In recent years in the HE sector, there has been a substantial increase in the amount of research-related administration required of academics as PIs of their research grants. Examples include open access deposits, enhanced research data management requirements, Researchfish returns and increased due diligence of partners to name but a few.  To help minimise this growing burden, an objective of the current overall College strategy is to support academic staff as much as possible in their endeavours to apply for and win research funding.

In support, the number of staff members that can create grant applications in Worktribe is restricted to a smaller number of administrative pre-award experts (“super users”).  They are responsible for creating, completing and checking all grant applications in Worktribe.  This minimises the amount of administration required from academic staff, allowing them to focus more on teaching and research.  Academic staff will not create grant application records.  Academic staff can view all grant application records on which they are named.  It was noted that a small number of academic staff wish to engage with creating their own records and would be negatively impacted by their access being revoked entirely.  Therefore, academic staff can create a “Standalone Budget”.  This uses the same costing methodology as full grant applications so will allow academic staff to perform a “quick costing” if they wish.  It is not a mandatory step.  Their pre-award super-user can then create a full costing covering the same base items, with any required amendments.

Academic staff have the ability to create standalone budgets by default, which allows them to cost non-staff items and unnamed staff (e.g. a “to-be-appointed” researcher on a specified spine point).  To cost specific named staff, an additional responsibility in the system is required.  Academics wishing to do so should contact their department manager for approval. Once department manager approval has been obtained, please contact worktribe.admin@imperial.ac.uk to request the additional responsibility in the system.