Research Support Fund: 2024 - 2025

About the Research Support Fund Program (RSF): Individual research awards cover the direct costs of research, but research institutions bear the costs of supporting their overall research activity. The RSF assists Canadian postsecondary institutions and their affiliated research hospitals and institutes with the expenses associated with managing the research funded by the three federal research granting agencies:

• Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR);
• Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC); and
• Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

These costs are called the indirect costs of research, defined as the operational costs that underpin an institution’s research activities (i.e., heating, lighting, ethics reviews, facilities for animals used in research, management of intellectual property, environmental assessment and safety compliance). The services that give rise to indirect costs are institutionally based and are not specific to individual research grants.

Eligible institutions receive an annual grant through the fund to help pay for a portion of the central and departmental administrative costs related to federally funded research.

Affiliated Organizations: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives- Manitoba

What costs does the program support?

• research facilities
• research resources
• management and administration of the institution's research enterprise
• regulatory requirements and accreditation
• intellectual property and knowledge mobilization

Examples of RSF Investment at UW

Research management software: We're upgrading our research management software to better serve researchers! 

Library: The Library supports researchers in many ways, including educating researchers on Open Access practices and investing in Open Access infrastructure, including Erudit/Coalition Publi.ca, Scoap3 and our Institutional Repository, WinnSpace. These investments benefit the UW community by promoting trustworthy and respected open access resources to our faculty and students, and supporting the infrastructure that sustains them. 

Staff: As the University’s research funding in the past decade has tripled, more and more staff are needed. New research support staff include staff to support research-related infrastructure projects, a research-focused lawyer and legal assistant, and staff dedicated to providing research program development specifically focused on equity, diversity, inclusion, and decolonization practices.

 Objectives for 2024-2025 RSF Grant