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 Demand Management and 'Office Rejection'

I've been seeking further clarification on the way the EPSRC's new 'demand management' - or blacklisting - system will work. In particular, I was wanting to know whether proposals that had not gone to the panel, so called 'office rejects', would be included in the three unfunded proposal allowance applicants get before blacklisting kicks in. The answer is, unfortunately, yes. However, EPSRC are reassuring on this; a proposal would only be rejected by the office if:

• it had been sent out to peer review, and the reviews were so unsupportive that there was no point in it going to panel. This may seem fair enough, but I know of at least one case where a proposal was rejected was rejected on these grounds, but the reviews were based on a misunderstanding, and were factually inaccurate;
• it doesn't fit with the call criteria, or with the remit of the EPSRC. Once again, this seems fair, although there is the question of interdisciplinary proposals. In these situations, however, EPSRC encourages applicants to contact it first and submit a 2 page 'remit query' so that it avoids being rejected on these grounds.

I asked if a proposal would be rejected by the office on a technicality - eg not having the right attachment, or a section of JeS being filled incorrectly, or the costings being incorrect. No, she said, this would not happen: if there was enough time before a deadline (or the deadline was open) the office would come back to you to rectify this. Also, JeS would be unlikely to allow you to submit an incorrectly completed form. If there wasn't time before the deadline and the application was incomplete in some way, the application would be returned, but it wouldn't count as a rejection, as it would not have gone through an assessment process.