Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A US university's F&A recovery on NIH grants in 2024 totalled $180 million.
- Is an instance
A UK research office calculates under-recovery against the full economic cost as part of TRAC return.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
Direct cost recovery (reimbursement of project-specific costs) is not indirect cost recovery.
- Not an instance
Tuition revenue is not indirect cost recovery.
Editorial commentary
Indirect cost recovery is a major revenue stream for research-intensive universities, often exceeding 100 million GBP/USD per year at large institutions. It funds general infrastructure (libraries, IT, buildings depreciation, central administration) and may be partially returned to faculties or PIs. Under-recovery (where the negotiated rate exceeds what sponsors actually pay due to programmatic caps or fixed rates) is a persistent funding gap, especially with foundations and EU schemes.
References
- Council on Governmental Relations (COGR) Excellence in Research; UK Transparent Approach to Costing (TRAC).
Also known as
Overhead recovery · ICR · Indirect recovery
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
<role vocab="credit"
vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
vocab-term="Indirect cost recovery"
vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/indirect-cost-recovery" />{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "DefinedTerm",
"name": "Indirect cost recovery",
"identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/indirect-cost-recovery",
"description": "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.",
"inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/funding-lifecycle-and-financial-vocabulary/",
"url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/indirect-cost-recovery",
"sameAs": [
"Overhead recovery",
"ICR",
"Indirect recovery"
],
"license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
}
