Research management

We equip our member charities with guidance to ensure they’re supporting the best research and researchers. 

Quick links:    Research Management: A guide for medical research charities    Guidance on implementing the principles of peer review

We provide more detailed guidance on each of our mandatory requirements below.

Mandatory requirements

Publishing a research strategy

Our member charities are required to publish a research strategy, setting out their priorities in the research they wish to fund and why. A good research strategy is clear, comprehensive and kept under regular review. This guidance outlines the key areas to cover when developing a research strategy.

Working to a conflicts of interest policy

Our member charities are required to have a written policy on how to deal with conflicts of interest in scientific advisory panels. A good policy identifies potential conflicts of interest and sets out how to record and manage them. This guidance contains a model policy that members can adapt to their own organisation’s needs.

Following our five principles of peer review

Peer review is a way of assessing the quality of scientific ideas. Regardless of their size, all our members must use a rigorous peer review process to select which research to fund. Our members must abide by our five principles of peer review when awarding research funding:

• Accountability
• Balance
• Independence
• Rotation
• Impartiality

Implementing our animal research policies

Whether our member charities fund research using animals or whether they focus funding on other areas of medical research, all of them stand together. Our members must...

• Support replacements, refinement and reduction (3Rs) of animals in research through peer review.
• Promote the 3Rs in your terms and conditions
• Publicly support our statement on the use of animal in research.
• Provide us with details on the use of animals in the research they fund during our annual data collection.

This guidance provides on overview for implementing all these policies. Find out more about animal research on this page.

The above mandatory requirements are reviewed at application stage and in our audit of existing members which takes place every five years.

Additional guidance and briefings

It may be helpful to take a look at this list of resources and regulatory bodies associated with best practice in research management.