Contract negotiation

Depending on the type of funder and the scheme involved you might have an opportunity to make some clarifications before a decision is made:

• many research council schemes provide you with feedback from the external peer reviewers and allow you to provide factual responses to their comments
• some funders will just respond with a "yes" or "no" and the ‘negotiation' could be as simple as accepting the grant offer
• others may come back positively but with some suggested changes and a proposed (invariably) lower budget offer.

For commercial funders, after an agreement in principle, there can often be a protracted series of discussions around the price, scope and intellectual property issues in the project.

For all but the simplest of interactions you are strongly advised to contact your research office for advice and potentially to negotiate on your behalf.

When the terms of the project are agreed there will be a signature requirement of some sort, this will need to be from a legal signatory (or someone with delegated authority) from your institution.  It is unlikely to be you or your head of department; it will be someone in the central part of your institution - check with your research office.

Have you already secured funding for your project? Visit the post-award pages.