This course is being put on by Research in Focus Ltd. We’re a tiny consultancy company dedicated to working with the academic research community. Most of our work is focused on helping individual or collaborations of researchers increase their chances of getting funded.  You can find out more about us at: www.researchinfocus.com

Before now we’ve delivered all of our training via bookings directly from research offices in individual HEIs. That meant universities had to accumulate enough e.g. ECRs (early career researchers) or prospective fellowship candidates to justify asking us to put on a course for them.

Through this platform we’ve now found a way to offer individual researchers access to our courses. A lot of time, effort and expense has gone into creating this & our other courses so please DO NOT give your password away/allow anyone else to access your account/etc.  Under NO circumstances should you pass on, or store on any shared file servers, etc. ANY downloaded workbooks, etc. You may NOT screen record or otherwise capture any of the video content.  These courses are operated on an understanding of trust and honour. We will give you as many tips and tricks and ideas as we can possibly squeeze into each course and we will do our best to keep prices reasonable whilst ensuring we cover our costs, on the understanding that the course YOU have bought (or your university/organisation has bought for you) is for YOU and YOU alone.

Access for life? Definitions/disclaimer/etc.

For our paid courses. Once bought, you will have access to all the course materials for as long as the platform exists (it’s been going for 10+ years already and $3.5billion of online courses are sold via it each year) and as long as we (Research in Focus Ltd, & we’ve been in business since 2012) exist and have an active account on it.  IF we decide to tidy up and remove the course material from our account OR move course platform provider OR close down our online courses provision OR even close the business (not likely Becky enjoys her job!)!!! THEN we’ll give you at least 3 months notice so that you can download any workbooks, etc. to your own individual access only file storage systems. If we’re just moving online platform AND the course you signed up for is still active we’ll do our best to “move” your membership automatically.  Subject, obviously to whatever data protection laws are in place at the time, and the usual technological interoperability gremlins.

For our free courses and tasters, we retain the right to remove these materials without notice. If there are active users engaged in these courses we will attempt to give those users at least a week’s notice of course retirement.

Periodically, we’ll undertake housekeeping and if your account has been inactive for 12+ months we will attempt to contact you to see if you still want access.  If we can’t find a valid email address for you or we don’t hear from you within 30 days then we’ll close your account and you’ll no longer have access to any of the courses held within it.

In summary, other than major emergencies/changes, etc. access to the course is yours for the foreseeable future and you’re welcome to come back to the materials as you need them. For example, on condition that your course membership is treated as YOUR course membership and NOT shared, if you’re a member of the relevant course, we’d encourage you to e.g. take a reset every summer, no need to pay again next summer or to dip into relevant sections of any of our Masterclasses every time you are preparing a grant application!

Code of Conduct for course participants

Our courses are open to anyone and everyone; we want everyone to feel welcome and to make that happen there are a few simple rules:

1. Respect. Everyone is welcome.  We will NOT tolerate any form of discrimination, hate, bullying or inflammatory language. THINK before you comment or respond to someone else's comment; how could your wording be perceived? A) polite, reasonable, respectful?  Go-ahead and post your thoughts. Interaction, polite disagreement and open discussion are warmly welcomed!  Or b) open to misinterpretation or against our standards? STOP!  Rephrase until it is respectful or don't post!

2. YOU are responsible for everything you post. Do NOT post any personal information, whether yours or anyone else's and whether or not you have consent to do so. If you're reposting something, make sure you have permission to do so.

3. Under NO circumstances may you give anyone else access to your account/library/course materials. We operate on a basis of trust and honour. You trust us to put absolutely all of our knowledge, tips, tricks, etc. into our courses and not hold back. We trust you to do the honourable thing by not abusing that trust and allowing others to access materials/resources/etc. that they otherwise would have paid for, or in the case of free courses, would have registered on our system to access. We're generous with our FREE materials so that there is simply no need for anyone to engage in what are effectively fraudulent activities. All materials, in whatever format are (c) Research in Focus Ltd.

The platform automatically checks for unusual activity and we reserve the right to suspend to investigate (for as long as it takes us) and/or eventually terminate, without refund, any accounts potentially engaged in fraudulent activity. 

If fraud, etc. means that we (as a tiny company) are not able to cover the (substantial) costs of using this platform then we will have to revert to only offering courses where Research Offices book us… this will be in addition to any consequences you suffer as an individual user.

4. As part of each course you will most probably want to download the PDF workbooks, etc. These MUST be kept on a password protected hard drive/server to which ONLY YOU have access. You may keep them on a cloud server, provided it is in your personal individual account and NOBODY else may access them. For the absolute avoidance of doubt, our materials may NOT, in any way, be transferred to another person be that electronically, via printing, etc. They may NOT be kept on a shared drive to which others have access.

5. By signing up for any of our courses you agree that you have read, and agree to abide by, our relevant policies. These include this Code of Conduct, our Privacy Policy, our Terms and Conditions and our Course Disclaimer. We may update these documents from time to time and continued course use expects you to periodically check that you remain happy. If we make any major changes to the documentation i.e. other than small tweaks to increase clarity then we will post the changes using course announcements.

In all cases, suspected infringement will result in a temporary suspension of your account whilst we investigate. If there is evidence suggesting you have breached this code, whether accidental, or otherwise, you will be subject to a) a warning with/without further conditions of continued site use, or b) in the case of severe, or repeated, breaches of this Code of Conduct, our Terms and Conditions or the Privacy Policy, the deletion of your account with NO FURTHER ACCESS TO THE COURSE MATERIALS.  In all cases our decision will be final and NO REFUNDS will be given.