EPSRC read blogs, it turns out

Ye Gods and Little Fishes. I was staggered to get a phone call from a nice man in EPSRC this morning, wanting to quote my post about the changes to EPSRC funding regulations in a presentation about academics' reactions to the changes. It would appear EPSRC having been reading academics' blogs about it. I bet they have google alerts set up looking for such stories. Anyway, I was factually wrong, because I mistook an "and" for an "or". (I know, as a computer scientist I should know better). The regulation is
"From 1 June 2009, we will exclude repeatedly unsuccessful applicants from submitting proposals to EPSRC for 12 months and ask them to take part in a mentoring programme.

This will apply to applicants (listed as the principal investigator on a proposal) who have:

• Three or more proposals within a two-year period ranked in the bottom half of a funding prioritisation list or rejected before panel; and [my italics]
  
• An overall personal success rate of less than 25%."

So maybe it isn't as bad as I thought. I was worried that EPSRC might take my inaccuracy amiss, and come and poison my tea*. But it turns out they wanted to use this quote from my post because it summed up what they were aiming for: " [it] means that university departments will have to stop their relentless pressure on us to keep applying for lots of grants. Fewer applications but higher quality will have to be the name of the game."

My guess is they are doing a damage limitation exercise now because lots of academics misunderstood them and having been moaning loudly. It is what we do, after all.
A final thought: this is an interesting demonstration of the power of bloggers to influence government and vice versa. One of the things I was interested in at a seminar of public engagement with science was that scientists, the public and government could all work with each other about what and how science should be done in this country. Here is an example in practice (although it is at a meta level of how science is funded), and interestingly was not mediated by broadcast media. This is one reason I think that social networking has a great part to play in public interest in science. But that topic is for another day.

* Probably should make students taste my tea for a bit to be on the safe side.

Comments

[Mike Fay]

Not sure the academics *have* misunderstood them. In some areas, an overall success rate of 25% is nearing twice the current average. And if the quality improves, then better applications will end up in the bottom half. Not that you have to have a bad application to rank down there anyway - if you have a referee who isn't up to date in the field, or misunderstands/misreads the application, very good work can easily be dropped down that low. The difference between high middle and middle-middle ranking isn't much - and that'll add more pressure to the reviewers.

If they'd set the tariff lower than 50% of applications, then it would be more likely to weed out "poor" applications only - as it is, it'll be hitting the wrong people too often - almost randomly.

[computer school]

I really like to experiment on a computer through either the website or create programs other. Can you describe in more detail about the EPSRC and the benefits to the community.