The British Academy

POLICY ON MONITORING AND EVALUATION

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  1. The principles underpinning the Academy’s policy for monitoring the outcome of awards and evaluating the success of its programmes are that procedures should be cost-effective, mainly qualitative, and deliberately proportionate to the scale of funding on offer.
  2. End of grant reports All recipients of research awards are required to submit an end of grant report. The exact requirements in terms of length and detail required may vary from scheme to scheme, and are set out in the conditions of award for each scheme. The minimum requirements for a report on the use of a grant are:
    • account of research carried out
    • identification of advances in knowledge or understanding resulting from the research
    • details of publications/other dissemination
    • financial statement of costs incurred with evidence of expenditure (not relevant for salary-only awards paid on invoice)
    • confirmation of deposit of digital resources, or waiver (where relevant)
  3. Assessment of reports: Reports on research are sent out to assessors within the Fellowship for evaluation. Holders of grants of more than one year’s duration are required to submit annual progress reports for approval before subsequent instalments of grant are released. Reports on conference grants are scrutinised within the office and any queries forwarded to assessors. Reports on Academy Research Projects are assessed by the Projects sub-Committee, and each Academy Research Project is, in addition, rigorously reviewed every five years. Reports on research funded through the International Policy Committee are scrutinised by the office and any queries forwarded to assessors.
  4. Reports are graded on the scale satisfactory/unsatisfactory/further information required. A research report must have been classified as satisfactory before any further applications for funding from the principal investigator are accepted. The Academy deliberately eschews any finer-grained assessment scale of reports in order to maintain the principal of proportionality.
  5. Compliance Reminders are issued to those who have not yet reported three months after the completion date of a grant. Persistent failure to comply with the conditions of award will result in the Academy writing to the Vice-Chancellor of the scholar’s institution, and lead to the possibility of penalty-listing the scholar and members of that institution.
  6. The sanction for non-compliance with the conditions of award is penalty-listing: that is, to disbar, sine die, the scholar concerned from applying to the Academy under any of it grant-giving schemes; and to disbar, for a period of two years, all members of that institution from applying to the Academy under any of its grant-giving schemes. In cases of grants awarded to independent scholars or those who have left academic life without complying with the conditions of award, the sanction is to disbar, sine die, the individual from applying to the Academy under any of its grant-giving schemes. Each awarding Committee will be presented with the details of those scholars who have failed to report, and will decide whether to proceed to the penalty-listing stage. (The procedures are set out in Annexe A.) The Research Committee will receive a periodic statement listing non-compliant individuals who have received funding via any Academy Committee including the Board for Academy-Sponsored Institutes and Societies.
  7. Under the provisions of the Academy’s Financial Memorandum with the DfES, lack of concrete evidence of expenditure constitutes a ‘loss’, and the writing off of any loss (grant) of value greater than £500 requires the consent of the Secretary of State. The Research Committee will periodically receive a list of grants to be written off, before the necessary consent is requested.
  8. Publications Award-holders are required to provide the Academy with bibliographical information of all published outputs resulting from funded research including books, articles and any non-print outputs. One copy of any book resulting from funded research should be presented to the Academy for lodging in its Library, which thereby serves as an archive of research supported by the Academy. Significant digital resources created as a result of research must be offered for deposit with the Arts and Humanities Data Service or Economic and Social Data Service, and compliance will be monitored. Failure to comply, subject to any waiver agreed with the relevant Data Service, will result in penalty-listing (see above).
  9. Impact measures The Academy considers that the value of the research it funds is assessed through rigorous peer review at application stage. Owing to the very large volume of grants awarded (nearly 2,000 awards each year), the relatively small financial cost of the awards, and the pressure on the Academy’s publicly-funded administrative and other resources, there are currently no plans to introduce a formal system of impact measurement such as a citations index.
  10. Evaluation of Programmes The Academy monitors the outcomes of each of its schemes in terms of distribution of applications and awards on a range of criteria including age, gender, institutional affiliation, subject classification, grade awarded, and national base. Additionally, each programme is subject to periodic, usually annual, review by the Committee responsible for its administration. From time to time, a survey of a cohort of applicants may be undertaken (a) to ascertain further information about the progress of research/development of careers initially funded by the Academy; (b) to ensure that the Academy’s schemes are meeting the needs of the academic community in terms of service delivery; and (c) to ensure that the programmes offered by the Academy are judged to add value within the spectrum of public funding available nationally.

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