Post-award

Find out more about the post-award stage in the School of Environment, Education and Development (SEED).

Project initiation

Acceptance and commencement

As soon as you receive notification of your successful award, please pass to your Research Support Officer who will liaise with the Research Finance Team to get an account 'R code' generated and made live.

Please ensure you read and understand all the terms and conditions attached to your award.

Your RSO may need to notify your funder of your expected start date and/or a starting certificate may need to be submitted when your project commences.

Contracted research

If you receive a contract from a potential funder, please forward to your RSO who will liaise with the University Contracts Officer. The Contracts Officer is responsible for negotiating terms and conditions on behalf of the University and, once confirmed, will ensure sign-off at the appropriate level and account code generation. 

The same process applies if you wish to subcontract any part of an existing award to a third party.

Ethical approval

All research involving human participants will require advance approval from the University Research Ethics Committee (UREC).  

SEED have established a School Ethics Advisory Group (SEAG) which screens staff applications to ensure they are ready for UREC. 

For details of the ethical approval process for your research, please see Ethics.

Research staff appointments

At the start of your award, the Post Award Support team will ensure that any new staff vacancies are approved within the School/Faculty. You will need to provide the Post Award Support team with a draft advert and further particulars for the post to be advertised.

Once vacancies are live, the School Resources Officer will assume responsibility and will support you through the recruitment process.

Where a researcher is named on a grant, the Post Award Support team will ensure that the appointment is approved and contract issued.  To facilitate this, you will need to provide the Post Award Support team with the researcher's CV and further particulars for the post.

PI Guidance on recruitment for research projects

All research contract staff with a contract of >3 months  should be assigned a mentor in their ‘home’ department. This allocation should be carried out by HoDs within the first month of new research staff’s starting contract date, or soon as possible if current contract researchers do not currently have an appropriate mentor allocated. See also Mentoring of Research Contract Staff: Expectations and Guidelines

For advice on all subsequent HR issues, from welcome and induction to end of fixed term contract, please liaise with the School Office. 

Further information can be found at .

SEED Buy In Policy

If you are awarded funds to cover more than 10% of your time, you may be entitled to claim some research-linked workload adjustment.

Please see: 

SEED Policy on Buy-out and WAM for Teaching and Research Staff (The University of Manchester)

SEED Policy on Buy-out and WAM for Teaching and Scholarship Staff (The University of Manchester)

Project management

Support for expenditure

All expenditure on research projects is processed in line with local SEED practice, ensuring the University's Financial Regulations are fully adhered to. 

Your RSO will provide you with further information and specific contacts for your Discipline at the start of your project. 

For quick reference, see the FAQs page for payment types and approvals. 

Monitoring budgets

You can access financial information on your project budget via the My Projects platform on the Staff Portal. 

The research support and finance team are available to meet with you should you wish to discuss any element of your budget.

Extensions and amendments

If you are planning on doing anything that might affect the original terms and conditions of your award, you will need to inform/seek approval from the funder in advance of any revised activity taking place. 

Please liaise with your RSO initially to determine what action is required.

Final reporting

Approximately six months before the end of your project you should arrange to meet with your RSO and RFO to ensure you are prepared for the closure of your project.

Starting this process early will allow time to deal with issues such as potential underspends or overspends. 

You should also be familiar with the final reporting requirements of your funder and be clear who will be responsible for submitting the final reports, both scientific and financial.

Open Access

It is HEFCE and University policy that all peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers accepted from the 1st April 2016 are made Open Access. Papers that do not meet the HEFCE Open Access policy requirements may not be eligible for submission to the next REF. 

To ensure that your work will be eligible for REF submission you must deposit the Author Accepted Manuscript of your paper to the institutional repository within three months of acceptance for publication.

The Author Accepted Manuscript is the version that has been agreed with your editor/s at the point of acceptance. It is not the same as the copy-edited, typeset or published paper, which are often referred to as ‘proofs’ or ‘versions of record’.

Publications should be deposited via the Open Access Gateway and the Library will create your publication in Pure on your behalf.  The Library has created guidance materials which summarise the process and provide answers to Frequently Asked Questions.  These are available via the Open Access Gateway.