Not with a Bang but a Whimper

Well, there was I, popcorn in hand, ready to watch it all kick off after the EPSRC's announcement of the latest runners and riders in the 'Shaping Capability' sweepstakes. Imagine my disappointment at the muted response from the sector. What, no angry letters to The Times? No resignations? Surely some mistake?

The response could, of course, be because the EPSRC has effectively dodged the bullet by (a) only looking at a relatively small number of areas, (b) saying that only two of these will be cut. They had learnt, I think, from their experience with the first tranche of disciplines, when there was a strong backlash against the Council's actions. This time both Research Fortnight and The Times Higher were struggling to find dissidents to rail against the EPSRC. Prof Neal Skipper from UCL suggested that one of the areas to be cut, Hydrogen Storage, was not at a mature stage of development, as the EPSRC Chief David 'Derek Smalls' Delpy seemed to suggest. But that was pretty much it.

The rest seemed to shrug and move on. Even Twitter, the medium of choice for hysterics, was relatively subdued about it. Which is all very disappointing. I'll put my popcorn away until the main feature later in the year, when a decision on the remaining 51 areas (out of a total 111) will be made. There's sure to be fireworks then.

Everything's ROS-y at NERC

NERC has decided to join AHRC, BBSRC, EPSRC and ESRC and join the Research Outcomes System (ROS). This will take over from its Research Outputs Database (ROD), which they've been using for nearly a decade.

The Council make the case that this will:

• Reduce the reporting burden by reducing the number of equivalent systems;
• Simplify submission by moving to a more standardised questionnaire;
• Improve how publications are handled;
• Share information better between systems, reducing data entry and reducing transcription errors; and
• Improve the quality of performance information available to support the case for public investment in the environmental sciences.

What's not to like? Well, as reported here a few months back, the new system isn't without glitches. However, NERC isn't adopting it immediately. Oh no. As in the Life of Brian, this calls for immediate...discussion. NERC will bound into action by:

• Completing the current collection exercise on the existing system;
• Establishing a project to manage the process of adopting ROS for future years collection with Centre participation;
• Engaging with users through the project to ensure that user requirements are identified and met;
• Adapting ROS where necessary to address NERC requirements, including coverage of grants and Centre programmes; and
• To migrate, as necessary, historic data.

I love this, the snail-like progress of bureaucracy in motion. It is a thing of beauty. Now if you want more information as to where we are in the programme of NERC migration to ROS - and who doesn't? - it can be found here.

NERC Introduces Demand Management

NERC has become the third Research Council - after EPSRC and ESRC - to explicitly state that they want universities to 'self regulate' their applications. This announcement was triggered by worries about success rates in some of their schemes falling to 16%.

Whilst NERC already has in place some measures to 'manage demand' - eg limiting the number of applications an investigator can submit per call and restricting resubmissions - this hasn't stopped the success rates from sliding in recent years. They're hoping to reverse this by encouraging institutions to strip out applications which NERC would define as 'uncompetitive' (defined by them as scoring 6/10 or below at panel).

So what are they going to do?

• firstly, ask institutions to nominate a point of contact for demand management;
• secondly, in the summer, provide data on past performance to them. This will be repeated annually from autumn 2013. The data will apply to Urgency, Large and Standard Grants, but not Fellowships or outlines. It will include: success rates for all schemes; distribution of grades for funded and unfunded proposals by scheme; final moderated grades for all proposals from institution/department; relative performance of institution/department.
• thirdly, from autumn 2012 NERC will (ahem) 'engage in a strategic dialogue' with institutions to provide information and advice in support of demand management, including setting targets for changes in submission behaviours. They can't meet with everyone in the first year, so those with the most applications, or with black marks in the NERC copy book, will be the first to get a visit from 'the management.'

So, at the moment, it looks to be relatively light touch: more ESRC than EPSRC. However, there will be the expectation that all research organisation will have their own internal quality control systems in place.

Who will be the next Research Council to fall in to line? Given the recent rumblings from Death Star House, my money's on the AHRC...

But Who's Right? There's Only One Way to Find Out...

Well, knives are quietly being sharpened around EPSRC. The rumblings of discontent have been going on for some time, and touch on everything from the Council's 'remit shaping' exercise, to its 'national importance' criterion, to its removal of PhD students from its grants.

Now, in a letter to the Daily Telegraph, 70 eminent scientists have vented their frustration. 'Taken together, [these actions] pose a serious threat to British science. EPSRC has exceeded its remit so spectacularly that it has lost the confidence of a significant proportion of the scientific community.'

Stuff and nonsense, say EPSRC. The fabulously named Attila Emecz, the EPSRC's Director of Strategy, dismissed the accusations as 'a major and gross misrepresentation.' Not only that, but the changes are, actually, brilliant: 'we believe the new policies will protect and improve UK research.'

But who's right? Well, in the words of Harry Hill, there's only one way to find out: 'FIGHT!' Crack open the popcorn, don the 3D glasses, put your feet up and watch battle commence.

EPSRC & the Difficulty of 'National Importance'

I wrote last month about EPSRC's plan to include 'national importance' as a criterion for judging funding applications. At their Regional Event in London yesterday they gave a little more idea what they had in mind. However, it was clear that they were still (as Catherine Coates said) in 'listening mode', and were keen to get feedback on their proposals.

Since announcing their plans, EPSRC have taken time to try and pin down 'national importance'. It is currently envisaged as research that will have an impact in 10-50 years time, and that:

• is key to maintaining the health of other research disciplines;
• directly contributes to addressing key UK societal challenges;
• contributes to current or future UK economic success;
• enables future development of key emerging industries.

Whilst it might be tempting to dismiss this as too vague and too long term to be worth engaging with, I'd urge caution. After all, 'national importance' is now the second criterion after research quality, with impact, track record and resources/management trailing behind.

However, it will still be a challenge to put meat on these bones, and also to make the case for today's research being key to developments in fifty years time. Imagine if EPSRC had introduced this in the 1980s: the issues of national importance would have been the coming ice age and the threat from the Soviet Union. As for smart phones, Star Trek Communicators were as close as we got. And you couldn't even text on them. And that was only thirty years ago.

So looking into the future to predict national importance is tough. Moreover, even though this is the Number 2 criterion, it will have to jostle for space in the 'Case for Support.' It will not have a separate attachment, unlike the Number 3 criterion, impact.

And, whilst it's going to be tough for applicants to try and make the case for national importance, it's going to be every bit as hard for the peer reviewers to sift on this basis. This was clear when EPSRC got us to have a go, using abstracts from previously successful applications. We sat there, huddled around the abstracts, trying to second guess where the research might lead.

However, Paul Thompson rounded off the session by bringing a sense of perspective. There was already an expectation that applicants should make the case for the importance of their research; all the EPSRC were doing was making this explicit. As with impact, get others to have a look at your application, and get help from Research Services in identifying and framing national importance.

More Entrails Needed

A quick post to publicise the excellent Research Counselling, a cartoon website the focuses on the trials and tribulations of dealing with the Research Councils. I particularly liked this recent one, about forecasting your project's 'national importance' for the EPSRC.

Oh the cynicism!

Globalisation: Notes from Research Fortnight Conference

The Research Fortnight conference this year was held at the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, and focused on 'Globalisation: the future of research institutions.' The title could have been framed as a question: as the world convulses with economic shocks, is now the right time to be reaching out in partnership?

They'd brought together an impressive roster of speakers to discuss this. Some faces were familiar – such as Julia Lane of the NSF who spoke at the ESRC Seminar Series on Impact a few weeks back – whilst others were new to me. But all gave thought provoking insights into issues around collaboration.

'Research belongs to no country'

Lord Bhattacharyya, Chairman of the Warwick Manufacturing Group, kicked off the day by quoting Louis Pasteur: 'Knowledge belongs to no country.' UK research had considerable strengths, said Bhattacharyya, that placed it well in the global market place: it was both high quality and covered a broad range of disciplines, as well as being relatively open and academically free. However, these were offset by areas of concern: the UK's disciplinary strengths didn't match the research interests of the emerging economic superpowers; collaboration - both with overseas partners and industry - wasn't happening fast enough, and its spending on research and development was too low.

The UK needed to think strategically about dealing with the challenges of the new global research environment. It needed to be more open to attracting new business research funding, and look to the market priorities of the BRIC countries, namely engineering, biology, and the physical and health sciences. Incentives needed to be created to overcome the potential reluctance to engage with Chinese or Brazilian colleagues, resulting from such considerations as lower citation rates from such partnerships.

'Collaborate to compete'

Throughout the day this analysis was knocked about, questioned, confirmed or refuted. Prof Anton Muscatelli, Vice-Chancellor of Glasgow, emphasised the need to 'collaborate to compete.' He agreed with Bhattacharyya that the UK faced challenges in doing so, at a time when it was facing its own, internal uncertainties. However, he was upbeat about Britain's ability to cope in this brave new world. British universities were both efficient and effective, he said, and the key to their success was the autonomy they had, coupled with the shark pool they swam in for research resources.

But why should UK institutions collaborate? Muscatelli suggested that there were three reasons: to diversify their income streams, as funding became tougher in the UK; to 'bring the best together'; and to address common, global challenges. These were all positives, but equally you could see that they had no choice: the UK was too small to go it alone. The Darwinian race for partners would see the open survive and prosper, and the insular wither and perish. The research map of the UK would be radically redrawn.

'Science is like a parachute: it only works when it's open'

Jeremy Watson, Global Research Director at Arup, outlined the view from industry. Arup had been behind such iconic buildings as the Sydney Opera House, the Pompidou Centre and the Gherkin. It had always relied on what Watson described as a 'knowledge supply chain', building on both internal and external research. For him, the case for collaboration between industry and academia was clear, and he suggested frameworks by which this might happen in the future, such as transnational 'centres of excellence' (as Rolls Royce had already developed); open innovation clubs with multinational industrial partners; and 'co-innovator' partnerships between academia and industry with 'permeable boundaries.'

Haggit Messer-Yaron, President of the Open University of Israel, concurred. Universities and industry had very different agendas, but it could be these differences that made partnerships work. There needed to be openness, however: 'science is like a parachute,' she quoted: 'it only works when it's open.' There should be a synergy, a complementarity. Governments could act as brokers for these relationships, providing early stage funding and support for 'bridging the development gap' as well as a conducive legal framework in terms of IPR laws and taxation. However, governments tended to act in the national interest, and as such may act against the principles of globalisation.

'It's the intersection of technology and liberal arts that makes our hearts sing'

After lunch we broke up into parallel sessions. I went along to the one that focused on the engineering and physical sciences, which quickly veered productively off track. Prof Graham Galbraith, DVC at the University of Hertfordshire, complained of the blinkered 'siloism' of current research policy. The difficulty with engaging with business, he said, was that most universities think within disciplinary boundaries, whereas most businesses don't. Of course, these disciplines may be useful – or indeed necessary – for running large organisations, but they were unhelpful in thinking creatively. 'Real innovation is not really rewarded or recognised,' he bemoaned. The ghost of Steve Jobs was conjured up: 'technology alone is not enough,' he had said. 'It's technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the the results that make our heart sing'.

So were the funders to blame for holding apart the disciplines? A representative of EPSRC was on hand to defend them, and the sense was that it was more to do with an engrained culture within academia. The discussion swiftly moved on to developing the necessary mindset for exploiting the opportunities offered by internationalisation. Phil Clare, Associate Director of Research Services at the University of Oxford, was bracingly breezy in his acceptance of the new deal offered by BRIC nations. 'We need to stop worrying about selling our birthright,' he said. Universities exist to generate knowledge, but can also act as catalysts for collaboration, and foci for local economies.

The conference finished with a final plenary on the experience of different institutions in developing and managing cross-continental relationships. The day had crackled with ideas and questions and, whilst no conclusions were reached, it had been a valuable opportunity to develop and debate our thoughts on this critical new horizon.

The Mists Are Clearing...I See a Project of National Importance...

As ever, EPSRC is blazing a trail in developing new hurdles for potential applicants. Hot on the heels of controversially 'managing' its remit and 'managing' demand via its blacklist, the Council has just announced that, as of 15th November 2011, all applicants will have to identify the national importance of their research.

Yes, it's both Scientific Excellence AND national importance that will now be the primary assessment criteria. Impact, track record, resources and management will be secondary assessment criteria.

Reviewers and panel members have been issued with new assessment criteria/forms to reflect these changes. For applicants, the national importance section must now be included in the case for support.

Is that a collective groan I can hear from the sector? Having just got used to the concept of predicting their potential impact, they're now going to have to predict its importance.

I do like the amount of faith that EPSRC has in the visionary abilities of the scientists within its remit. I'm surprised, however, that they haven't put these abilities to better use and got them to predict the numbers for the National Lottery? It would be an excellent use of the collective brain power of EPSRC scientists if they could rustle up the Euromillions necessary to meet the 10% funding cut that resulted from the CSR flat settlement.

Getting Involved with Funders

A number of funders are inviting people to become involved in their decision making. These include the following:

• AHRC - Peer Review College
• BBSRC - Council
• EPSRC - Council
• ESRC – Council
• MRC – Council
• STFC – Council
• NIHR - Programme Advisory Board & Refereeing

Do consider putting yourself forward for these vacancies. Being involved with funders raises your profile, but also gives you the opportunity to influence their policy and direction.

There's a Battle Outside and It's Raging

There's a fascinating storm raging at the moment around the walls of the EPSRC citadel. Some of you outside the Engineering and Physical Sciences might not be aware of it, but it has the potential to affect all of your disciplines, because what EPSRC does first, the other Research Councils tend to follow.

This time the EPSRC is 'engineering' their sector. Or, as they would have it, 'shaping our portfolio.' Basically, through their 'Shaping Capability' agenda, they've had a good look at the disciplines within their remit and have decided which should be backed, and which should be quietly shelved.
Now in some ways you can see the logic of this. In strained financial times it may be better to prioritise the important, high quality work that has the potential to make a difference to science globally, as well as nationally bolstering the UK's competitiveness.
However, as you can imagine, those who are adversely affected by this prioritisation are angry about what they see as the fairly arbitrary algorithm by which it has been decided. Have a look at the sub-GCSE graph above. This is known as the 'Bourne Graph'. It is a visual representation of how EPSRC see the relative value of subjects within its remit.
But how were these relative positions decided? What scale is being used along the X and Y axes? Hmm. It's not clear, and EPSRC's reticence on this is not helping. People are thinking the worst. As a York-based organic chemist comments on his blog, 'if one didn't know better you may be forgiven for thinking it had been thought up on the back of a fag packet over a pint in the pub after work.'
Helpfully, he provides a similarly inane graph for his relationship with fruit and vegetables, as follows:

I think the methodology's clear, don't you?
Prof Timothy Gower, another blogger, has tried to work out where they're coming from by deconstructing the newspeak pronouncements to come out of EPSRC.
More seriously, the sector's disquiet has resulted in letters from the chemists, statements from the mathematicians, and articles from the physicists, as well as a call from, well, everybody (in the shape of the Royal Society) to 'pause' the strategy. David 'Smalls' Delpy responded, specifically to the chemists, saying that he felt their pain, but ultimately it was their own fault for getting too much of the budget recently. Or words to that effect. Elsewhere he's poured oil on the troubled waters by saying that the complaints were an 'overreaction', backed up by 'relatively little' evidence.
The storm has been rumbling on since July, and there's no sign of it abating any time soon. If anything, it's growing in strength, and there's hope that, as Dylan said, 'the loser now will be later to win.' Whilst I have sympathy for EPSRC, and believe it acted in good faith, I think this kind of engineering is dangerous and ultimately fruitless.
Remember Robert Edwards, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine this time last year? He had developed in vitro fertilisation, which has led, since 1978, to millions of 'test tube babies.' Well, when he turned to his sector's funder, the MRC, in 1971 they turned him down. At the time his discipline wasn't of interest, as the politics of the day suggested the world was heading for malthusian destruction. If there hadn't been a private funder on hand his research may well have withered on the vine.
His is a cautionary tale. The allocation of research funding shouldn't be left up to politicians and apparatchiks (like me): it should be up to peers and contemporaries to decide what should be prioritised. Only then will the best, bravest and brightest have an equal chance - from whatever discipline.

MRC 'Neither Up Nor Down' Shock

Oh you couldn't make it up. Paul 'Shriek' Jump made it a hattrick in last week's Times Higher by bemoaning the fact that the MRC success rate had - wait for it - stayed the same.

To recap:

• On 1 September Jump suggested that the fall in its success rate reflected badly on the ESRC...
• whereas on 8 September Jump suggested that the rise in its success rate reflected badly on the EPSRC;

Now, with its success rate pretty much static (it actually fell by 1%), Jump was wringing his hands about how badly this reflected on the MRC.

Spookily, in a comment on this blog Adam Golberg had foreseen this scenario almost exactly: 'Next week in the Times Higher: The XRC Research Council announces unchanged success rates. Does this stagnation spell the beginning of the end for the XRC?'

Does he know something we don't? Does he have access to lines of communication which are - frankly - supernatural? Is he, in fact, Robert Johnson?

We should be told.

EPSRC Tweaks Its Blacklisting Procedures

Ah, EPSRC: they are the story that keeps on giving. You can always rely on them for a headline.

No sooner have they got chemists spitting blood at their remit changes, than they're saying that only certain disciplines can apply to their fellowships, before crowing about their blacklist-fuelled success rates. You've got to love 'em.

Yesterday, having not made any pronouncements for literally days, they issued a press release on changes to their blacklisting procedure. It's only really tweaking, so put the placards down. In fact, most of the changes are for the better, as follows:

• When calculating your success rate, EPSRC will no longer include applications that were thrown out because your research didn't fit within its remit;
• Similarly, if you applied to a scheme that has a second/interview stage, and you manage to get to that stage but get rejected after, this will not be held against you in the calculations;
• Finally, if your application was ranked against nine or fewer other applications by one of EPSRC's panels, and came in the bottom half, this will not be included in their calculations.

So generally a move in the right direction. Now all they need to do is tweak their 'Shaping Capability' remit changes, and we'll be there.

EPSRC Success Rate Rises to 36%

Paul 'shriek' Jump is once again questioning the Research Councils in the Times Higher. After his 'off with their heads' piece last week on the ESRC, he turns his ire on the EPSRC this week and questions its steadily rising success rate. From a low of 26% in 2008-09, the Council's success rate has risen to 36% in 2010-11.

Good news, you would think. EPSRC put it down to the success of their blacklisting policy (although they don't call it that: to them it will forever be the 'Policy for Repeatedly Unsuccessful Applicants'). This limits those who have had three or more rejections, or have been in the bottom half of the prioritisation list, in a two year period and have a personal success rate of less than 25%, to only submitting one application in the subsequent year. With me so far?

However, Jump quotes two academics who suggest that the success of the policy is debatable: Ian Walmsley suggested that applications are down across the research councils (although this seems to run counter to Jump's piece on the ESRC), and David Price claimed that the policy was deterring weak and strong applications alike.

Whilst it's clear that Jump is a glass-half-empty kind of a guy, I agree that EPSRC's news should be greeted with caution. The Council has recently been in the headlines about it's - ahem - 'consultation', which suggested cutting funding to a number of disciplines within its remit. This has been met by horror in the sector, and has left David 'Derek Smalls' Delpy crying into his beer and saying that it wasn't really a consultation anyway.

Cutting both the number of disciplines and the number of eligible individuals within the remaining disciplines will, eventually, lead to a success rate of 100% for the Council. Hurray! Their work will be complete. Or certainly will be until this plummets back to 0% as there'll be no-one eligible left to apply.

Changes to EPSRC Funding Schemes

News is coming through from Polaris Towers about changes in the pipeline for EPSRC funding schemes:

• The leadership, career acceleration and postdoc fellowships are to be stopped. They will be replaced by a single fellowship scheme - where you can apply anytime, at any stage of your career.
• Increased number of calls in strategic areas (although responsive-mode grants will continue to get the vast majority of their funding)
• Increased support for key UK-based academics - individual, long term support.
• Possible changes to the way first grants will be assessed (i.e. not just against first grants). However, detail of this was not forthcoming.
• No plans for a UK equipment register; it will be up to academics to find shared equipment.

Full details of these will be announced next week (around 20 July). Thanks to my colleague Carolyn Barker for this. Incidentally Carolyn's planning to start up her own, science-focused funding blog, so watch this space...

Delpy: I'm into Something Good

Prof David Delpy, looking for all the world like an ageing member of Herman's Hermits (or should the be Derek Smalls?), has been interviewed in Physics World. The EPSRC CEO robustly defended the Council's blacklisting procedure, pointing to the fact that the success rate has risen to 30% - way ahead of that of its sister Research Councils.

However, Prof Philip Moriarty, a condensed-matter physicist from Nottingham University, questions what he sees as the arbitrary nature of the blacklisting rules. He suggests that the EPSRC runs "a simple experiment" to test its assumption that grants falling in the bottom half of a ranked list are necessarily of poor quality.

"They should take the same set of proposals, send them out to different referees, and then give them to five different panels [and] look at the correlation in the ranked lists," he says. "If they are so confident that the principle underlying the blacklisting process is robust, then why not do this experiment? It would silence me and all the other critics of the scheme."

Well, don't hold your breath. I think EPSRC are quite happy with the new procedures, thank you very much, and won't be making a move any time soon to test the fairness of their underlying assumptions.

ResearchActive Newsletter: Summer Edition Available

The summer edition of the Research Services Newsletter, ResearchActive, is now available. A hard copy has been sent to all staff, but if you've not received it do get in touch and we can send you an electronic version. It's a bumper six pager this term, and includes:

• Details of the University's new Internal Peer Review system;
• Information on the research interests of new staff;
• Highlights of some recent awards;
• REF update;
• Changes to RCUK equipment costs;
• Details of how we use the data that EPSRC sends us on 'blacklisting';
• Notes from the Leverhulme visit, and Grants Factory events;
• and, of course, some choice cuts from the Blog.

Get it while it's hot!

ERC Success Rates

Interesting stats from UKRO on the ERC Starting (StG) and Advance (AdG) Grants. There's now been three complete calls for each scheme, and UKRO's statistics show how the success rate for both StG and AdG has risen:

• Starting Grants: 3.3% (2007-8) to 14.9 (2009-10)
• Advanced Grants: 12.7% (2007-08) to 13.2% (2009-10)

Interestingly, the success rates for Grants hosted at UK HEIs is higher than the European average for StG (17.3%), but only marginally so for AdG (13.6%).

Now compare these figures with those published by the ESRC in their Demand Management Consultation Paper on the recent success rates for all the UK Research Councils:

• AHRC: 16%
• ESRC: 17% (small and standard grants combined)
• MRC: 19%
• BBSRC: 22%
• NERC: 24%
• EPSRC: 30% (following the introduction of its blacklisting procedure)
• STFC: 53%

So the ERC success rates aren't a million miles away from the bottom three Research Councils - and the UK Starting Grants are actually the same or better than the AHRC and ESRC. No wonder the ESRC is making moves to introduce demand management measures, and the AHRC is following fast in its footsteps.

Changes to the ESRC - Part 2

Last week I wrote about imminent changes to the ESRC funding schemes. Yesterday I went along to their regional event at Brighton, and got further clarification and detail about how they see these changes being implemented:

• Risky research. As mentioned before, they will be introducing a new mechanism into their grants scheme for risky research, with a 'breakpoint' mid way through at which the success or otherwise of the pilot project will be assessed. However, they made it clear that, in effect, this would mean the reintroduction of the small grants scheme, but with a very specific remit of encouraging risky, innovative, ambitious research.
• Advanced Sifting. As well as outline applications, the ESRC would introduce 'advanced sifting' of their Research Grants. In practice, this would mean that applications go through an initial peer review by 2-3 academics. If it's an application for a small amount, this might be all the assessment it gets: depending on the outcome, the application will get funded or rejected. If it's for a larger amount, this peer review will decide whether the application goes to full panel.
• Outline Applications. The ESRC will simplify the JeS form for outline applications, including the costing element. They will shortlist approximately three times as many applications as they can fund, so that the success rate for the second stage (full applications) will be around 33%.
• Right to Reply. A right to reply would be built into all their funding schemes.
• Demand Management. The deadline for the consultation process on the demand management options closed on 16 June. They will now consider the responses. It is hoped that they will not have to introduce any of the more draconian measures. They will allow a year to see how the 'interim measures' have worked - eg outline applications, no uninvited resubmissions, encouraging HEIs to implement 'quality assurance' procedures. They admitted that a year might not be enough for these to have a real effect, but it should be enough to see the 'direction of travel'. If they are happy with the 'direction', they will allow more time for them to have further effect.
• Statistics. To support the demand management measures, the ESRC will provide HEIs with stats on their comparative performance. These will be provided three times a year and, it is hoped, they will be more nuanced than just presenting simple success rates. For example, they should show the relative position of an institution's applications in the peer review panel's prioritisation list, so that HEIs can get a sense of the quality of their applications.
• Working with the Other Research Councils. The ESRC made clear that they will be working with their sister councils to implement a common form of demand management. Of course, this will have to allow for variance that arises from the culture and patterns of those working within a council's disciplines. Thus, what works for the EPSRC wouldn't necessarily work for the ESRC. However, as far as possible they hoped for a consistency across RCUK.

EPSRC Makes Open Access Mandatory

EPSRC has announced that it intends to make open access mandatory. It will apply to all research articles submitted for publication on or after 1st September 2011. In a statement on 3 June EPSRC stated that the Policy on Access to Research Outputs had been 'agreed by our Council and which we are introducing with immediate effect. The policy states that all EPSRC-funded research publications must be published as openly accessible documents – that is, freely available online to anyone who has access to the internet.'

Tempted away from Academia

Walking in this morning I met an academic who had been waiting for almost a year to hear back from the EPSRC on a grant application. We chatted in the bright spring sunshine.

'I got an invited resubmission,' he said, with a clear look of disappointment on his face. I tried to console him, and told him that invited resubmissions were a relative rarity these days. Apparently he had even had 'strong encouragement' from the Council to do so. He should take heart, and go once more unto the breach.

Only problem was that life had moved on in the meantime; a year's a long time to be kept waiting. In the interim the EPSRC had withdrawn the provision of studentships - so he'd have to rethink this - and some of the work outlined in the original application had now been done abroad. In addition the needs of his commercial partner had developed and changed.

'To be honest, I'm thinking about whether it's worth carrying on in academia,' he said, ruefully. 'Up until now I've had a succession of grants, but the last two applications have come just below the cut off. In the private sector a lot of people I know are now millionaires, and are fretting about how to spend their money.'

I suggested he put them in touch with me and I could help them out. We laughed, but on this warm summer morning, on this green campus, it did highlight a worrying trend: when funding gets this hard some of the best people will be tempted away from academia, and the UK's research base will suffer as a result.