Applications and awards

There are many reasons to complete an application in ResearchNow when applying for grant funding whilst at Flinders. Some of the key reasons are:

• To assist you in your career development and progression by demonstrating grant application activity.
• For your College to assess and approve the application, ensuring there is adequate space and staff to support successful grants.
• To be able to obtain a letter of support if required.
• To include the University's commercialisation staff so they can assist with commercialisation, patenting, or other opportunities
• To identify if students are involved in order to help them with counselling on IP and other research concerns.
• So that the Colleges and the University are able to report on your grant submissions and success rates (by FOR or SEO code) for promotion rounds etc.
• So that you can copy information from a previous grant application in ResearchNow when you are submitting to another funder, or to convert your application to an award in ResearchNow (once granted).
• To enable faster processing of your award, when your application is successful.

Your application in ResearchNow can only be viewed by Research Development and Support, your College Dean of Research and Vice-President Executive Dean and the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research). Applications do not appear on the ResearchNow portal and are only reported on for statistical purposes, not to view individual application information. If you have granted Trusted User access to ResearchNow, that person will also be able to see your applications.

Navigate to ResearchNow by clicking on the chiclet in your Okta dashboard. 

The application form in ResearchNow is available from the main screen, under Applications in the left-hand navigation pane:

ResearchNow does not save your data automatically as you enter it, so make sure you save your application frequently by selecting Save (located at the very end of the form). A saved application can always be edited later. To edit a previously saved application:

1. Find and select an application you would like to edit

There are no notification emails to let you know that an application has been approved. You need to login to ResearchNow and view the list of your applications.

To view the status of a single application, open the application and view the Application approval route at the bottom. The example below has been approved by the college.

To quickly see the status of multiple applications, try viewing the applications page and selecting the matrix view:

This will show you all of your applications and their status in the approval process. 

There are research Budget Estimator tools for contract and tied/competitive research available on the RDS Application Process webpage.

Please contact research.grants@flinders.edu.au or visit Research Link to find out the latest information on grants and funding opportunities.

The Research Development and Support College Support Officer or Dean of Research may send an application back to you if you have not provided sufficient information for the application to be assessed. You will be notified by email when this occurs. To check the application log in an open the application

In Tasks on the right side of the screen there will be a notification that an application is waiting on you – click the link.

Open the application

Click the edit icon in the top left corner

Click history and comments

All comments including the reason your application was returned will be in the form. Please note that the most recent comments are at the top of the page

Click metadata to return to your form and update any details before resubmitting for approval.

1.       Open the application you would like to view.

2.       Click the edit icon in the top left corner.

3.       Click history and comments

4.       All comments including the reason your application was returned will be in the form. Please note that the most recent comments are at the top of the page

Please contact research.grants@flinders.edu.au and request that your funder or funding opportunity is added to the list. (This applies to internal grants also.) The RDS Grants and Tenders team will then confirm when the new funder / opportunity has been added.

Yes, if you set them up as a ‘Trusted User’. A trusted user is someone you invite to take control of your user account and who can then perform the same tasks as you in ResearchNow. This allows you to delegate control of your account to someone else; for example, when you will not be accessing the system for a period of time or if there is someone who will usually be performing ResearchNow activities on your behalf.

For instructions on how to add someone as a trusted user please refer to the Managing trusted users guide.

Please refer to the 2020 Higher Education Research Data Collection Specifications guide to help you assign your grant application to the correct HERDC category.

If your application relates to funding that is in a foreign currency, you will need to provide an equivalent AUD amount. You can convert your currency using online converters.

The following table presents the different types of investigators. There are 3 types of chief investigator, as well as an associate investigator, partner investigator, student investigator, and supervisor. Choose the type that is appropriate for your application.

In the ResearchNow Applications form, under Application managed by, select Add Collaborating College/s and enter a College name in the search field that is displayed.

Information about the infrastructure levy is available under Research infrastructure levies on the Application Process  Research Support webpage.

Open your application form in ResearchNow and select the Editing layout (the pencil icon at the top left of the form), then in the left-hand navigation pane, select Edit > Metadata. To easily view the detail of the data in the Funding section, toggle the "disclosure triangle" as per the following example.

Step 1. Click on the 3 dots at the top right of the form and select Settings.

Step 2. Scroll down to Privacy and security and select Site settings.

Step 3. Select Pop-ups and redirects at the bottom of the list.

Step 4. Next to the Allow heading, select Add.

The ARC website explains the purpose and definition of the SEO (Socio-Economic Objective codes) used across Australia and New Zealand. The SEO codes cover every type of research.

“The … SEO classification allows R&D activity in Australia and New Zealand to be categorised according to the intended purpose or outcome of the research rather than the processes or techniques used in order to achieve this objective. The purpose categories include processes, products, health, education and other social and environmental aspects in Australia and New Zealand that R&D activity aims to improve.”

You can find the right SEO code to use for research from the official ABS website - at this link.

When applying for any Research grant funding, a ResearchNow Application is required as this enables the College to plan for supporting the project. Capturing this data also helps the University and each College to report on success rates and the information can be used in Academic promotion rounds.

Internal Grants must also be captured in ResearchNow; they require an Application just like any externally funded grant. The benefit of recording the internal grant information is that over time it will enable Colleges to see how these internal grants turned into or contribute to getting external funding. Details of current Internal grants can be found at this web page. 

You can view your award record, but not edit it directly – although you can mark an academic milestone as complete (assuming all funder requirements have been met). You can see the status of your award, eg invoicing history, final financial acquittal.

In addition, subject to College Dean of Research approval, you can publish your award information to the public ResearchNow Portal by linking the award to a project.

The processes for correcting data have not changed. Those people and groups with whom you've usually reached out to for management of data quality remain the same. This includes RDS College Support, RDS Grants & Tenders, RDS Contracts, and Finance.

In ResearchNow, both RDS and Finance have access to the same award information, including academic and administrative milestones.  For technical support with ResearchNow such as errors or improvement suggestions, raise a Service One request.

Please refer to the below 'Guide to Research Income Attribution' for a full explanation of how your ResearchNow Award data is used in research income reporting at Flinders.

An award is an agreement and funding awarded by a funder.

An award record is an aggregation of information arising from the process of funder approval, contract, and financial / RDS administration. A contract informs an award, for example with research activity obligations and financial milestones. (Not all contracts have milestones, however.)

A project account is created once a contract and other necessary items completed.

A project in ResearchNow is a container for research activities that can be published to the public ResearchNow Portal. This enables you to promote your work.

When creating a project, you can choose to add information such as title, description, layman’s description, and key findings. Research outputs and awarded grants can then be linked to the project. Linking an award to a project will automatically make it visible on the ResearchNow Portal, unless you choose to supress it, or components of it such as the funder, or awarded amount.

(The amount awarded is the total award value, not just the Flinders portion for collaborative grants.)

A project must be submitted to your College Dean of Research for review and approval, as it represents the university on a public website (the ResearchNow Portal). If the Dean of Research approves the project for publishing, the project becomes visible on your researcher profile on the ResearchNow Portal.

The university and DVCR have requested a greater understanding of the success rates of applications by FOR / SEO code.

If an application is marked as successful (ie awarded) then FOR and SEO codes are automatically copied into its award record in ResearchNow, saving data entry time.

ResearchNow handles all the notifications to alert FPS when an invoice is due. The FPS team can also see when associated academic milestones have been completed to streamline the process. If there is an administrative milestone on your award for the invoice you no longer need to raise a Service One request for Finance and Procurement Services (FPS) to raise an invoice to the funder of your research award.

There may be other types of research-related invoices that are required, eg volume-based invoices as in clinical trials – ie a number of people processed – rather than periodic (date-based) invoices. There is a specific Service One request to FPS that can continue to be used for these.

Please put in your best estimate and note in the comment field on the submission declaration that it is an estimate and subject to negotiation at contract execution.