Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A 25,000 GBP one-year seed grant to generate preliminary data is a single-year project.
- Is an instance
A 12-month industry SRA for a defined preclinical study is a single-year project.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A 5-year R01 is multi-year, not single-year.
- Not an instance
A 3-year ERC Starting Grant is multi-year.
Editorial commentary
A single-year project is a funded research activity whose entire period of performance is one year or less, structured with a single budget period and a single reporting cycle (an interim report if the funder requires one, plus a final report), rather than the multi-year budget periods, continuation applications, and annual progress reports that characterise longer awards. The category covers seed grants, pilot grants, pump-priming awards, short fellowships, internal catalyst awards, and many industry-sponsored research agreements scoped to a single defined study.
Administratively, single-year projects are simpler in some respects — there is no continuation or renewal decision partway through, and no cycle of annual progress reports to prepare — but they compress delivery expectations into a much shorter window, which raises different risks for a research office to manage: recruitment and ethics approval delays that would be absorbable in a multi-year budget can consume a disproportionate share of a one-year award, and there is little slack to recover lost time.
Why single-year projects matter beyond their own funding
Single-year awards frequently function as a deliberate first step rather than a complete research programme: a seed or pilot grant’s purpose is often explicitly to generate preliminary data that then supports a subsequent, larger multi-year project application to a major funder. Recognising a project as single-year at the proposal stage matters for setting realistic milestones, and for research offices tracking a portfolio’s pipeline from pilot funding through to sustained programme grants.
References
- US NIH small-grant (R03/R21-type) programme mechanisms.
- UKRI pump-priming and seed-grant call documentation.
Also known as
One-year project · Short-duration grant · Annual project
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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