What You Need to Know: ESRC Secondary Data Analysis Initiative

Or do you have a better idea about using the data? 
Photo by Franki Chamaki on Unsplash

The ESRC’s Secondary Data Analysis Initiative might not win any awards for ease of verbal articulation, but it does “do exactly what it says on the tin”. Sarah Tetley hears more from Tina Haux about the scheme, and what academics need to do if they want to be successful.

Who Will Assess My ESRC Application?

I've just been advising an academic on applying to the ESRC. There used to be a substantial difference between the success rates for their standard and small grants. This has now pretty much disappeared, so I suggested that he shouldn't worry too much about trying to scrape it in under £100k upper limit for small grants.

Of course, value for money is a consideration, but more important is that the costs are justified, necessary and realistic.

Other than that, I suggested that he bear in mind the process that the application will go through, and who will be assessing it. Small grants only get seen by two members of a 'Virtual College', with the final decision being made by a member of the review panel; standard grants get seen by the whole panel. Details of Virtual College members are here; Panel members are here; and what the different panels cover is here.

From these it's possible to get a good idea of who will be asked to review the application. Is it someone who would be sympathetic to your work? Or is there a danger, if you put in for a small grant, that it will be shot down by someone who's unsympathetic? Would it be better to get a full hearing from the whole panel, including members who might know little about your area?

So construct your application according to the needs of your project, but always bear in mind your audience.

'The Grant-acquistion Treadmill is Relentless'

Interesting comment piece by Prof Tim Brikhead in this week's THE. He suggest that we need a dramatic overhaul of the way teaching and research are balanced in universities, including a wholesale change in the distribution of grants.
'The grant-acquisition treadmill is relentless. It is also monumentally time-consuming and demoralising because the failure rate is high and the likelihood of success almost random. Without exception, every one of my colleagues has come back from recent research council grant meetings wringing their hands in frustration and despair at the scale of the bureaucratic burden on academics and the utter injustice of the system. A system that requires academics to spend such a huge proportion of their time writing grant applications, awards those grants haphazardly, and then ranks academics according to how successful they have been in this exercise, is deeply flawed.'
Instead he suggests using the Canadian method - note the Institute for Government's interest in this earlier - whereby academics need only spend a relatively short time applying for grants, which are longer term. Prof Birkhead says that some of his colleagues there need only spend a week every five years complete applications. Interesting idea - but would the Government have the stomach to take it on?

MRC Chief Comes to Town

The CEO of the Medical Research Council, Sir Leszek Borysiewicz PhD, FRS, FRCP, FRCPath, FMedSci, will be coming to Kent tomorrow. He will be speaking to staff in the Senate Chamber at 2pm, and it will be a chance to hear how the MRC will be facing the challenging economic times ahead. What will be the MRC's strategy for dealing with them, and how is it dealing with the thorny issue of impact? There'll be a chance to ask question after Sir Leszek's talk, and the event will be followed be refreshments, and a further chance to chat informally to Sir Leszek and other colleagues. Contact Carol Moran if you'd like to come along.

ESRC: External Review and Right to Reply

I called the ESRC to shed a bit more light on how they deal with external reviews. As you may know, they don't externally review 'small' grant applications (£100k); the decision as to whether to fund the application is taken by two of the Research Board members. For their standard grants (>£100k) the applications do get sent out for external review, but you only have a right to reply if you are seeking more than £500k. If you're application is between £100k - £500k you only find out what the reviewers said after you've been informed of the outcome. Seems a bit harsh: the decision to (not) fund might well have been based on some confused or misinformed reviewer.