Research Active Vol 04 Issue 2 Jan 2010

RESEARCH ACTIVE The Newsletter of University of Kent Research Services, Vol 4, Issue 2, Jan 2010

HELP IS AT HAND Nine senior academics from across the University have agreed to help colleagues prepare funding applications.

• Each of the nine has experience in getting research funding, and they have all worked on the peer review panels of some of the UK’s major funders. They will be providing support through three complementary initiatives: the grants factory, masterclasses • and peer review panels.

GRANTS FACTORY Workshops, based on Andrew Derrington's Grants Factory techniques.

Prof. David Shemmings

MASTERCLASSES The Panels: Understanding and getting to know panels

Grants Factory

Prof. Mick Tuite

Andrew Derrington’s very successful ‘Grants Factory’ workshops will be continued by Prof David Shemmings. These offer a practical understanding of how the review process works, and how best to frame an application (see ResearchActive, Vol4, Issue 1 for more detail).

Masterclasses

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Dr. Peter Bennett •

The Review Process: Understanding how the review process works

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The Language: Using the right language to construct your argument Prof. Paul Allain

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Peer Review Panels

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POCKET STATS

Applications

2009-10*

Awards

Prof Dominic Abrams (ESRC) Prof Paul Allain (AHRC) Dr Peter Bennett (NERC)

Prof. Peter Clarkson

Secondly, a series of ‘masterclasses’ will be offered, which will look at more specific issues around proposal writing and review (see box, right).

Finally, staff will be able to get their funding applications reviewed by a panel of their peers before they submit. Each term, subject specific ‘mock panels’ will take place, to which any applicant can bring along their draft proposal. The panels require no preparatory reading and no form filling. You can just turn up with your proposal and have it reviewed by your peers. The exercise is simple, and proved to be very effective in the ‘Grants Factory’ workshops over the summer.

For more information contact Jacqueline Aldridge (j.aldridge@kent.ac.uk).

What Works: Common traits of successful applications

WHO’S INVOLVED?

The Right Match: Making your proposal suit the funder and its assessment process Prof. Peter Taylor-Gooby The Case for Support: Making the case for support work for your project Prof. Simon Thompson

Others to be confirmed.

PEER REVIEW PANELS • • • • •

Biomedical sciences Biology, ecology, evolution and conservation Maths, computing, physics and engineering Social science Humanities

Panels will meet termly.

Number

232

Down 13%

Value

£35.6m

Down 12%

Number

71

Down 12%

Value

£3m

Down 40%

*figures are for the period 01/08/2009—15/12/2009, and are compared with the same period last year 1

Prof Peter Clarkson (EPSRC) Prof Ulf Schmidt (Wellcome) Prof David Shemmings (ESRC) Prof Peter TaylorGooby (ESRC & Nuffield) Prof Simon Thompson (EPSRC & EC) Prof Mick Tuite (BBSRC & Wellcome)

RECENT AWARDS Recent awards have included: •

Prof Jeremy Carrette (SECL) and Prof Hugh Miall (PolIR): £427,736 from the AHRC for ‘Religious NonGovernmental Organisations and the United Nations in New York and Geneva.’

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Dr Jeremy Kendall (SSPSSR): £92,521 from the ESRC for the Third Sector Research Centre.

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Prof Liz Mansfield (SMSAS): £296,776 from EPSRC for ‘Group Actions in Functional Approximation Spaces.’

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Dr Ulrich Weger (Psychology): £48,475 from Leverhulme for ‘Practicing Mindfulness as a Strategy to Prevent Premature Judgements.’

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Prof Ann Netten (PSSRU): £9,550 from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation for ‘Social Well Being Dissemination’

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Dr Colin Johnson (Computing): £307, 678 from EPSRC for ‘Refactoring and Neutrality in Genetic Programming.’

ERC PRIZE Kent has won it’s first prestigious European Research Council award. Professor Adrian Podoleanu, in the School of Physical Sciences, has been awarded an ‘Advanced Grant’.

Details are still to be finalised, but the grant will be for €2m, and will look at ‘Combined time domain and spectral domain coherence gating for imaging and biosensing’.

The Vice Chancellor, Professor Julia Goodfellow, congratulated Prof Podoleanu on his achievement. ‘This is a substantial grant - perhaps the biggest individual research award that Kent has ever received - and is a great honour for both Adrian, the School and the University. I appreciate all the work he has done in preparing the application, and of course the excellent research upon which it is based.’

Prof Mark Smales (Biosciences): £312,456 from Lonza Biologics plc for an ‘Investigation of Improved Protein Synthesis/Synthesis mRNA Translation and growth characteristics in CHO Cells for Enhanced mAb Production.’

Congratulations to all award winners—both listed and unlisted—and we wish you all the best with your research.

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Common Comments from Reviewers Carol Moran (Sciences Faculty Funding Officer) has looked at a wide range of reviews from rejected applications and identified some common themes and comments. These included: ‘For non-specialist, proposal difficult to follow’; A need to ‘spell out’ why an experiment or methodology is chosen; • ‘ ..... fails to describe what the key ...... question is’ • Making unsubstantiated ‘assertions’ / ‘glib statements’ about either importance or methodology; • Not enough ‘illustrative examples’ to clarify what is to be achieved; • Doesn’t appear to take into account previous work.

For collaborative projects, there was concern about: • •

• • • • •

Inconsistency of terminology used by collaborators; Not enough cross site contact/sharing of info/ expertise; Not enough detail in the proposed work of ALL disciplines involved; Role of Co-I in one discipline not adequately explained; Proposal basically two projects bolted together.

Elsewhere, reviews expressed concern about the management of a project, saying that: The contingency / risk assessment was inadequate; Objectives were not clearly stated or linked to workplan; There was not much by way of proof of concept or preliminary data - difficult to be confident it will achieve aims; The Work Plan image ‘uninterpretable and unhelpful’; There was a mismatch between project objectives and methodology/experiments design.

• • •

• •

Knowing what reviewers commonly pick up on gives you the chance to pre-empt these issues. Make sure that your proposal: is written clearly in a way that is easy to understand by someone outside your discipline; • demonstrates a knowledge and understanding of previous work in the area; • is robust, well-thought through, consistent, and coherent, with an appropriate methodology and partnerships.

For more information on these reviewers comments, contact Carol Moran (c.a.moran@kent.ac.uk).

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KENT’S RESPONSE TO THE REF The University submitted a response to HEFCE’s proposals for the REF (see Research Active, Vol 4, Issue 1). Key points from Kent’s response include: •

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Support for the dual funding system and belief that the main function of the REF should be to provide a justifiable basis for the allocation of QR funding; Support for the key features of the proposals, particularly that judgements based on the peer review of samples of outputs. Citation data should only be used to inform and not drive peer review, and only in ways precisely indicated in advance by the panels and subpanels and where institutions have had an opportunity to view the data to be used;

Stats!

Want to know what applications have been submitted or awards received by Kent over the last five years? Stats are now available via the Research Management Information webpage at https://www.kent.ac.uk/resear chservices/local/mi/index.html

The Impact of Impact The debate over impact continues to rumble on, both for the REF and for the Research Councils (RCUK). For the REF, many responses to HEFCE’s consultation (including that from Kent, above) have suggested cutting the percentage from 25% to 15-20%. Elsewhere the Universities and Colleges Union (UCU) has created a petition opposing impact in the REF, which has now been signed by over 18,000 people.

Over at the RCUK the sector are being HELP WITH IMPACT encouraged to ‘work Not sure what the impact of your together’ with the research is? Stuck when it comes councils to give the to preparing an ‘impact plan’? government what it Then Research Services can help. wants, namely eviFrom January we will be holding dence that their inregular meetings with our colvestment has been leagues in Kent Innovation and justified.

Enterprise, the Media Office and At a well-attended the European Office. Together event in London we will identify the potential recently RCUK impact of your research for asked delegates to you. discuss how this If you would like us to come up should be done.

Signs are that impact with some impact ideas for your research, get in touch with Phil will be with us for a Ward (p.ward@kent.ac.uk). good while yet.

A request for consistency and clarity of criteria and process across panels; • A request to make the intervals between REFs as long as possible because of the costs of the process, and the slow change to research quality; • Opposition to a greater concentration of QR funding than that which resulted from RAE 2008.

Further detail included: • Support for 3 outputs rather than 4; • Support for ‘double weighting’ of some outputs; • Support generally for the proposed panel membership, numbers and working methods, with some caveats; • Concern about the proposed timetable; • Opposition to the redefinition of 4* category; • Opposition to citation use in Computer Science; • Opposition to the 25% impact weighting , and to it being weighted more than environment. A weighting of 65% for outputs, 20 for environment and 15% for impact was suggested instead; Thanks to all those who attended meetings to discuss HEFCE’s proposals, or provided comments directly to John Baldock or David Coombe.

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AHRC VISIT Professor Shearer West, the AHRC’s Director of Research, will be visiting the University on 27 January 2009. The programme is still to be finalised, but if you would like to come along to hear her talk about the work of the Council, the future strategy (including impact), get in touch with Lynne Bennett (l.bennett-282@kent.ac.uk).

What do I do now?

Academics receiving their first award might be a little uncertain as to what happens next. Here’s the next three steps: •

Give Research Services a copy of your award letter or contract. In addition, if we don’t have a copy of your application, the start date, and project costs, let us have these.

•

Research Services will then send you an ‘announcement’ of the award. This gives you a ‘cost code’ against which you can make claims on your award.

If research or other staff are to be appointed to the project, you will need to fill in the appropriate form.

R01 to advertise a post, R02 to appoint a named person to a post, and R03 to extend or vary the contract of an existing member of staff.

For more detail look at the dedicated Research Services webpages on starting and managing your grant at https://www.kent.ac.uk/researchservices/local/managing/index.h tml, or contact Ruth Woodger (r.p.woodger@kent.ac.uk) or Kate Ferguson (k.a.ferguson@kent.ac.uk) with any questions.

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CHOICE CUTS FROM THE BLOG Research Fundermentals, the blog started by Phil Ward, has been keeping an eye on the world of research funding since September. Recurring stories include the REF, funding cuts, and Impact.

Here are a selection of stories from it.

The blog itself can be found at: http://fundermental.blogspot.com/ 'Chill Wind of a Funding Winter' 8 October 2009 Adam Tickell, vice-principal of Royal Holloway, has painted a gloomy picture of the future funding of research.

'After an extraordinary Edwardian summer, funding for university research faces a long, cold winter'. Or World War I, if you take his analogy to its logical conclusion. In the bloody stalemate that's to follow he suggested that the Research Councils should retrench and set upper limits on how much they fund academic salaries relating to grants. ‘Unless some changes are made, the falling success rates may lead to major questions about the credibility of the research funding regime that will be of no benefit to anyone in the sector.'

'No benefit to anyone.' Let's hope it doesn't all end with the Treaty of Versailles.

ESRC External Review & Right to Reply 9 November 2009 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 2 people, 1 from the ’Virtual College’ and 1 from the Grants Board.

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.

Tories: Impact 'Clunky' 7 October 2009 David Willetts, the Conservative shadow education secretary, has criticised RCUK’s "clunky" assessment of impact. Its saving grace, he said, was that leaders of the research councils had told him that they didn't let it affect their grant-making decisions.

And he went on to warn: "We don't want to import that into the REF." UK Success in FP7 5 October 2009 The UK received the largest proportion of EC Framework funding in 2008. It overtook Germany to receive 16% (or €568m) of the 7th Framework Programme (FP7) total annual budget of €3,534m. The UK’s success rate also increased from 21.8% in 2007 to 26.3% in 2008 and continues to be higher than the EU average of 21.4%.

Separated at Birth?

27 October 2009

RCUK 'Serendipity Award': a Covert Comment on Impact?

2 October 2009 RCUK has announced the shortlist for its 'Serendipity Award'. This 'recognises entrepreneurial spirit in universities, rewarding researchers who have seen and seized unexpected opportunities for impact arising from their research.'

However, this seems to go counter to the Research Councils' current demand that researchers outline their 'Impact Plan' - up to 2 sides of A4 - when applying for funding.

By creating a 'Serendipity Award' is RCUK implying that impact cannot be predicted before the research is undertaken, that asking applicants do so is unrealistic, and that some of the best research has come from unexpected results? Surely not.

Astronomical Impact 4 November 2009 The Royal Astronomical Society has called on its members to join in with the UCU petition against Impact.

I guess this is unsurprising: Astronomy might be one of the tougher subjects to justify in terms of 'social and economic' impact. However, if a meteorite hits earth it'll be the biggest impact of all...

Get with the Programme 12 October 2009

Is it just me, or is there a touch of the Lloyd-Webber to the new RCUK Chair, Prof Alan Thorpe? fEC 'Dogs of War' Unleashed 20 November 2009 'Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!' bellowed RCUK, as they launched their Full Economic Costing (fEC) taskforce this week. Well, not quite. The wheels of funder bureaucracy move less dramatically, more slowly and much, much more carefully than that. Following its review of fEC in April, RCUK and Universities UK (UUK) are teaming up with the Financial Sustainability Strategy Group and the TRAC Development Group to establishing a group to come up with proposals on how to implement the review’s recommendations. The group is expected to report its proposals by the end of April 2010.

But somehow that doesn't quite have the same ring as 'cry havoc...'

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In the past I've always steered people away from the glitzy 'research programmes' issued by the funders. My reason for doing so is that they inevitably attract everyone who specialises in that area, but the funding available is limited. As a result success rates are usually pitiful.

However, looking at the AHRC's recent 2008-09 Annual Report the success rates for different schemes makes startling reading: • Responsive Mode success rates ranged between 10-33% • Strategic Mode (i.e. Programmes) ranged between 6-100% 6% I can understand, but 100%?? Surely some mistake?? But no, the overall average success rate for the programme grants is a very respectable 41%; for responsive mode a risible 18%. So the message to take away is never to dismiss Programme grants out of hand: if your project is strong, your subject appropriate and your application clear and well-written, then your chances are as good (if not better) than for standard grants.