Grant policies

Climate change represents an unprecedented challenge of our time, impacting our planet and human lives. In line with Barts Charity’s vision of healthy East London lives, we are committed to playing our part by ensuring that meaningful consideration is given to environmental sustainability in our funding activities and delivery of our mission.

We ask our grantholders to consider the environmental impact of the delivery of the project itself, as well as the potential outcomes. In case of adverse impact, applicants are asked to state how these would be mitigated.

Barts Charity will only fund essential travel related to the projects we fund. Project teams should limit travel by using alternatives where possible (for example, video conferencing). Where travel is required, we expect the low-carbon option to be chosen, where practical, and we will fund this even if it is more expensive (within reason).

Sensible project design can reduce carbon waste. For laboratory-based research projects, we ask our grantholders to sign up to the Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework (LEAF) scheme. For healthcare research in the NHS, we ask our grantholders to consider the NIHR Carbon Reduction Guidelines, a set of recommendations and strategies for researchers to reduce the carbon emissions from health research in the NHS. For healthcare projects, we ask grantholders to align with Barts Health’s sustainability strategy.

Barts Charity is a supporter of the Concordat for the Environmental Sustainability of Research and Innovation Practice.

As a local funder, effective involvement and engagement of our community (patients and the public) in the work we fund is very important to us.

The UK Standards for Public Involvement provide detailed guidance to describe what good public involvement looks like and encourage greater consistency in research. This includes case studies, processes, procedures and values necessary to support suitable public and patient involvement. We recommend grant holders review this guidance before planning any involvement activities.

Patients and the public should ideally be involved and/or engaged in every stage of a project, from developing a proposal, through project delivery, to evaluation and dissemination.

Costs related to involvement and engagement within a project can be requested in an application and must be detailed in the finance section of the application form

If conducting lab-based research projects, please read the specific guidance for patient and public involvement.

In some areas, research involving animals is essential to understand human health and develop new treatments. We do not take the decision to fund this research lightly. We use expert peer review to ensure that we fund only high-quality research where the use of animals is scientifically justified and there is no alternative.

We support the AMRC principles on the use of animals in research.

Barts Charity is now a Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) signatory. When evaluating applicants’ track records and their suitability for delivering proposed research, expert advisers consider the value and impact of all research outputs—not just research publications.

Example research outputs include:

• Preprints
• Training
• Contributions to consortia
• Patents
• Sharing of key datasets
• Software
• Novel assays
• Reagents

When reviewing research publications, expert advisers focus on the scientific content of a paper rather than the journal name or impact factor. They also take into account a broad range of impact measures, including qualitative indicators such as influence on policy and practice.