General Research Fund (GRF) - FAQ

The General Research Fund (GRF) aims to supplement universities’ own research support to researchers who have achieved or have the potential to achieve excellence

• Biology & Medicine
• Business Studies
• Engineering
• Humanities, Social Sciences
• Physical Sciences

• Only academic staff members whose conditions of employment meet all the following requirements are eligible for applying for RGC grants as Principal Investigator (PI):
  1. having a full-time¹ appointment in the university proper² of UGC-funded universities;
  2. being at Staff Grades from 'A' to 'I' ³ (i.e. from 'Professor' to 'Assistant Lecturer');
  3. being primarily engaged in and spending at least 80% of time in degree or higher degree work⁴ at the university proper; and
  4. salary being wholly funded⁵ by the university proper.
  
  ¹ Part-time staff and staff holding honorary appointments are excluded.
  ² Excluding schools/arms of continuing education and professional training and other analogous outfits.
  ³ Polytechnic staff grades are excluded.
  ⁴ A Project Investigator who is / will be seconded to work full-time or part-time at the two Innovation and Technology (I&T) clusters (Health@InnoHK and AIR@InnoHK) at the Hong Kong Science Park; or to conduct research in a university or a research institute / body / agency in the Mainland / overseas jurisdiction, is still considered eligible to apply for the GRF.
  ⁵ Staff who are receiving income from paid appointments outside the university proper do not satisfy this requirement

• Visiting staff will only be eligible if they have a full-time appointment in the university proper covering at least one year or the duration of the project, whichever is the longer. Staff supported by external research grants6 are however not eligible. 

• As a transitional measure, academic staff who are engaged in non-degree programmes which are still funded by the UGC may also apply as the PI. Eligible staff in this category must be wholly funded from the General Funds of the university concerned. This arrangement would continue until such time when the relevant programmes are no longer funded by the UGC. Cases of an exceptional nature (including circumstances not covered by the above rules) will be considered by the RGC on a case-by-case basis.

There is no eligibility requirement on Co-I.

• PIs submit full proposal
• Optional internal/external review
• Optional editing service
• Formal submission of full proposal (online mode)
• Formal submission of full proposal (paper mode)
• Proposal update

• Research Ethics Traning Certificate
  i. Staff members are required to present the certificate(s) of passing the ethics test(s) before they could apply for any internal or external grants. For details, please visit the Research Ethics Training Website at https://www.research-ethics.cuhk.edu.hk/orktsResearch/.
  
  
• Undertaking made by Grant Applicant 
  
  
• VeriGuide
  i. VeriGuide Originality Reports should be endorsed by the respective Panels in the VeriGuide system before the applications are submitted to the Office of Research and Knowledge Transfer Services (ORKTS) for vetting.
  ii. Scanning of the applications should be done during both the application stage and the proposal update.
  iii. All full-time academic staff can now have free access to the VeriGuide scanning service (available at: http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/veriguide) by entering their Staff IDs and CWEM passwords.

There is no institutional quota for this scheme.

• Threshold Limits for Applications
  • The lower threshold limits for applications are $150,000 for projects in the fields of Biology & Medicine, Engineering and Physical Sciences, and $100,000 for projects in the fields of Business Studies and Humanities & Social Sciences.
  • The budget for the proposals in the field of Biology & Medicine and Engineering will be capped at $1,200,000. Proposals costing more than $1,200,000 will still be considered but they must be supported by strong justifications. This budget cap is applicable to Biology & Medicine and Engineering Panels only.
    
    
• Project Duration
  • Projects to be funded from the GRF should normally last for no more than three years except for applications for longer-term research grant, the objective of which is to cater for projects with a research objective(s) that can only be achieved in a time span of four to five years.

• Supporting Staff
• Equipment
• Outsourcing of Research Work Outside Hong Kong
• General Expenses
• Conference Expenses
• Relief Teacher
• Research Experience for Undergraduate Students
• High-performance Computing Services
• Research-related Software Licence / Dataset
• For the items/costs are chargeable to an RGC grant, please refer to the "Guidelines on Accounting Arrangements for RGC Grants" for details

If PIs opt to submit without vetting by ORKTS, ORKTS will proceed the Research Panel endorsed application to University's endorsement and submit to the RGC for review. The processing time is around four days.

• Academic quality/merit
  i. scientific and scholarly merit of the proposal;
  ii. qualifications and track record of the (principal) investigator(s);
  iii. originality;
  iv. feasibility within the time-scale of the proposal.
• University’s commitment;
• Contribution to academic/professional development (where applicable);
• Potential for social, cultural or economic application; and
• Availability of, and potential for, non-RGC funding.
• Academic quality/merit is the overriding criterion in evaluating research projects when others are accorded equal weight. In considering grant applications, the RGC will also take cognizance of alternative sources of funding available because some subject areas will attract more private funding than others

PI if wish to request for excluding some experts from reviewing their applications, please submit a signed letter with attention to RGC, basic project info (ref. no., project title, PI), details of potential reviewers (name, affiliation, contact details).

The results will be announced in late June of the following year (e.g. in late June 2021).

External review service fee

Editing services will be at individual Research Panels' discretion. PIs may contact the Research Panel concerned for editing services.