Impact of Covid-19 on your research

We fully recognise that the delivery of Prostate Cancer UK funded research has been significantly affected over the past 12 months and we thank you for your continued cooperation and communication during this time. We appreciate that there is still a lot of uncertainty going forward and so please do continue to keep us abreast of any changes/developments to your grant.

Please do contact us at research@prostatecanceruk.org if you have any questions or concerns about the delivery of your grant.

Starting your grant

Once contracting is completed, grant holders must complete and submit to us their project start certificate to activate their grant. This will state the start date of the grant and the point from which expenditure can be invoiced from.

We want to ensure that your project gets off on the right foot and so will liaise with all new award holders about the most suitable timeframe for getting their grant up and running.

Invoicing

Invoices must be submitted to research@prostatecanceruk.org quarterly in arrears, beginning from the start date as stipulated on the project start certificate. The invoice must quote the project reference and purchase order number, and must only include costs incurred during the corresponding claim period.

Expenditure should be broken down into the following four headings: staff costs, research expenditure, animal costs and other costs, as categorised in the Terms and Conditions of award. An itemised breakdown must be provided as a supporting document (including the name of any staff member whose salary is being met through this grant). Invoices and the expenditure break down should be submitted as a single pdf document.

Claims must be submitted within 30 days of the end of the corresponding claim period, except for the final claim, which must be submitted within six months of the end of the Grant Period. Your claim will not be reimbursed if it contains expenditure incurred more than six months before the claim period.

Please note, final claims for each year will not be reimbursed until the delivery of a satisfactory progress report.

Progress reporting

It is vital we record the impact of our research funding, so that we can continue to demonstrate the value and importance of funding prostate cancer research and work to implement research findings. Hearing about papers you’ve published, follow-on funding and patents you secure on the back of our research funding means that we can understand early on in the life of a grant how your research is contributing to our goal of stopping prostate cancer from being a killer.

All grant holders are required to submit annual reports and a final report. If additional updates are required, grant holders will be notified in advance. We’ll also be following-up after your funding has come to an end. All progress report forms are available through the grant holder’s account in our online Grants Management System (CC Grant Tracker) and should be completed and submitted through this system.

Site visits

We want to hear about the progress being made with your research and are here to offer advice and support if you ever experience any delays or set-backs. We endeavour to meet up with every grant holder during the lifetime of their project and welcome invitations to visit you at your research institution.

Our research team is keen to meet with you and your team in person, but we appreciate that this may not be feasible (particularly at this moment in time!). We are therefore now hosting virtual engagement visits so that we can ‘meet’ with you and your team to discuss your research. We will contact you at some point during your grant to arrange a suitable time to meet with your team (virtually or in person)… but we are more than happy to hear from you sooner if you would like to get in touch!

Extension and change requests

We understand that research does not always go to plan and so we will consider requests for No-Cost Extensions or changes to the project plan. Any such request must be necessary and well justified and must have sufficient funds remaining on the grant to cover the additional time and activity. Please note that we are unlikely to agree to any changes which will result in an increase in the overall cost of the grant.

All extension and change requests must be approved by the Research team at Prostate Cancer UK. Please do not apply for the extension any sooner than twelve months before the end date of your grant, so that all factors can be considered and multiple requests for the same award can be avoided. All requests for extensions should be made prior to your award end date and you must complete and return a change request form. To do this, please email the Research Team.

If activity has completely stopped on your grant, and no costs continue to be incurred (including salary costs), then we may consider putting your grant into abeyance. This must be approved by the Research Team at Prostate Cancer UK. If your grant is put into abeyance, the duration of the suspension will automatically be added on to the end of your project to give you time to continue your research once the grant has been re-activated.

Communicating your research

To increase our knowledge of prostate cancer, we need to be open in our communication and dissemination of the research we fund, and we expect the researchers we support to share this same ethos. This is so others may learn from and build upon this vital research, to maximise the impact and reach of the research we fund.

Please get in touch if you would like support with communicating your research. We have Press and Communication teams that can work with you and your research organisation to help promote your research.

For posters and presentations, a high-resolution logo can be requested from research@prostatecanceruk.org

Publication policy

In order to create a step change in our knowledge of prostate cancer, we need to be open in our communication and dissemination of the research we are funding. This is so that others may learn from and build upon this vital research, and we expect the researchers we support to share this same ethos. All grant holders must comply with our Publication Policy (summarised below):

• Results should be published in such a way that allows unrestricted access to the data and information, and the research must be made publicly available as soon as possible.
• All research manuscripts accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal should be done so in an open access format in all but very exceptional circumstances. Electronic copies of all manuscripts must be made available via Europe PubMed Central as soon as possible, although certainly no later than 6 months from the date of publication.
• Once the results have been published, any relevant data and materials must be made available to other researchers upon request (subject to ethics, approvals and Intellectual Property consideration).
• Investigators must inform us as early as possible when the results of their work have been accepted for publication or presentation.
• Researchers must acknowledge the financial support from Prostate Cancer UK in the following format: “This work was supported by Prostate Cancer UK through a [Award Type] ([GRANT REFERENCE]).”

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have suspended our open access reimbursement scheme until further notice. Award holders should consider alternative sources of funding for Gold open access publication, or otherwise publish via Green open access routes.

Making Progress: A networking day for early career researchers

We feel it is important to support and encourage the early career prostate cancer researchers, in order to build the next generation of leading prostate cancer researchers. That's why we hold an annual networking day for all the early career researchers we support.

This event provides a prime opportunity to establish connections with other researchers at a similar stage in their career as well as provide a forum for you to present your research findings.

Furthermore, you will meet and hear from some of the leading prostate cancer researchers in the UK, learn more about the work of Prostate Cancer UK and obtain key skills and advice to help you forge a successful career in prostate cancer research. You can find out more information here.

Contact us

If you would like to get in touch regarding your grant, please contact the Research Team by e-mailing research@prostatecanceruk.org.