Applications without Impact Get Funded

An interesting article in this week's Times Higher: apparently applicants who refuse to complete an impact statement are not necessarily less likely to secure funding. Zoe Corbyn writes that, using figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, she's uncovered a "modest revolt" against impact statements at some of the councils. Whilst she admits that it's only a 'snapshot of researchers' behaviour', it does demonstrate that researchers who refuse to complete the statements are still winning funding.

Interestingly, the THE analysis shows that the BBSRC and ESRC applicants were most compliantwith the Impact demands (all provided the requested information), whilst EPSRC and AHRC applicants were least so (7% and 4% respectively didn't). Despite this non-compliance, however, 12 AHRC applications and 3 EPSRC without statements got funded.

The article was accompanied with a 'word cloud' of commonly used words found in the impact statements, reproduced above.