Assessment process
Eligibility and remit
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) will check Innovator applications for eligibility and remit.
Expert review
Following UKRI eligibility and remit checks, Innovator applications will be subject to distributed peer review (DPR).
In DPR, applicants are also assessors and review other proposals submitted to the same funding opportunity to decide who gets funding. By submitting a proposal, applicants agree to act as reviewers and to have their proposal reviewed by their peers. Please find the DPR Rules and Guidelines in the Additional Information section below. It is important that you read these carefully before applying.
By applying for this scheme, you are consenting to take part in distributed peer review (DPR). Please do not apply for this opportunity if you would prefer not to take part in the DPR process.
Please note that by submitting a proposal, you accept the following terms and conditions:
- all applicants will receive an average of five proposals to review
- the reviewer is expected to carefully read all the assigned proposals, rate them and provide feedback to the applicants following the rules and guidelines
- failing to provide the reviews by the deadline will lead to the automatic rejection of the proposal submitted by the given applicant
By using different reviewer pools, proposals will be assigned to reviewers in such a way that scoring an application has no bearing on the ranking of the reviewer’s own application. See the DPR rules and guidelines in the Annex below.
Allocating resources
Following assessment, applications will be allocated to one of three tiers.
Resources will be allocated to the applications in the top tier as priority, using partial randomisation as required.
Applications in the middle tier may be recommended for resources using partial randomisation.
Resources are allocated until the budget is exhausted throughout the middle tier.
Each review pool will have a separate resource budget, as a proportion of the overall resource budget for the opportunity.
Assessment by experts remains the mainstay of the process and applications must pass a certain threshold to be deemed competitively strong against the assessment criteria.
Therefore, only highly competitive applications will be considered via randomisation.
The UKRI or Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) Delivery team will make the final allocation decision.
Assessment areas
Your application will be assessed against the following areas:
- are the project objectives in scope for the AIRR programme?
- has the project demonstrated how it has the potential to advance current understanding of AI research and innovation, and impact world-leading research, society, the economy or the environment?
- has the project demonstrated how it will contribute to building capacity across the AI ecosystem?
- has the project demonstrated that the AIRR resources requested are appropriate and justified?
- has the project demonstrated that it has identified and evaluated the relevant ethical or responsible research and innovation considerations, including how to manage these considerations?
We reserve the right to modify the assessment process as needed.
What happens if you receive an award offer
If your project application is successful, UKRI will send the project lead a formal offer letter, which will contain:
- the award terms and conditions
- any subsidy notice required
- a link to the online equality monitoring form
When you confirm the equality monitoring form has been completed, the project lead will be emailed a project link from the AIRRPortal.
By logging in to the AIRRPortal and accessing the compute resources, you will have accepted the UKRI terms and conditions.
Important notes
We will not accept requests to significantly delay the award start date.
UKRI and DSIT reserve the right to pause your access to AIRR to allow high priority projects and urgent national requirements to access AIRR.
We will provide as much notice as possible should this occur and work with you to reschedule work appropriately.
