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Dear Colleague Letter

Growing Research Compliance Support and Service Infrastructure for Nationally Transformative Equity and Diversity

Encourages proposals aimed at enhancing capacity and access to institutional research compliance infrastructure, ensuring adherence to complex research policies and regulations while promoting integrity, security and public trust in research.
Encourages proposals aimed at enhancing capacity and access to institutional research compliance infrastructure, ensuring adherence to complex research policies and regulations while promoting integrity, security and public trust in research.

Dear Colleagues:

Research compliance support infrastructure represents the human and technological resources needed to adhere to institutional, state, national, and international research policies, regulations. and laws. This infrastructure helps ensure research security, protect research subjects, safeguard the integrity and quality of data and research methods, and maintain public trust. It is essential for securing and managing sponsored funding.

Research compliance regulations are complex and constantly evolving. Fostering a culture of compliance within research institutions, in addition to providing related services, can lead to more effective adherence to regulations and requires significant effort and resources. Through the NSF funding opportunity, PD 23-221Y, NSF invites proposals for innovative approaches and ambitious projects that address the gaps, challenges, and opportunities for growth in, and access to, institutional research compliance infrastructure.

GRANTED-aligned project ideas may include but are not limited to capacity, capability, and infrastructure development to ensure compliance in the following areas:

  • Research Security: safeguarding ideas, methods, know-how, and intellectual property and capital (e.g., - export controls, training, cybersecurity hygiene and foreign travel monitoring). Investigators and institutions considering this topic are encouraged to consider the resources available through the NSF Office of the Chief of Research Security Strategy and Policy.
  • Regulatory Compliance: financial conflict of interest, conflict of commitment, bio-safety, laboratory and radiation safety, safe and inclusive fieldwork, and the use of controlled substances.
  • Research Ethics and Integrity: responsible conduct of research, rigor and reproducibility, accountability, and research misconduct.
  • Protection of Research Subjects: ethical treatment of human and animal subjects.
  • Research Data Management: storage, findability, accessibility, interoperability, and re-usability.

GRANTED-aligned project ideas may also focus on:

  • Innovation in compliance support provision including organizational structures, functions, and governance;
  • Development of pathways into the research compliance workforce, including curriculum development, certification, and other means to attract and retain talent into this essential part of the research enterprise;
  • Development and testing of new roles/positions that specialize in research compliance sectors or that support research compliance activities broadly;
  • Development of programs/resources that streamline compliance processes or automate documentation to mitigate the administrative workload of research compliance management activities.
  • Research on the research compliance sectors (regulatory compliance, research integrity, protection of research subjects, research ethics, and research data management) of the research enterprise. Investigators and institutions interested in studying research security should watch for the Research-on-Research Security (RoRS) solicitation to be offered by the NSF Office of the Chief Research Security Strategy and Policy.

Proposals may take the form of research, implementation,and evaluation studies as well as planning, and conferences and workshops. Research and evaluation studies should ask hypothesis-driven questions that seek respectively to generate new knowledge or determine the efficacy and impact of current practices related to research compliance. Implementation studies will develop and test models designed to transform the compliance capacity and culture of an institution. Concept outlines are required to submit planning proposals. Concept outlines may be submitted to GRANTED@nsf.gov. Investigators interested in submitting a GRANTED-aligned Research Coordination Networks (RCN) proposal to build research compliance network capacity regionally and / or nationally should refer to the RCN program solicitation. All types of studies should plan to contribute to the growing body of knowledge on research compliance.

Regardless of the type, proposals must be prepared and submitted in accordance with the guidance in the NSF Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG), Chapter II. To ensure a geographically broad portfolio, institutions and organizations located in EPSCoR jurisdictions are particularly encouraged to apply.

Inquiries about this DCL and questions about the submission of proposals should be directed to  GRANTED@nsf.gov. Additional information about the GRANTED initiative can be found at https://new.nsf.gov/funding/initiatives/broadening-participation/granted.

Sincerely,

Rebecca Keiser, Ph.D.
Chief of Research Security and Strategy
Office of the Director (OD)

Alicia J. Knoedler, Ph.D., CRA 
Head, Office of Integrative Activities (OIA)

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