Research Contracts

The College Hub teams provide support to the academic and professional services community at Birmingham in preparing, reviewing, negotiating and authorising for signature all University research contracts with third parties (external funders, collaborators and service providers).

Contracts for research and associated agreements provide a legally-binding declaration of the obligations of all involved parties as well as ensuring compliance with legislation, University policies and best practice.

Birmingham’s funders and collaborators will usually expect (and often require) a research contract in order to provide their contribution and to pursue a given project / transaction with us. Although contracts are often driven by the need to receive or make payments the main focus should be that they protect the university and academics interests in any collaboration or activity of the University. A contract provides documentary evidence of the University and academic commitments for the purpose of audit and accounting of research activity. They also secure the rights of publication and use of the results and research in future work.

Research contracts come in a variety of sizes, shapes and complexity and can be based on our standard agreements with tailoring to suit the specific needs and also in more bespoke forms for unusual or complex transactions. The contract or agreement provides the basis of each party’s commitment to perform allocated work within an agreed period, to exchange information, data and/ or materials, to pay or be paid. The type of agreement required for a particular situation can be anything from a letter of intent to a fully funded multi party collaboration agreement with commercial parties or international clinical trial agreements.

If you are unsure as to whether your contract should be dealt with by us or not, get in touch with us and we will advise you.