Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A US R01 grant applies the institution's 58 percent F&A rate to MTDC, recovering indirect costs for facilities and administration.
- Is an instance
A Horizon Europe project automatically receives 25 percent indirect on eligible direct costs.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A reagent purchase specifically for an experiment is not an indirect cost.
- Not an instance
Project-specific subcontract costs in Horizon Europe are excluded from the indirect base.
Editorial commentary
Indirect costs (also termed overheads, F&A in the US, or full economic costing components in the UK) represent the institution's investment in the research infrastructure. They are typically expressed as a percentage applied to a defined direct-cost base (e.g., MTDC). Negotiated rates are common in the US (via federally negotiated rate agreements), while flat rates apply in Horizon Europe (25 percent of direct eligible costs excluding subcontracting). Under-recovery of indirect costs is a persistent financial challenge for research-intensive universities.
References
- US Office of Management and Budget Uniform Guidance 2 CFR 200 Appendix III; UK Transparent Approach to Costing (TRAC).
Also known as
Overheads · F&A · Facilities and Administrative costs · On-costs
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
vocab-term="Indirect costs (overheads)"
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"description": "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.",
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"url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/indirect-costs-overheads",
"sameAs": [
"Overheads",
"F&A",
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],
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}
