Summary

Note: This Summary will be published on publicly available sites should the project be funded. Please ensure confidential information is not included in this Summary.

The Council has a responsibility to promote the public awareness and understanding of its research areas. The purpose of the Summary is to help publicise the Council's research programme to:

• Opinion-formers and policy makers;

• The general public; and

• The wider research community.

The summary should be written in a style that is accessible to a variety of readers, including the general public.

The summary may cover, for example:

• The principal subject of the research;

• The key aims;

• Where and how the research would be undertaken;

• Who else would be involved; and

This field must be completed using:

• No more than 4000 characters, including spaces, tabs and character returns (2 characters).

• Only the standard Je-S character set; and

• No specialist characters and symbols (e.g. mathematical symbols) because these may not transfer successfully to other computer systems.

• Please note that typing into a text box is not detectable by the system and is regarded as system inactivity. Please remember to save text regularly.

- THE FOLLOWING IS COUNCIL SPECIFIC GUIDANCE -

EPSRC - Specific Guidance

For Senior Media Fellowships the Summary should capture in broad terms the applicant’s proposals for developing their role as a media “explainer” of the science or engineering topics included and make clear what forms of activity are planned.

Note that this summary will be automatically published on EPSRC’s website in the event that a grant is awarded.

MRC - Specific Guidance

Summary: A maximum of 4,000 characters should be used to explain to a lay audience the nature of the proposed research, the prospective outcomes, and the expected benefits in terms of improvement in human health.

Summaries may be used for a variety of functions. As well as being freely available on our web site, they may be used to brief Members of Parliament and journalists and to encourage interest in and answer questions on the work of the MRC amongst health professionals and the general public. When preparing your summary it may help to imagine you are writing for a reader of a middle-market tabloid newspaper. This reader is unlikely to have a detailed scientific knowledge but is used to reading health and medical stories in the paper, including the results of research. Scientific language, where used should be briefly explained in lay language. Please keep sentences short and use short words where possible.

Key issues to address when writing the Summary are:

• What is the scientific or medical context of the research?

• To which disease(s)/ condition(s), if any, is the research relevant?

• What is the research trying to achieve?

• Why is this important?

• Who is carrying out the research?

• How, briefly, is the research to be conducted (i.e. is it a clinical trial? Will it use human samples?)?

MRC reserves the right to edit and amend Summaries.

STFC - Specific Guidance

Ernest Rutherford Fellowships

The summary should be written in a style that is pitched at the level of an undergraduate seminar.

Note that this summary will be automatically published on STFC’s website in the event that a grant is awarded.