Dear colleagues

The eRA pre-awards module will be rolled out across all faculties at UCT from the 26 August 2019. For researchers, the impact of this rollout will be felt when you apply for an international or external grant. With several large international funding opportunities available – including, but not limited to, the Global Challenges Research Fund (Networking Grants; Global Challenges Research Fund (Challenge Clusters) and the Wellcome Collaborative Awards – we need to make sure you, our researchers, are prepared.

The university needs to support this growth, both to enable continued and even increased success at winning international grants, and to ensure that it manages the financial, human-resource and legal risks involved. For instance, if a researcher does not fully consider factors like inflation, exchange-rate fluctuation and indirect costs in their budget, this puts additional financial pressure on both the project and the university. When researchers are not protected from such errors and find themselves unable to meet their funder requirements, this leads to reputational damage with funding agencies that will impact negatively on subsequent applications.

eRA stands for the electronic Research Administration system and its pre-awards process is a straightforward one for the principal investigator (PI) applying for funding.

• The PI uploads the requested project documents and captures key project information and details relating to resourcing, ethics and biosafety online.
• The form is sent (also online) to departmental finance staff to complete project-related finance information that was discussed with the PI prior to submission of the form.
• The PI confirms their agreement with this financial information.
• Internal review and approval is completed by relevant faculty finance and deanery staff, with final submission to the funder actioned by either the Research Contracts and Innovation Office or the PI.

This process helps to manage risk (in terms of resource use, research ethics, health and safety and finances) to both the PI and the university, and serves as an internal review to ensure all information required by the funder is complete upon submission.

There are, however, key requirements researchers need to be aware of ahead of their submission to the funder:

Internal deadlines now apply: internal deadlines allow for a thorough review of the applications and enough time to make any necessary amendments. Internal deadlines may differ faculty by faculty but we recommend that PIs should submit the pre-awards approval form 10 working days before the funder deadline to obtain timeous approval from both faculty and Research Contracts and Innovation (where relevant). PIs will need to liaise with their faculty approval signatories about turn-around times.

There are a number of different roles and responsibilities in the pre-awards approval process:

• The budget reviewer is a staff member in your finance department (e.g. departmental finance officer) who will help you develop an appropriate budget and will complete the financial information in the approval form.
• The finance approver is the research management accountant or faculty finance manager who will be responsible for the internal approval of the budget developed by the PI and finance department.
• The final faculty approver is the dean or deputy dean of research or a delegate* who will conduct a final check to ensure key areas of risk have been thought through and planned for (like ensuring a project is appropriately costed, sufficient office space for additional staff members is accounted for and ethical approval has been considered).
  *the delegate cannot be the same person as the finance approver.

Not all applications require a pre-award approval form: as a general rule of thumb all external funding proposals need a pre-award approval form, but if in doubt ask yourself: will what I am submitting pose any potential risk to UCT, whether in terms of resource use, research ethics, health and safety, and finances? If the answer is yes, then complete an approval form. For further information see our frequently asked questions page.

In the coming weeks the eRA team will be intensively engaging with the various faculties regarding the rollout of the pre-awards module. If you want to know more about presentations to your faculty, or would like to schedule an information session for your department or research unit, please contact our internal communications officer, Natalie Simon.

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The Research Announcement is produced by the Research Office, University of Cape Town.