Policies and concordats for applicants

This information should be read in conjunction with the application guidance and terms and conditions of the scheme you are applying for, which are available on the scheme’s webpage. This section outlines selected policies and concordats that are relevant to applicants.

Relevant concordats

Concordat on Openness on Animal Research

The Academy is a signatory of the Concordat on Openness on Animal Research. We are committed to being open about when, how and why animals are used in the projects we fund. In addition, we aim to ensure that every effort is made to replace, refine and reduce animals in research. In your application, you will be asked to explain and justify the use of animals involved in the proposed research and outline the measures in place to ensure openness about their use. Where non-human primates, cats, dogs, pigs or equines are used, this information may be sent to the National Centre for the Replacement Refinement & Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs) for review. Awardees are required to follow ARRIVE guidelines (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) in order to minimize unnecessary studies whilst improving the design, analysis and reporting of animal research to maximise the information published.

Please read the grant holder brief to find out how our commitments as signatories of the Concordat affect AMS award holders.

San Francisco Declaration of Research Assessment

The Academy is a signatory of the San Francisco Declaration of Research Assessment (DORA) and our Panel members and peer reviewers are requested not to use journal-based metrics, such as Journal Impact Factors as a surrogate measure of the quality of individual research articles. In your application, we ask you to highlight three of your publications and outline their significance and your role in these studies. This question is intended to promote thorough consideration of the content of a publication or other research output, rather than the impact factor of the journal it is published in.

For more information on the concordats we support please visit our concordats page.

Relevant policies

The use of human tissue or subjects in research

Research involving human participants is governed by principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki, the Nuremberg Code, and the Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS) guidelines, all of which set out requirements with regard to the rights and safety of research participants and standards for research design and conduct.

The Academy requires researchers to have the relevant regulatory and ethical approvals in place before the relevant research begins, although you may apply for funding before this. In the event of an award being made, commencement of any research involving human participants and tissues will be subject to these approvals being in place and sent to the Academy.

ORCID

The Academy requires all lead applicants to provide an ORCID iD (Open Researcher and Contributor identifier) when completing an application form. ORCID is an open, non-profit effort to create and maintain a registry of unique researcher identifiers and a transparent method of linking research activities and outputs to these identifiers. The ORCID Registry is available free of charge to researchers, who may obtain an ORCID iD, manage their record of activities, and search for others in the Registry. The Academy recognises the benefits of this effort and requires that lead applicants obtain an ORCID iD.

Data management and data sharing

To maintain research integrity, institutions and researchers must ensure research data is preserved so that results can be verified and the data reused in future. The Academy expects all of its award holders to maximise the availability of research data. Therefore, in your application form you may be requested to provide a Data Management and Sharing plan. Please refer to the application guidance of the scheme to which you are applying for more information.

Open Access policy            

The Academy’s mission is to create an open and progressive research sector to improve the health of people everywhere. We believe that unrestricted online access to scientific publications for all - Open Access (OA) - supports this ambition. As such, we require that awardees make articles available upon publication on Europe PubMed Central, through utilising either a Gold or Green route to OA. You should consider this when completing your budget requests when applying for a grant. Many academic journals will make a published article OA if an article processing charge (APC) is paid. While the Academy will not fund APC fees separately from our research award, applicants may cost APC fees in their grant applications and where a publication has been funded wholly by the Academy of Medical Sciences, underspend on an AMS grant may also be used to meet the cost. Please read the Academy’s Open Access policy for more information on what we require from our awardees with regards to OA.