Letter dated 14 April 2009 from Secretary, Research Grants Council to
Heads of UGC-funded Institutions
Strategic Public Policy Research (SPPR) 2009/10

I am writing to invite applications for the "Strategic Public Policy Research (SPPR) 2009/10 exercise" sponsored by the Central Policy Unit (CPU) of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and to provide details of the procedures to be followed. This exercise runs once a year from 2008-09 to 2011-12.

Background

The promotion of public policy research among local higher education institutions was one of the new initiatives in the 2005 Policy Address. This involves the disbursement of $60 million in three consecutive financial years starting from 2005/06 under a Public Policy Research (PPR) scheme administered by the Research Grants Council (RGC) of the University Grants Committee (UGC). In the 2007/08 Policy Agenda, the Government decided to extend the PPR scheme for four more years (i.e. from 2008/09 - 2011/12) with an annual provision of $20 million.

To support longer term public policy research projects, the CPU has decided to deploy half of the $20 million annual provision to launch a Strategic Public Policy Research (SPPR) Funding Scheme once a year starting from 2008/09. The objective is to facilitate more longer term public policy research and to focus efforts on specific areas. Inter-disciplinary or inter-institutional collaboration is encouraged but not a requirement.

Following the practice adopted for the Collaborative Research Fund, all proposals will be reviewed by external reviewers through the RGC's existing peer review process and the research teams of short-listed proposals will be invited to selection interviews. Applicants are encouraged to have a theoretical component embedded in the projects in addition to the application/policy implications of the grant. To provide information for the evaluation of the proposals on their policy implications, applicants are required to state clearly in the application forms the explicit policy relevance of the proposals to public policy development in Hong Kong. If the application is an inter-institutional collaboration, an effective project management mechanism should be established to oversee and coordinate collaborating research work, and to ensure prudent use of resources.

Quotas of Application

Each institution is only allowed to submit a maximum of TWO proposals in each SPPR exercise.

Electronic Submission

The SPPR Electronic System (SPPRES) is now available for submission of SPPR applications and all applications MUST BE submitted through the electronic system. Applicants may use the electronic system to prepare and submit their applications starting from noon on 16 April 2009.

Apart from the electronic submission, 10 hard copies of the short-listed proposals will still need to be made available for the selection interview. The Secretariat will provide each institution with a CD containing the electronic copies of the short-listed proposals for your printing of the hard copies.

To help reduce the cost of processing and save paper, applicants are requested to keep the length of proposals and attachments to the minimum and institutions should use double-sided printing/photocopying when reproducing hard copies of the form. I would like to reiterate that applicants should comply with the page limits and word limits specified in various sections of the application form. Supporting documents are allowed in Section 17 of the application form to cater for the needs of documents such as letters of collaboration or research ethics/safety approval. Supplementary materials such as research papers, manuscripts, publications or detailed research work are not acceptable. Applications will be disqualified if the proposals are found to have exceeded the allowable page/word limits in various sections or have abused the purpose of the "Supporting Documents" in Section 17 of Part II of the application form.

Explanatory Notes

Applicants must read the Explanatory Notes (SPPR2) carefully before completing the application form. A full set of the application form and Explanatory Notes will be mounted on the RGC Homepage (URL: http://www.ugc.edu.hk/rgc) and can be downloaded for use.

Deadline for Submissions

Applications should reach the UGC Secretariat through the electronic system by 30 June 2009.

Maximum Duration and Funding of Research Projects

Maximum duration and funding for each funded SPPR project are five years and $5 million (including 15% on-costs) respectively.

Research Themes

The applications must be related to the research themes as indicated by the CPU at Annex. Academic quality and the relevance of the proposal to the needs of Hong Kong are the primary considerations in evaluating research proposals.

Date of Selection Interview

The selection interviews for short-listed proposals are tentatively scheduled for 8 / 9 December 2009 and the funding result will be announced around end December 2009.

Funded projects must commence work on or before 30 June 2010. Completion reports should be submitted within nine months of project completion. It is expected that, in general, some results of the research should already be available for access by the public as possible input to policy formulation before submission of the completion reports. Principal Investigators (PIs) of projects should also plan for early release of some results for access by the public midway through the projects.

Access to Government Data & Records

To help investigators in conducting the research, the CPU will perform a liaison role between the Government and PIs. For example, CPU will help PIs gain access to Government data and records and arrange meetings with Government officials. Please contact Miss Patricia W S WOO of the CPU (Tel.: 2810 2378) if such assistance is required.

If access to Government or official data and records is critical to the proposed project, the applicant concerned should provide evidence in the application that the government department(s) or official agency(ies) has/have been approached for approval of access to the related data/records and subsequently provide confirmation of such approval on or before 30 October 2009.

Intellectual property right

The Government and the RGC does not claim copyright or other intellectual property right of the output produced. However, to ensure timely dissemination of the research results for the reference of the Government, PIs are encouraged to pass to the CPU a copy of any disseminable output (be it working paper, report, journal paper, conference paper, books etc.) through the UGC Secretariat (Attn.: Mr Anthony Chan) as soon as it is available. The CPU may circulate these outputs to relevant Bureaux / departments / statutory bodies of the Government for reference. It may also consult PIs concerned on other matters relating to the study, e.g. if it wishes to release such outputs in the public domain.

Acknowledgement

A suitable acknowledgment of the funding from the CPU and RGC should be included in any equipment / facilities purchased and any publication / publicity arising from the work done on a research project funded in whole or in part by the CPU / RGC / UGC. The following format of acknowledgement should be used -

"The work described in this paper (or the equipment / facility) was fully / substantially / partially supported by a grant from the Central Policy Unit of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. e.g. [Institution Name, CityU][Institution Number, 1][Serial Number, 001]-SPPR-[Year of Fund Awarded, 09], e.g. CityU 1001-SPPR-09)"

Research Ethics / Health and Safety Approval

Both the applicants and the institutions are required to indicate on the application forms that appropriate approvals have been or are being obtained for projects involving experiments on human or animal subjects or requiring ethics or health and safety clearance. [Part II Section 14 and Part III Section 2 of SPPR1]. All projects involving human subjects MUST obtain ethics clearance. It is the responsibility of the institutions and the applicants to ensure that the research proposals are carefully reviewed for their compliance with applicable laws, health and safety guidelines and ethical standards. Ethics clearance should be sought for research involving living animals and / or human subjects including those in social science research (e.g. potential physical or psychological harms, discomfort or stress to human participants that a research project might generate, subjects' privacy etc.). These issues, if applicable, should also be addressed properly in the research proposals.

Where such approval is required but has not yet been obtained, the institution should ensure that the approval is submitted to the RGC by 30 October 2009. Otherwise, the RGC will regard this SPPR application as being withdrawn and will stop the processing of the application.

Update of Proposals

Applicants may provide a brief update through the Electronic System on or before 30 October 2009 should there be any significant changes to the applications after submission, including the eligibility of the PIs, modification of scope, budget proposals, personnel, alternative funding obtained and investigator(s)'s relationship with nominated reviewers etc. It should be emphasized that such update should be confined to the above-said changes, and applicants should NOT use the opportunity to revise their proposals substantially. For short-listed proposals, 10 hard copies of the updates are required to be appended to the original proposals and submitted to the Secretariat on 2 December 2009.

Enquiries

If your colleagues have any enquiry about this exercise, please feel free to contact Mr Anthony Chan at 2844 9916 or Mr Brian Lip at 2844 9959.