ESRC Demand Management Part 5: And the winner is…. researcher sanctions!

"And the prize for best supporting sanctions scheme goes to...."
And the winner is.....

The ESRC today revealed the outcome of the ‘Demand Management’ consultation, with the consultation exercise showing a strong preference for researcher sanctions rather than the other main options, which were institutional sanctions, institutional quotas, or charging for applications.  And therefore….

Given this clear message, it is likely that any further steps will reflect these views.

Which I think means that that’s what they’re going to do.  But being (a) academics, and (b) British, it has to be expressed in the passive voice and as tentatively as possible.

Individual researcher sanctions got the vote of  82% of institutional responses, 80% of learned society responses, and 44% of individual responses.   To put that in context, though, 32% of the individual responses were interpreted as backing none of the possible measures, which I don’t think was ever going to be a particular convincing response.    Institutional sanctions came second among institutions (11%), and institutional quotas (20%) among individual respondents.  Charging for applications was, as I expected, a non-starter, apparently attracting the support of two institutions and one learned society or ‘other agency’.  I’m surprised it got that many.

The issue of the presentation of the results as a ‘vote’ is an interesting one, as I don’t think that’s what this exercise was presented as at the time.  The institutional response that I was involved in was – I like to think – a bit more nuanced and thoughtful than just a ‘vote’ for one particular option.  In any case, if it was a vote, I’m sure that the ‘First Past the Post’ system which appears to have been used wouldn’t be appropriate – some kind of ‘alternative vote’ system to find the least unpopular option would surely have been more appropriate.  I’m also puzzled by the combining of the results from institutions, individuals, and learned societies into totals for ‘all respondents’ which seems to give the same weighting to individual and institutional responses.

Fortunately – or doubly-fortunately – those elements of the research community which responded delivered a clear signal about the preferred method of demand management, and, in my view at least, it’s the right one.  I’ll admit to being a bit surprised by how clear cut the verdict appears to be, but it’s very much one I welcome.

It’s not all good news, though.  The announcement is silent on exactly what form the programme of researcher sanctions will take, and there is still the possibility that sanctions may apply to co-investigators as well as the principal investigator.  As I’ve argued before, I think this would be a mistake, and would be grossly unfair in far too many cases.  I know that there are some non-Nottingham folks reading this blog, so if your institution isn’t one of the ones that responded (and remember only 44 of 115 universities did), it might be worth finding out why not, and making your views known on this issue.

One interesting point that is stressed in the announcement is that individual researcher sanctions – or any form of further ‘demand management’ measures – may never happen.  The ESRC have been clear about this all along – the social science research community was put on notice about the unsustainablity of the current volume of applications being submitted, and that a review would take place in autumn 2012.  The consultation was about the general form of any further steps should they prove necessary.  And interestingly the ESRC are apparently ‘confident’ they they will not.

We remain confident that by working in partnership with HEIs there will be no need to take further steps. There has been a very positive response from institutions to our call for greater self-regulation, and we expect that this will lead to a reduction in uncompetitive proposals.

Contrast that with this, from March, when the consultation was launched:

We very much hope that we will not need additional measures.

Might none of this happen?  I’d like to think not, but I don’t share their confidence, and I fear that “very much hope” was nearer the mark.  I can well believe that each institution is keen to up its game, and I’m sure discussions are going on about new forms of internal peer review, mentoring, research leadership etc in institutions all across the country.  Whether this will lead to a sufficient fall in the number of uncompetitive applications, well, I’m not so sure.

I think there needs to be an acceptance that there are plenty of perfectly good research ideas that would lead to high quality research outputs in quality journals, perhaps with strong non-academic impact, which nevertheless aren’t ‘ESRC-able’ – because they’re merely ‘very good’ or ‘excellent’ rather than ‘outstanding’.  And it’s only the really outstanding ideas that are going to be competitive.  If all institutions realise this, researcher sanctions may never happen.  But if hubris wins out, and everyone concludes that it’s everyone else’s applications that are the problem, then researcher sanctions are inevitable.

A visit from the British Academy….

The British Academy logo, featuring the Greek Muse Clio, according to wikipedia...
The British Academy

Ken Emond, Head of Research Awards of the British Academy, came to visit the University of Nottingham the other week to talk about the various and nefarious research funding schemes that are on offer from the British Academy.  To make an event of it, my colleagues in the Centre for Advanced Studies also arranged for various internal beneficiaries of the Academy’s largesse to come and talk about the role that Academy funding had had in their research career.  I hope no-one minds if I repeat some of the things that were said – there was no mention of ‘Chatham House’ rules or of ‘confidential learning agreements’, and I don’t imagine that Ken gives privileged information to the University of Nottingham alone, no matter how wonderful we are.

Much of what funders’ representatives tend to say during institutional visits or AMRA conferences is pretty much identical to the information already available on their website in one form or another, but it’s interesting how many academics seem to prefer to hear the information in person rather than read it in their own time.  And it’s good to put a face to names, and faces to institutions.  Although I think I shall probably always share Phil Ward‘s mental image of the BA as an exclusive Rowley Birkin QC-style private members club.  But it’s good to have a reminder of what’s on offer, and have an opportunity to ask questions.

I met Ken very briefly at the ARMA conference in 2010, and his enthusiasm for the Small Grants Scheme then (and now) was obvious.  I was very surprised when it was scrapped, and it seems likely that this was imposed rather than freely chosen.  However, it’s great to see it back again, and this time including support for conference funding to disseminate the project findings.  It seems the call is going to be at least annual, with no decision taken yet on whether there will be a second call this year, as in previous years.

It seems much more sensible than having separate schemes for projects and for conference funding.  It’s unlikely that we’re going to see a return of the BA Overseas Conference Scheme, but…. it was quite a lot of work in writing and assessing for really very small amounts of money.  Although having said that, when I was at Keele those very small amounts of money really did help us send researchers to prestigious conferences (especially in the States) they wouldn’t otherwise have attended.

One of the questions asked was about the British Academy’s attitude to demand management, of the kind that the EPSRC have introduced and that the ESRC are proposing.  The response was that they currently have no plans in this direction – they don’t think that any institutions are submitting an excessive number of applications.

Although the British Academy has some of the lowest success rates in town for its major schemes, they are all light touch applications – certainly compared to the Research Councils.  Mid-Career and Post-Doc Fellowships both have an outline stage, and the Senior Research Fellowships application form is hardly more taxing than a Small Grant one.  Presumably they’re also quick and easy to review – I wonder how many of those a referee could get through in the time it took them to review a single Research Council application?  Which does raise the suggestion from Mavan, a commenter on one of my previous posts, about cutting the ESRC application form dramatically.

But… it’s possible that the relative brevity of the application forms is itself increasing the number of applications, and that’s certainly something that the ESRC were concerned about when considering their own move to outline stage applications.

I guess a funding scheme could be credible and sustainable with a low success rate and a low ‘overhead’ cost of writing and reviewing applications or a high success rate with a high overhead cost.  The problem is when were get to where we are at the moment with the ESRC, with low success rates and high overhead costs.

Yet another ‘oh look, the start of term’ blog post….

Apologies for the lack of posts recently.  I’ve been off on leave for a couple of weeks, but although this blog is written in my own time and in a personal capacity, I decided to ended up taking a complete break from all things research funding related.  And yes, I did have a nice break, thanks for asking…. part ‘stay-cation’ and part ‘prepare for house move that won’t now take place this leave year after all’


“Hello! Hello! It’s good to be back!”

I managed to miss the first week of term, although the return of the students is fairly hard to miss in university cities like Nottingham.  Suddenly there are young people everywhere, and about a third of them look lost.  I played my part in supporting the student induction experience by giving directions to an undergraduate who had lost herself between two of the University of Nottingham campuses (campi?).  Easily done.  This is usually been the limit of my interaction with undergraduates, other than telling them that, no, I don’t know the code to the computer room, and that they should ask at reception.

Universities are strange, almost depressing, places outside term time.  A little bit like I’d imagine the whole world would be after a ‘rapture’ of the kind that some odd kinds of Christians are expecting.  Sure, it’s nice for a day or so to have the place to ourselves, but when the students go, so does the infrastructure.  Limited choice of sandwiches at lunchtime, a reduced bus service, and of course, the staff slope off as well.  Academics for a combination of annual leave and research time (except this year, of course.  Thanks, ESRC, for those September deadlines.   Thank you so much), and the rest of us will also look to take the bulk of our leave then too.  On one level, you’d think it would a good time to get things done, but on the other, the people you need to get on board to get any of them done tend not to be around.  And as we’ve seen, no time of the year is really any good.

Does anyone else play the ‘out of office’ lottery?  Trying to predict how many out of office emails you’ll get in a day, or in response to any one particular email.  (On the subject of which, wouldn’t it be handy to have an ‘oh, never mind, enjoy yourself’ option to respond to o-o-o emails with, so that you could delete your original email so they’d have one less to deal with when they return.  I’d also quite like an “I’ve told you once already” o-o-o-email which subtly escalates in annoyance if more emails are received from the same person).

But it’s remarkable how soon the spring in the step fades, even on a warm October morning.  The campus is bustling with activity, when academic and non-academic colleagues are around (if busy) and the corridors are full of students’ chatter.  Office doors everywhere are left just a little bit ajar, colleagues are catching up on their summer holidays research, buses are more frequent (if a little less reliable), optimism and excitement are in the air.and the university feels, well, like a university again.

But then I’m asked for the code to the computer room before I even get as far as unlocking my office door, I have to queue for ten minutes for a sandwich at lunchtime, I can’t get on to the hopper bus after a meeting and have to walk back to base, and corridors are blocked with lost or dawdling students, or just ‘hanging out’.  Though I suspect no-one says ‘hangs out’ any more.  And then I start to yearn for the peace and quiet of the summer.  Almost.

Not really…. Hello, Nottingham University Business School.  Hello, term time.  It’s good to be back.