British Ecological Society - Synthesis Grants

Overview

Synthesis grants

Fast-tracking innovative and impactful research by contributing £30k towards the formation of new two-year synthesis groups.

Objectives

• Synthesis is a growing scientific research method where scientists garner new knowledge and insights from existing data, using a hypothesis and question-led approach.
• Synthesis outputs should help inform decision-making by various relevant stakeholders, such as policymakers, regulators and funding agencies.
• This grant aims to bring together diverse interdisciplinary groups of 8-15 individuals to focus on data analysis and synthesis while fostering collaboration and mentoring opportunities.
• Networks are encouraged across universities, research institutes, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), industry and government departments, and groups should include a mix of career stages and backgrounds. They ask that working groups are not formed entirely of members from academic institutions.
• Every effort should be made to ensure long-lasting connections and networks are established far beyond the project’s funded length. Examples of this include producing open synthesis datasets and synthesis publications.
• The groups should meet using a hybrid model, with regular formal meetings.
  • Two in-person meetings must be held at the kick-off and conclusion of the project. In-person meetings should rotate among different institutions to ensure mobility, and to maximise the opportunity each meeting should last for a minimum 3 days.
  • All other meetings should be held virtually, capitalising on advances made during the pandemic using remote meetings software (such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Webex, Google Meet, etc).

Read more about one of the recent Synthesis projects they have funded here.

Eligibility and conditions

• The main applicant must have BES membership. It is not a requirement for all members of the working group to have membership.
• The groups must have a diverse mix of members at different career stages, a diversity of institutions and have international participation.
• Applicants are responsible for obtaining all relevant permits and permissions required to undertake the proposed work.
• They will not award more than one grant to any one applicant in any one year, and no more than three grants in any five year period.
• Failure to submit a satisfactory report at the end of a grant will mean the grantee is ineligible to apply for further grants.

All groups need to demonstrate principles of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in their composition. To explicitly address this, at least 30% of participants should be from the Global South and balanced by gender and ethnicity.

Working groups will be required to promote the Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reusability (FAIR) principles, since a central part of synthesis science requires assembling existing data and the creation of new databases.

All group members must meet in person at the project’s start and end. Smaller group meetings during the duration of the two year project is a reasonable expense.

Please consider your carbon footprint when arranging meetings. Meetings can be held at a conference for example, where group members were already planning to attend.

The contact details and experience levels for the group members must be provided as part of the application process.

Value

Synthesis groups can claim up to £30,000 over two years for groups of 8-15 participants.

The size of the award allows for travel and subsistence to attend physical meetings, as well as facility and venue hire and computing costs to support working group activity within the hosting institutions, which do not have dedicated facilities and may require additional costs to enable hosting a working group onsite.

Funding can be used to support Global South ecologists in purchasing equipment such as laptops.

The lead applicant will be awarded all the funding. The lead applicant must state how the funding is administered across the group and institutions as part of the application process.

Funding can be used to contribute towards publishing a paper as a result of this project. The paper does not have to be published in a BES journal. BES members receive discounts on publishing costs:

• 25% discount on Article Processing Charges (APCs) when publishing open access in Functional Ecology, Journal of Animal Ecology, Journal of Applied Ecology and Journal of Ecology. 
• 20% discount when publishing in our fully open access journal’s People and Nature, Ecological Solutions and Evidence and Methods in Ecology and Evolution.
• 10% discount when publishing in Ecology and Evolution

Although data collection should be limited for a Synthesis Group, funding can be used for employment to provide gap-filling data collection on the ground in Global South countries.

Funding is not available to cover a working group member’s time.

It is a condition of all grants that our contribution is acknowledged in any publication or publicity that may arise from this study. Please notify us of any publications supported by this funding.