years or work-package completion dates.
Lump-sum grant (Horizon Europe)
A Horizon Europe funding model in which a fixed lump-sum amount is paid for completion of each work package, replacing detailed cost-actuals reporting with focus on technical deliverables and successful work-package completion.
Milestone payment
A funding disbursement triggered by the achievement of a defined project milestone, used in fixed-price or hybrid funding mechanisms to align sponsor payment with verifiable progress.
Fixed-price grant
A grant or contract in which the sponsor pays a pre-agreed fixed amount on satisfactory completion of the work or defined milestones, without reimbursement of actual costs, transferring cost-overrun risk to the recipient.
Cost reimbursement
A funding mechanism in which the sponsor reimburses the recipient for actual allowable costs incurred during the performance of the award, typically up to a stated funding ceiling, with periodic invoicing and supporting documentation required.
Pass-through entity
A non-federal entity that receives a federal award from a federal awarding agency and then provides a subaward to a subrecipient to carry out part of the federal programme.
Prime award
The grant or contract directly between the funder and the lead recipient organisation, which holds primary responsibility for the project's scope, deliverables, and compliance, and may issue subawards to other entities.
Subrecipient monitoring
The activities undertaken by the prime award recipient (pass-through entity) to ensure that subrecipients comply with the terms of their subawards, including financial, programmatic, and audit oversight.
Subaward
A formal award by the prime recipient of a grant to another organisation to perform a defined portion of the substantive scope of work, governed by terms flowing down from the prime award.
Sponsored research agreement
A contractual agreement between a research-performing organisation and a sponsor (industry, foundation, or government), defining the scope of work, deliverables, IP terms, publication rights, payment terms, and reporting obligations for a research project.
Crowdfunded research
Research projects funded by aggregated small contributions from many individuals, typically solicited through online platforms (Experiment, Kickstarter, GoFundMe, institutional giving sites) rather than from traditional grant-making bodies.
Endowment income
The investment returns generated by an institution's or foundation's permanent endowment fund, used (typically at a defined spending rate, e.g., 4 to 5 percent of a multi-year smoothed average) to support operations, scholarships, or named research programmes.
Foundation grant
A grant awarded by a private, charitable, or family foundation rather than a government agency or industry sponsor, typically funded from endowment income and governed by the foundation's mission and giving guidelines.
Indirect cost recovery
The income an institution receives from sponsors as reimbursement for indirect (overhead) costs incurred in support of sponsored projects, calculated by applying the negotiated or sponsor-imposed indirect cost rate to the relevant direct-cost base.
Single Audit (US)
A US federal annual organisation-wide audit required of non-federal entities expending more than a defined threshold of federal funds, conducted under 2 CFR 200 Subpart F (formerly OMB Circular A-133).
Audit (grant)
A formal examination of an institution's or project's financial records, internal controls, and compliance with sponsor terms, conducted by external or internal auditors to provide independent assurance of proper stewardship of grant funds. For US federal grants specifically, "federal grant audit" most often refers to the annual, organisation-wide Single Audit required under 2 CFR 200 Subpart F once an entity's federal expenditures cross the statutory threshold (see Single Audit (US)); an entity whose federal expenditures come from only one federal program may instead elect an equivalent program-specific audit under 2 CFR 200.501(c). Either is distinct from an agency-initiated audit -- for example by a funding agency's Office of Inspector General -- of a single award outside the routine Single Audit cycle.
Closeout phase
The grant lifecycle phase following the end of the period of performance, during which final technical, financial, equipment, and property reports are submitted, residual obligations are liquidated, and the award is formally closed.
Post-award phase
The grant lifecycle phase covering all activities between the start of the period of performance and the end of the closeout reporting period, including expenditure, reporting, monitoring, modifications, and subaward management.
Pre-award phase
The grant lifecycle phase covering activities from identification of a funding opportunity through proposal preparation, submission, and award negotiation, prior to the start of the period of performance.
Encumbrance
A reservation or commitment of grant funds against a future expenditure (such as a purchase order, a multi-year salary commitment, or a subaward), recorded in the institution's financial system to prevent over-commitment.
Burn rate (grant)
The rate at which a grant's funds are being expended over time, typically expressed as currency-per-month or as a percentage of the budget consumed per period, used to forecast end-of-period spend and identify under- or over-spend trajectories.
Underspend
The condition in which a grant budget period ends with unspent funds, indicating actual expenditure was lower than planned and requiring action (carry-forward, reduction of next-year award, or return to sponsor).
Carry-forward
The authorised transfer of unobligated grant funds from one budget period to the next within a multi-year grant, allowing the recipient to use those funds in a subsequent period rather than losing them.
No-cost extension (NCE)
An approved extension of the period of performance of a grant beyond the original end date, without additional sponsor funds, to enable completion of the funded scope.
Continuation award
The release of subsequent-year segments of a multi-year grant, contingent on satisfactory progress and the availability of funds, but not requiring a new competitive application.
Renewable award
A funding award that, on completion, may be extended or re-funded for additional periods through a renewal process, which is typically partly competitive (against other proposals) and partly based on performance of the prior award.
Discretionary funding
Funds that an institution, dean, or unit head may allocate at their own judgement, without a formal competitive call, typically used for strategic investments, recruitment startups, bridge support, or unforeseen needs.
Non-competitive grant
A funding award made without a comparative peer-reviewed competition, either through direct invitation, formula allocation, or as a routine continuation of an existing multi-year award.
Competitive grant
A funding award made following a peer-reviewed, merit-based competition against other proposals, in which only a subset of applicants are funded.
Catalyst grant
A targeted, often small-to-medium-value funding mechanism designed to catalyse strategic activity in a specific area, such as building a new research network, piloting a methodology, or de-risking a translational step.
Pump-priming funding
Small grants intended to initiate new collaborative or interdisciplinary research activity that is not yet ready for full external funding competition, typically with an explicit expectation of follow-on external grant capture.
Seed funding
Small-value, short-duration funding awarded to develop a novel research idea to the point where it can compete for larger external grants, typically provided by institutions, learned societies, or pilot-grant programmes.
Bridge funding
Short-term funding provided to maintain a research programme between an expiring grant and an anticipated new award, typically from institutional sources rather than external sponsors.
Match funding
A funding model in which one party's contribution is conditional on a matching contribution from another party, typically expressed as a ratio (e.g., 1:1, 2:1) of sponsor funds to recipient or third-party funds.
Cost share (voluntary)
A contribution to a sponsored project beyond what the sponsor requires, committed by the recipient institution typically to strengthen a proposal's competitiveness or demonstrate institutional support.
Cost share (mandatory)
A contribution to a sponsored project that is required by the sponsor as a condition of the award and must be documented, tracked, and reported, typically as a percentage of total project cost or as a specific dollar value.
Direct charging
The practice of charging a specific cost directly to a sponsored project's budget as a direct cost rather than recovering it through the indirect cost rate, when the cost meets allowability, allocability, and reasonableness criteria.
APC reimbursement (funder)
The mechanism by which a research funder repays an article processing charge (APC) paid by an author or institution, either directly or via an institutional block grant, in support of open access publication of grant-supported research.
Open access publication cost (grant-eligible)
The portion of a grant budget allocated to fund open access publication of project outputs, including article processing charges (APCs), book-processing charges (BPCs), and related fees, where the sponsor permits such costs as direct or supplemental expenditure.
Travel cost (grant)
The portion of a grant budget allocated to project-related travel, including transportation, accommodation, meals, and subsistence for project personnel attending fieldwork, conferences, collaboration meetings, and dissemination events.
Equipment cost (grant)
The portion of a grant budget allocated to the purchase, fabrication, or lease of equipment with a useful life beyond a single budget period and a per-unit cost exceeding the institutional capitalisation threshold.
Personnel cost (grant)
The portion of a grant budget that pays the salaries, wages, and associated benefits of staff working on the project, typically the largest single category in most research grants.
Single-year project
A funded research project whose period of performance is one year or less, with a single budget period and a single reporting cycle (interim if applicable, plus final).
Multi-year project
A funded research project whose period of performance extends across more than one year, typically structured with annual budget periods, interim reporting, and continuation reviews.
Grant Agreement (Horizon Europe)
The legally binding contract signed between the European Commission (or designated funding body) and the beneficiaries, defining the action's scope, budget, deliverables, payment, IP, reporting, and dissemination obligations for a Horizon Europe project.
Consortium agreement
A legal agreement signed among all beneficiaries in a multi-partner grant, regulating their internal relationships (governance, IP, confidentiality, financial flows, conflict resolution) in complement to the Grant Agreement with the funder.
Partner (grant consortium)
A non-coordinator beneficiary in a multi-partner grant consortium, responsible for an agreed share of the work and budget and party to the consortium agreement.
Coordinator (grant consortium)
The beneficiary in a multi-partner grant (especially Horizon Europe) that takes legal and administrative lead, acting as the single point of contact with the funder and coordinating consortium activities, reporting, and payments.
Beneficiary (Horizon Europe)
A legal entity that signs the Horizon Europe Grant Agreement and is directly accountable to the European Commission for delivery of an agreed share of the project's work and budget.
MTDC (Modified Total Direct Cost)
The base to which a US federal indirect cost rate is applied, equal to total direct costs minus excluded items (typically equipment over a threshold, capital expenditures, patient care, tuition remission, rental costs, scholarships, and the portion of each subaward exceeding $25,000).
De minimis rate (NIH)
A federally permitted 10 percent indirect cost rate that organisations without a negotiated F&A rate may elect to use on US federal awards, applied to modified total direct costs (MTDC).
Indirect Cost Rate (F&A Rate)
Indirect cost rate (also called the F&A rate in US federal terminology): the negotiated or de-minimis percentage applied to a defined direct-cost base to recover an institution's facilities and administrative (overhead) costs on US federal grants and contracts — costs that support a sponsored project but cannot be attributed to it directly.
Indirect costs (overheads)
Project costs that cannot be specifically attributed to a single research activity but are necessary to support the conduct of research, including facilities, administration, libraries, IT, and depreciation, recovered from sponsors through an indirect cost rate.
Direct costs
Project costs that can be specifically and unambiguously attributed to a single sponsored research activity, including project-specific personnel salaries, materials and consumables, equipment, travel, and subaward costs.
Postdoctoral researcher
A person who holds a doctoral degree (PhD or equivalent research/clinical doctorate) and is engaged in a temporary, full-time, mentored research or scholarly-training position -- commonly one to five years, most often two to four -- undertaken specifically to build an independent publication record, grant history, and research skillset before moving into a permanent faculty, industry, or other independent research role. What separates a postdoc from an ordinary staff researcher is this combination: doctorate already in hand, a defined non-permanent term, and an explicit developmental/mentored purpose rather than an open-ended production role.
Research funder
An organisation providing financial support for research activity.
