Research and Equipment Application Guidelines

• Open access fees: The FDF cannot sustainably support all requests for payment of open access publication fees. The committee may consider such requests on a case by case basis if funding allows. Priority will be given to fees related to fully open access journals or books (i.e., publication is freely available to the public without a subscription or access fee). If the publication is a fully open access journal or book, the application must include a statement explaining a) why you’ve chosen this publication over a traditional venue that does not require open access fees; b) how you have determined that this publication is non-predatory. Fees for “hybrid” (subscription- or fee-based) journals that offer an optional open access add-on requests must include a rationale for why the open access option is necessary for the advancement of your research trajectory. If awarded, support for open access fees will be capped at $2500 per application, with up to one such award per faculty member per academic year. We request that authors with sufficient funding from grants or contracts not apply for FDF coverage of open access fees; we also recommend including open access costs on future external grant proposals. The FDF will not support publication or other fees from predatory open-access journals. Please check one of these lists of potentially predatory journals before pursuing publication: Beall’s List of Predatory Journals and List of Standalone Journals. If you are uncertain about this, please consult the Gleeson librarian in your discipline. Please note that Gleeson Library/Geschke Center, as a member of the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC), has entered into Open Access agreements with American Chemical Society (until 2025), Springer Compact (2023-2024), and Cambridge University Press (until 2023). The agreement enables University of San Francisco-affiliated authors to publish articles in fully open access and/or hybrid open access journals at no cost to individuals, and make them freely available to read. More information on these agreements can be found on the library's Open Access site. 
• Book purchases for non-research use or that are accessible through the library system are not supported.
• Computers. Information Technology Services (ITS) handles purchase and disbursement of all computers and similar devices.
• Tablets (such as iPads) are not supported except under strict conditions where research cannot proceed without one; this must be fully explained in the application. However, the Dean’s Office has a limited number available for loan. Please contact your area Associate Dean for further information.
• Teaching materials: Items needed for the offering of a specific course are not supported. The committee feels strongly that the FDF’s purpose is supporting faculty scholarship. Expenses associated with a course should be borne by the department or program offering the course.
• Student research that is not directly tied to the applicant’s scholarship or creative work is not supported. The FDF cannot be used as a mechanism to support program functioning (such as funding student thesis research that is not conducted as part of a faculty member’s scholarship), for instance, which should instead be supported by the relevant department or program.
• ​​Courses: Immersion or training courses, lessons, coaching, workshops, and certifications are not supported. (In rare circumstances, a case can be made for such requests as part of a teaching effectiveness or research application; applicants must first discuss this with their area Associate Dean.)
• Payments, stipends, honoraria, or other financial support for faculty members or outside colleagues are not supported. For example, you cannot use FDF to bring a colleague here to USF to visit, to take them out for dinner, or to compensate them for their time.
• Promotional expenses such as gifts or payments to reviewers, book advertising, or book tours are not supported.
• Costs related to events (e.g., catering, room rental, and so on) are not supported.
• External cloud-based storage is not supported, as USF provides such services. Please contact Information Technology Services for information and assistance.
• Software subscriptions (beyond the software suite provided by USF) such as DropBox Pro, Grammarly Premium, Adobe Creative Cloud, Adobe Premiere, Amazon Drive, and similar programs are not supported unless they are shown to be necessary for the research or professional advancement outlined in the FDF application and an explanation is provided for why available USF resources are not sufficient.
• Courses, training, and workshops: Immersion or training courses, lessons, coaching, workshops, and certifications will be considered as part of Professional Effectiveness applications. Applicants are encouraged to first discuss such requests with their area Associate Dean. Applicants are expected to be specific regarding the ways in which the proposed course, lessons, coaching, workshops or certifications will enhance their professional (academic or creative) work. For instance, if the proposal is to enhance your teaching effectiveness via a workshop, specify the ways the workshop will do so and for which particular course(s); if the proposal aims to enhance your research or creative work through training, specify the ways it will do so and for which particular project. The proposal should also explain why this professional effectiveness support cannot be found through existing University resources. 

The maximum number of RA hours that may be funded is 400 per faculty member per academic year. Any request exceeding this limit must be accompanied by a compelling justification. If you are specifically requesting a graduate student assistant, you must include a rationale as to why undergraduates would not be suitable.

Applications for RA must include

• A brief description of the research assistant’s duties and their connection to your research agenda
• RA hiring plan, which includes plans for posting and advertising the job. See this sample RA hiring plan, which includes all required elements;
• A sample job posting including the required Equal Opportunity Statement
• See the Student Employment Supervisors page for information on advertising student jobs.
• If you are specifically requesting a graduate student assistant, you must include a rationale as to why undergraduates would not be suitable.

University rules on student employment:

• Students may not work more than 7.5 hours per day and may not work 7 consecutive days. Domestic students are limited to 25 hours per week during the Fall and Spring semesters, and 35 hours per week during Intersession and Summer terms. International students are limited to 20 hours per week during the Fall and Spring semesters, and 35 hours per week during Intersession and Summer terms. Overtime pay is not allowed for any student in any position.
• The pay rate is $ 19.61 per hour for undergraduates and $20.61 per hour for graduate students. The FDF Gnosis form will automatically add 12% to this amount to account for benefits. Please use the Gnosis calculated amounts in your application budget. Faculty are encouraged to consider work-study students.
• Faculty supervisors are expected to closely monitor student hours and task completion to ensure that research funds are used effectively to complete the work for which they were awarded, and to sign off on time sheets. Program Assistants should not be doing these tasks in place of faculty members.
• Workday approvals: USF Payroll no longer auto-approves time sheets. This means hourly employees and students will not be paid if their managers do not approve their hours at the end of each pay period. If you have hired a Research Assistant, you are their manager and are responsible for approving time sheets. Payroll recommends that all managers set a calendar reminder to run the USFWorks "team time review" on the 15th and the last day of the month to ensure that their direct reports have submitted their time, and to run the report again on the 16th and 1st of each month to approve the time entered. To do this: On your USFWorks home page, click the Team Time worklet --> Actions --> Review Time. If a delay in payment to the next pay period causes hardship to the employee, an on-demand check request should be submitted payroll@usfca.edu, and copy Tuan Nguyen tanguyen11@usfca.edu, USF Payroll team.
• Tracking balances: Applicants must check and report the balance in their FDF accounts at the time of application by selecting the current fiscal year. See Post-Award FAQ for further information.

This can include scientific equipment, books, or other supplies. If you are requesting:

• Scientific equipment: Please include a description of the equipment needed and how it will be used, price quotes for items above $50 (e.g., an invoice or a screenshot of a price list), and an itemized budget.
• Books: FDF will support purchases of books for research use that are not accessible through the USF library system. Any exceptions should include a clear explanation of why library use is inadequate for your research purposes. Please include a specific list with the title and author, a description of how these will advance your research, and evidence that they are not otherwise accessible. To bring down costs, please consider purchasing used books whenever possible.
• Computers/iPads/Tablets: The FDF committee will consider such a request IF the device is essential and there is no cheaper alternative. Please note that this is a request and not a guarantee. If approved, such equipment must be purchased by ITS as it is USF property, and must be returned to USF after the completion of the project. The FDF does not fund the purchase of computers or their equivalent for general use.
• Misc. Electronics: In rare cases, FDF will support purchases of equipment such as cameras, scanners, smart watches, and similar digital technology that is clearly shown in your application to be necessary for your work and unavailable through existing USF avenues (including the Dean's Office, departments, and Information Technology Services) as well as other local facilities such as UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco, Stanford, San Francisco Public Libraries, etc. Such equipment must be purchased through USF, remain USF property, and must be returned to USF upon completion of the project.

FDF funds can be used to pay research participants (up to $50), provided the research falls within the CAS policy on participant compensation. This policy is in response to increased regulation resulting from the ACA and changes in federal tax law. It is critical that we be able to provide evidence sufficient to satisfy an auditor that allocated funds were spent in service of faculty research.

• All research involving human subjects, regardless of whether compensation is involved, must be reviewed and approved by USF’s Institutional Review Board before the study begins. For each participant, the PI should obtain a signed informed consent form. This form should also indicate payment received. If this has been waived by the IRB, a log of payments, including date and amount, will suffice. The PI is responsible for retaining these forms for seven years and producing them if Accounting and Business Services needs to provide proof of proper payment during an audit.
• Applications for participant compensation must include a description of the study, the proposed compensation per participant (up to $50), and the total amount requested.
• Cash is the preferred mechanism for compensation of research subjects; however, cash incentives cannot be used for USF staff/faculty subjects. For research subjects who are USF employees, please use gift card incentives.
• For online studies, researchers should use PayPal (or an equivalent service) to compensate subjects and maintain a log that records payments made on a given date to a specific username. Please note that USF does not maintain a corporate or institutional PayPal account; faculty should manage this on their own and seek reimbursement as needed. If you're using Zelle as the payment method, you will need participants to provide email addresses or phone #. If Venmo is used instead, then the participant's Venmo username is required.
• Reimbursement can be handled by submitting, via Concur, a list that contains: a name or identifier, the date the payment was received, the amount paid, and the PI’s signature. Please also include a brief summary of the research.
• In cases where cash flow is an issue, a cash advance can be used to provide funds in advance. Please contact the CAS Office of Operations at ASOperatons@usfca.edu for details.
• Faculty wishing an exception to these rules may request this by contacting Dennis Miller in Accounting and Business Services (millerd@usfca.edu, x6371).

Important: USF must pay individuals providing services directly; do not pay them out of your own pocket, as you will not be able to get reimbursed. The individual should prepare an invoice and receive payment directly from the University. Payments to enterprises/publications are reimbursable with itemized receipts.

Please note: There is an independent contractor freeze effective on December 1st, 2025. You can use this form, and it will be routed for VP/President's approval. Once fully approved, you'll receive a confirmation. With the final invoice and their W-9, your department assistant can request payment and charge it to your approved FDF FOAP. We strongly recommend securing approval (if possible) prior to contracting with any independent contractor.

Applicants must provide 3 quotes for these services. If only one individual or provider is qualified or available to perform the work, please include a brief explanation with your request.

Typical supplementary services include:

• Indexing or editing services
• Website design
• Permissions fees or graphic preparation costs
• Translation services
• Transcription services

• The FDF cannot sustainably support all requests for payment of publication fees, but recognizes this is an important and oftentimes necessary component of scholarly work. Thus, the committee will consider requests for publication fees, with the amount capped at $ 4,000 per application and no more than one such award per faculty member per FDF cycle. If publication fees exceed this cap, the committee will consider justifiable requests on a case-by-case basis, but cannot guarantee funding. This may be used for publication charges in traditional, hybrid, or open-access peer-reviewed journals.
• The application should include
  • (1) a statement explaining the relevance of the selected journal in your field,
  • (2) your rationale for selecting this specific journal as opposed to others in the field, with lower or no publication fees, and
  • (3) the steps you have taken to confirm that this journal is non-predatory.
• Please check these lists of potentially predatory journals before pursuing publication: Beall’s List of Predatory Journals, List of Predatory Journals, and List of Standalone Journals. If you are uncertain about this, please consult the Gleeson librarian in your discipline. Please note that Gleeson Library/Geschke Center, as a member of the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC), has entered into Open Access agreements with American Chemical Society (until 2025), Springer Compact (2026), Cambridge University Press (until 2025), Elsevier (2027), and the Association for Computing Machinery (2026). The agreement enables University of San Francisco-affiliated authors to publish articles in fully open-access and/or hybrid open-access journals at no cost to individuals and make them freely available to read. More information on these agreements can be found on the library's Open Access site.
• We kindly request that authors with sufficient external grant funding not apply for FDF coverage of publication fees if publication costs have been included in the grant budget; we also recommend including publication costs in future external grant proposals where possible.

Applicants can request FDF funding for other costs associated with the completion of a scholarly project. Applicants should include a quote from the person or entity performing the service. In evaluating these sorts of requests for full or partial funding, the committee will look at whether this is an efficient use of FDF funds and whether there are less expensive ways to achieve the same results.

USF must pay vendors or individuals providing services directly; do not pay them out of your own pocket, as you will not be able to get reimbursed. The vendor should prepare an invoice and receive payment directly from the University. 

These are typically supplementary services such as:

• Indexing or editing services
• Journal publication fees
• Website design
• Permissions fees or costs of graphics preparation
• Translation services
• Transcription services

A note on journal publication fees: Please note that Gleeson Library/Geschke Center, as a member of the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC), has entered into Open Access agreements with American Chemical Society (until 2025), Springer Compact (2023-2024), and Cambridge University Press (until 2023). The agreement enables University of San Francisco-affiliated authors to publish articles in fully open access and/or hybrid open access journals at no cost to individuals, and make them freely available to read. More information on these agreements can be found on the library's Open Access site. 

Multiple files can be uploaded for each line item by clicking “Choose File” and then “Save” for each separate file. Or you may combine all your receipts or quotes into a single PDF and upload it to each field. Actual receipts or price quotes included.