BMS Research Support

Do you have plans to establish an international collaboration or to work with partner organisations in an international consortium?

Then it is compulsory to fill out one of the "Checklist Knowledge Security" well in advance of submission of the proposal. This also applies when you are submitting a grant within a consortium, e.g. for a Horizon-call, for an EDF call, for an NWO call, in which non-EU partners participate. Information provided by you via the "Knowledge Security Checklists" enable the Team to carry out an initial risk assessment. It only takes 5 minutes to start the procedure. The earlier you fill out the checklist, the better it is. The Knowledge Safety Team (KST) is ready to assist you throughout the entire process.

Knowledge Safety and Sanctioned collaborations

Please note that restrictions on collaborations and partnerships apply to certain countries. For more information, visit the page "Restrictions - Search by country".

GRANTS SUPPORT

The grant & project advisor for BMS faculty is Sofia Mutlu-Numansen. She can support in linking your research ideas to grant opportunities, building a consortium, and editing your proposal drafts. She is your first contact person for anything research grant related. It is important to contact her from the moment you think of applying for a grant. This way she can have an overview of who is applying for what within BMS, and can link people to each other and support more pro-actively. Sofia works closely together with the Grants Office at central level (SBD-office) and other grant support officers all over the university. 

Note: for questions regarding educational grants (e.g., Comenius), go to the BMS Teaching Academy. For questions specifically regarding Erasmus+, go to Janke Rademakers (Coordinator Internationalisation in Research).

An overview of recent calls is available on the SBD news page. In addition, an overview of health related calls can be found on the TechMed intranet. SBD has organized and recorded many infosessions, these recordings can be found here. Furthermore, you can search for funding opportunities in a new system for finding funding: Research Connect yourself. 

PERSONAL GRANTS SUPPORT BMS

Personal grants are bottom-up and researcher-driven grants that enable researchers to strengthen their scientific career and conduct projects in their own line of research. Through such projects, researchers can explore new opportunities and directions within their field, which in turn can lead to new ambitious research projects.

Personal grants are often seen as prestigious seals to individual research careers, especially for early- or mid-career researchers. And, while several developments within the scientific community point to an increasing focus on Team Science, one can easily argue that enabling (young) talent to apply for personal grants can be considered a team effort as well. In fact, being successful in the highly competitive arena of personal grant programs, requires a lot of time, effort, and help from others. Therefore, the BMS faculty finds it important to additionally invest in supporting researchers with the acquisition of personal grants, next to the already existing support from the SBD-Grants Office.

Timeline for Personal Grants

Below you will find a short overview of personal grants aimed at different stages in researchers’ careers. Importantly, extension clauses apply to all grants for parents, and to most on grounds of training, care responsibilities, or sick leave, supporting efforts to increase diversity and inclusiveness through these programs. You can check your eligibilty for NWO and ERC yourself. 

EMBEDDING GUARANTEE VENI & VIDI

NWO will ask candidates for an 'embedding guarantee' in their application for Veni and Vidi funding. In other words, researchers can only submit applications for Veni and Vidi funding with the support of their Department & Section Chair and the BMS Faculty Board.  

EMBEDDING GUARANTEE VENi and vidi

Requests for a Veni embedding guarantee need to be submitted by the Department chair to the Faculty board before 31 May for VIDI the deadline is 8 September. The BMS procedure for requesting a VENI and VIDI embedding guarantee by the Faculty Board:

1.      Section chair and candidate: agree with the candidate’s project proposal, and taking into account the consequences of grant acquirement for the section (i.e. in terms of the employment contract and time/topic dedication), and how the proposal is aligned with the BMS Research focus. Subsequently, the Section chair aligns with the Department chair on candidate(s). 

2.      Department chair sends (BEFORE 31 May (VENI) or 8 September (VIDI)) an email (entitled 'Embedding guarantee [name candidate]' to 'BMS dean', cc to: Section chair, candidate, and, Sofia Mutlu-Numansen. 

The email explicitly states:
- section & department chair's consent with the candidate's project proposal, 
- a statement that they both take into account the consequences of grant acquirement for the department/section (i.e. in terms of employment contract and time/topic dedication. Please discuss employment consequences explicitly with the HR advisor of your section to avoid unpleasant surprises);
- a statement that the candidate will be allowed time to write the full proposal.
- a quarter A4 motivation how the VENI/VIDI proposal is aligned with the BMS Research focus (we need this input to draft the guarantee);
- please attach CV of the candidate and a short (about 300 words) summary of the proposal. Instead, a concept of the pre-proposal is also sufficient.

3.      After the Faculty Board meeting end June (VENI) or September (VIDI), a confirmation email will be sent including the positive/negative advice to chairs and candidate, and i.a. the embedding guarantee.

4.      Around the NWO submission pre-proposal date we ask the candidates to reply (to all) to the received confirmation email and attach his/her completed pre-proposal. This is to check correspondence with the earlier received documents on which the embedding guarantee was based, and for our archive. 

ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA FOR PERSONAL GRANTS

* NOTE: possibility for extension to the time limit for Veni, Vidi, Vici applications on the grounds of care responsibilities, pregnancy, illness, and/or training in a clinical specialism. See FAQ NWO. Biological mothers who have given birth to one or more children are granted a standard extension of eighteen months per child. Other parents (fathers and non-biological mothers) are granted a standard extension of six months per child that is part of the applicant’s household

BUDGETING PROJECT APPLICATIONS (CALCULATION)

For support on costing and pricing in the application phase of your project contact Martin van Ooijen or Renate Masselink-Veldschoten (based on the department you work in). For more information see BMS financial affairs intranet and check who you need to get in contact with. 

ENGAGING IN A COOPERATION WITH FOREIGN PARTNERS? CHECK EU SANCTION LIST!

We make you aware of the existence of the ‘EU sanction list’
Pay attention to this list and restrictions, before engaging in a cooperation agreement, contract or license agreement. The UT may not be allowed to collaborate with people/institutions in countries as mentioned on this list, depending on the specific restrictions. Ask our legal advisors for advice.
It is particularly of interest on relations with people/partners in countries that are on the sanction list and responsibilities for those who want to work with partners on what is classified as ‘Dual-Use research’ (goods, software, and technology that can be used for both civilian and military applications). Dual-use research can also refer to knowledge transfer, workshops, training and training materials, software, materials, sensors, and other equipment. For cooperation with international partners on dual-use research, and export a permit is required. European guidelines for research misuse.

In case of doubts or questions, please contact the BMS coordinator internationalization; Inge van Haare  

HR EXCELLENCE IN RESEARCH

 The European Commission recognizes with the 'HR Excellence in Research Award' the institutions which make progress in aligning their human resources policies to the 40 principles of the Charter & Code, based on a customized action plan/HR strategy. The implementation of the Charter & Code principles by research institutions render them more attractive to researchers looking for a new employer or for a host for their research project.
The UT is allowed to use the 'HR excellence in research' logo. We encourage you to indicate this when acquiring for (European)funding.  

THE BMS LAB

THE BMS LAB can support in project acquisition (technology, data), Hardware/software tools, Lab facilities, Data Management, Computing and Storage, Development, Surveys

Get in contact with the Managing Director: Dr. ir. Jan Willem van t'Klooster  or with THE BMS LAB

BMS STRATEGIC RESEARCH FUND 

The BMS Faculty Board has reserved an amount of €300k for the BMS Research Themes jointly to support researchers’ collaborative grant acquisition activities, especially where these involve research consortia. The Strategic Research Fund aims to support applications for collaborative grants and other strategic acquisition activities (e.g., contributions to the content of new calls, agenda setting in Brussels).

WHO CAN APPLY? 

The fund is open to all BMS researchers, juniors and seniors. 

WHAT CAN BE FUNDED, TO WHAT VALUE? 

The funding aims to provide support mainly for the following activities: 

• Preparation of a grant application targeted at a specific call, which is in line with the BMS Research Strategy.
• Consortium-building activities in readiness for anticipated calls.

In particular, the fund supports the following activities:

• Professional external project management/proposal writing services on a consultancy basis
• Event costs for hosting meetings with collaborators.
• Workshop costs, e.g., to engage regional partners.
• Graphic design and language editing
• Individual proofreading of grant applications (only when not covered by the Grants Office).
• Travel costs related to Horizon Europe brokerage events

This list is not exhaustive, applications may also request support for other activities related to grant acquisition. Please note that the purpose of the call is to support grant acquisition, not the financing of research as such.

The Theme Chairs coordinate the Fund. We have implemented a flexible and ‘rapid-response’ process to ensure that applicants can ask for various types of support while receiving a fast answer so they can respond rapidly to funding opportunities. In addition, we strive for fairness in distribution of the Fund across research themes, departments, and researchers. 

For applications of more than €20.000, or deemed ‘high-risk’ by the Theme Chairs, the Faculty Board will decide based on advice from the Theme Chairs. 

BMS stimulates Open Science, as from 2019 the Faculty Board of BMS made OA funds available. The BMS Open Access fund 2026 is available. Noting, however, that funds could be depleted before the end of the year. As APCs still increase, and because of (unforeseen) BTW costs on top of the invoice, we decided to raise the reimbursement.
BMS will reimburse (partly) publication costs for (high-quality) open-access journal articles or books/book chapters accepted in the period January-December 2026. Reimbursement depends on the criteria (see above link) and needs to be requested and paid by the section first before the end of 2026.

# 2nd call 2026 CLOSED

Sometimes, opportunities arise in your PhD project that may benefit your professional development, but which are not accounted for beforehand. Often, sections cannot financially support these (unexpected) opportunity-driven activities out of the planned PhD-project budget. In case the activities not only result in the scientific-career growth of you as a PhD but also positively contribute to the knowledge/expertise of our faculty BMS, you can apply for (partial) funding from the BMS PhD Fund. We have around 2 submission dates during the year.

Ethical Review of Research at BMS

The Faculty of BMS requires ethical assessment for all research involving human participants and/or sensitive data about individuals, groups, or organizations. This ensures ethically responsible research practice.

Research is submitted for ethics review via:

UT-wide Ethics Review

The UT research ethics policy provides the framework for the ethical review of research conducted at or on behalf of the university. Research is reviewed by one of four domain ethics committees: Humanities & Social Sciences (HSS), Computer & Information Sciences (CIS), Natural Sciences & Engineering Sciences (NES), and Geo-Information Sciences (GEO). While most BMS research falls within HSS domain, some projects may be better suited to another committee, e.g. cyber research with CIS and technology-related health research to NES.

Health-Related Research Support

Research falling under the Medical Research Involving Human Subjects Act (WMO) must be reviewed by an accredited Medical Research Ethics Committee (MREC). The TechMed Centre supports university researchers with (non)WMO applicability, medical-ethical review preparations, MDR compliance, and health technology implementation. Get in contact.
Medical or health-related research that does not fall under the WMO may still require review by one of the UT domain ethics committees.

Archiving informed consent forms

BMS faculty has a procedure for archiving paper informed consent forms collected during research projects involving human participants. Please check our information on how to use this procedure. Scanning informed consent forms by yourself is not legally sufficient!

Research Data Management Policy 

The UT Research Data Management (RDM) Policy provides the framework for managing research data at UT. Find practical information and guidance on the RDM service portal. BMS researchers can also use the BMS General Guideline on Ethics, Privacy & RDM. 

As a researcher, you are responsible for securely storing, documenting, sharing and archiving your research data. A Data Management Plan (DMP) helps you plan how you will manage your data throughout your project. Prepare your DMP at the start of your project and update it when needed.

For PhD candidates, preparing a DMP is part of the mandatory Data Management Bootcamp. 

Funder requirements 

A DMP is also an important part of grant applications and research projects. Funders may require you to include a data management section in your research proposal. If your project receives funding from organisations such as NWO, ZonMw or the EU, you must submit a DMP.

You can use the UT-DMP template to prepare your DMP. Funders such as NWO, ZonMw and the EU accept this template. More information and guidance can be found on the RDM service portal. 

RDM at BMS 

BMS researchers can find practical guidance on the RDM service portal. This includes information about storing, sharing, archiving, publishing and making your research data FAIR. 

The BMS Data Stewards can also advise you on these aspects. 

BMS-specific resources 

• UniShare provides a secure way to share and synchronise data with external research partners. BMS covers the costs of UniShare for BMS employees. Find out how to apply on the UniShare application procedure page. 
• Researchers are also encouraged to reuse existing datasets where appropriate. Explore available datasets or find UT resources for finding and using scientific information. 

For BMS Students 

The BMS Lab provides a secure environment for storing your research data. As a student, you can also use the RDM Guidebook and Checklist for practical guidance on managing research data, including personal and sensitive data. 

The UT Privacy website provides information about the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (the European privacy law), including GDPR terminology and definitions, the registration of reseach involving the processing of personal data at the UT, guidance on the appropriate use of personal data in research, an overview of privacy-related agreements (Data Processing Agreements, Joint Controller Agreements or Data Sharing/Transfer Agreements), information on Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA's), a pre-DPIA form, and answers to FAQ. The website also explains how to report a data breach. 

In addition, researchers and students within the BMS Faculty frequently work with personal data. For this reason, the BMS DataLab website provides additional practical guidance tailored to BMS research that is not available elsewhere.

Get in contact with the Privacy Contact Person (PCP) BMS, BMS datastewards or UT DPO. 

BMS Datalab webpage sets out how to handle research data safely, legally & ethically correct, and methodically soundly.

The BMS Information specialists (Marit, Kasandra, and Julia), infospecs-bms@utwente.nl) can support you on topics like:
- Information Literacy;
- Starting a Systematic Literature Review and existing supporting tools;
- Purchase literature;
- Reference Managers;
- Choosing a journal to publish in using the UT Journal Browser;
- Increasing visibility and academic impact of your research;
- Open Access;
 - Copyright;

UT support OPEN SCIENCE

Goal 100% Open Access!

Our aim is to make 100% of our research publication output Open in some form. How can we all contribute to this goal?
14,000 journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) don’t charge APCs, and UT authors can publish Open Access at a full discount in more than 10,000 journals, thanks to discount agreements between the Universities of The Netherlands (UNL) and publishers. You can find which journals are part of the agreement through the UT Journal Browser.

But what if the publisher charges costs for Open Access?

As a BMS author, you have several options to cover the cost of open-access publishing:

1.      BMS authors can receive a reimbursement of up to €2,500 per article per year from the faculty’s Open Access Fund for publishing in a DOAJ-listed journal. Journals are only listed when they meet the DOAJ requirements. 

2.      Are you publishing about NWO-funded research? NWO covers APCs when these are included in the budget of the project proposal and for publishing in a DOAJ-listed journal. NWO also covers the cost of publishing a book (chapter) about NWO-funded research. NWO’s Open Access Book Publication Fund can cover the cost (up to €10.000). Here is more info.

Preregistration

Preregistration means registering your research plan, including your hypotheses and analysis methods, before you collect or analyse data. It helps you work more transparently, reduce bias, and avoid questionable research practices such as p-hacking and HARKing.

By preregistering your study, you make your research more open and reproducible. The preregistration receives a timestamp and can often be assigned a DOI. You can also use an embargo if you do not want to make your research plan public immediately.

The BMS faculty recommends OSF, AsPredicted, PROSPERO and ClinicalTrials.gov, depending on your study design.

Need help? Contact the BMS information specialists at infospecs-bms@utwente.nl

OPEN DATA

Funders (e.g. ZonMW, NWO) also expect you to archive your research data belonging to a publication or a dataset belonging to the whole project and make it Open or FAIR. 

For questions related to Open Data, you can reach out to our Data Stewards.

Reuse
The aim of Open Science is that researchers reuse other parties' research data and services where possible and make their own data available as far as possible. 
Think about reuse of existing datasets in your research. Check also UT Research support for more data sources.

PURE Research Information is the University of Twente's research information system. It enables researchers to showcase their research output (publication, datasets, software), profiles, and activities, prizes/awards, press/media contributions, and projects, increasing the visibility, accessibility, and impact of their work. This information is published on the public research portal.

For more information about the Research Information System (RIS) Pure, visit the UT RIS website (available via the UT Service Portal). There you will find, among other resources, the Quick Reference Cards (QRCs) and the FAQ within RIS Pure.

THE BMS LAB provides support on: Hardware/software tools, Lab facilities, Advice in using tools/facilities, Advice in how to implement technologies into education, Support for project acquisition (technology, data), Data Management, Computing, Data processing and Storage, Development, Surveys, Knowledgebase on algorithms/equipment use/data processing (e.g. Audio transcription)/procedures.

The aim of Behavioural Data Science Incubator (BDSI) is to spark innovation and collaboration in data science that involves human behaviour: to accelerate and inspire data-driven research within BMS that uses statistical models, machine learning, or simulation techniques.
Check how BDSI can support your research.

The test subject pool system SONA can be used if you need student participants for your research sample. You can recruit participants for your research via SONA. To include your study in this system, you first need to submit your research project to the BMS Ethics Committee via the web application. As part of the web application, you will be asked if you wish to make use of the Sona test-subject system (Sona Systems) to recruit participants to carry out your research. For more information on the procedure and rules for the recruitment of participants read the SONA website.

The Sona test-subject system is coordinated by the research secretary’s office (Shaunie Schutten, Ravelijn room 3244, tel. (053) 489 1291, email: test-subjects-bms@utwente.nl). 

Recruitment of participants 

As of June'2023 UT has a website 'Meedoen met Onderzoek' (Dutch) for people outside the UT to check if there are research projects searching for participants, and if people like to be informed on the research in order to decide if they want to participate. You as a researcher/student can contact Renske van Wijk via meedoen@utwente.nl to inform if your research project can be shared on that page to help you recruit participants. 

The Methodology Shop supports both students and staff with practical guidance on research methods and data analysis. Whether you are designing a study, working with a dataset, or looking for help with statistical analyses in R or SPSS, the website offers useful step-by-step information and resources. For more specific questions, online consultations are also available.

The methodology shop is an initiative by the BMS section of Cognition, Data, and Education (CODE)
Contact: methodologyshop@utwente.nl.

BMS only admits external PhD candidates that have a fit with the BMS Research Strategy and where the supervisory team has the capacity to offer enough guidance to the new candidate. Additionally, BMS complies with UT-wide requirements on Knowledge Safety and the PhD charter, doctoral regulations and tuition fee policy. This is captured in the BMS External Phd registration policy (2026).

Therefore, the registration of any external PhD candidate at BMS, must be pre-approved by the Dean. The anticipated promotor can start this process by filling out the Form to Request Registration of External PhD Candidate and send it to ext-phd-bms@utwente.nl.

At a glance: PhD registration process at BMS

The process from request to registration can take up to 4 weeks.

For more information for PhDs working at BMS and our BMS PhDs for PhDs initiative, see the BMS PhD Portal (Intranet).

And check the special News (and Events) page for BMS PhDs as well, for the announcement of discounts, grants, workshops and more.

Impact at BMS

BMS has developed the Position Paper on Impact to give define to the concept of "impact" for our community and give vocabulary to reflect on one's impact. Some theory presented in this paper is also featured below.

Impact Pathway and sphere of control

Impact is less about what you do, and more about the effects of your work. Who or what gets better because of your work? The Impact Pathway is a useful model to elaborate on this. An impact pathway tries to bridge what you do (activities) to what a future state where something has changed (impact). You can see this illustrated in the image below, where the steps can be described as:

• Inputs: What academics need (e.g., a grant).
• Activities: What academics do (e.g., literature review, interviews, lab work, surveys).
• Outputs: The products of research (knowledge and tangible “products”, like a publication or prototype)
• Outcomes: People are aware of and are using the outputs (e.g., a healthcare provider using your proposed way of working, or your theory becoming used in a field)
• Impact: effect on… (going beyond usage: what is actually changing? Is the “use” sustained? Who benefits?)

When using an impact pathway, you ideally start at the desired impact and then work your way back. Sometimes multiple paths contribute to the same impact. Think of an overarching envisioned impact and multiple work packages that contribute to this. Or how your education and research with make an impact but sometimes in different ways. As such, you could also “stack” pathways that all lead to a same impact.

Figure: a model impact pathway, adapted from the Erasmus+ Impacttool

But you can't control everything! Sometimes researchers feel that they are solely responsible for their impact, but this is not the case. The further you are in the impact pathway, the less control you have. This is visualised below (you may recognise this from the NWO "Working with an Impact Plan" module). For example, you are in control of the contents of your publication, intervention, or prototype, but who is citing/using this, is something you can influence but not control. When talking about future impact, you can describe how you set up your work so that the chance of future impact is high.

Figure: spheres of control, influence and interest

Impact Case

Impact is often captured in a narrative, which is underpinned by relevant indicators. One way to do this is to take the Impact Pathway as a framework and build your narrative around that. You can either look back at your past impact, or plan for future impact. To guide you in developing your own impact case, a template has been developed, see below.

Every project is different, so a generic set of indicators does not exist. Instead, one can opt for context-sensitive indicators that match well with the goal of that specific project (per the Impact by Design concept). The Impact Indicator Framework provides a wide set of generic indicators that can help you find indicators that fit your work and your narrative. 

Contact

At BMS, Tom Boogerd is the main contact point for any impact-related questions, workshop requests or when you have ideas you wish to share (feel welcome!).

Feel free to reach out to set up a custom workshop for your research group, there are many possibilities.

ir. T.C. Boogerd (Tom) Policy Advisor Research (BMS) & Program Manager Recognition and Rewards (UT)

+31534898694

 t.c.boogerd@utwente.nl

Building: Ravelijn 3119

Personal page

Internal Support Offer

The table below tries to match more specific support needs to internal UT support offer: