Spending six months on a failed grant bid is too much. Things must change

This, but more so in social sciences: at ESRC, success rates for 2022-23 were just 11.7%.

It's a demoralising process writing detailed proposals that you know are unlikely to be funded. I’ve seriously considered giving up in the past and have known many other talented individuals to have done just that and moved to the private sector. As mentioned in the article, there’s no easy answer to all the problems but a few simple steps such as the two-stage process could save countless wasted hours of work.

When I started out in research in Australia, grant success was less than 10%; the best were successful. Writing a grant helps to consolidate ideas and is never a waste of time. It is nonsense to suggest it is a mugs game-it is integral to academia. How else are we to differentiate the best researchers from the rest?

We have to remember that we are asking for a lot of money. There should be a high degree of scrutiny. My last BBSRC grant application was £650k (FEC), and I think that is about average. I was explaining to a friend last night how it came to that much. They work in a (charity funded) unit providing mental health support to homeless people with addiction issues. £650k would be enough to fund their whole unit for several years. Instead it's being closed down for lack of funds, while i'm applying to do this research for no other reason than its kind of cool and interesting. I also don't think it takes 2-person months to write a standard responsive mode bid. I wrote the previously mentioned one in more like 1 month. Yes, there would be some time on the admin side, but I don't really think anything like a months worth. That said, I like the idea of a two stage process, as currently used by funders like the Wellcome Trust and the ERC. And I can see a place for limited resubmission - although this might massively increase the amount of submission that need considering, and thus work load on committees etc.

I agree 100% with the author's comments and believe that something needs to done urgently to address the current wasteful grant application process. The suggestions, such as a two stage process, double blind reviewing, a set number of reviews being allowed, and bids rated as excellent being allowed to resubmit, seem completely reasonable. I sincerely hope that bodies such as the BBSRC take notice of this and start implementing positive change. If they don't, the wasteful apparent lottery through which grants are currently awarded may disenchant many of us (with excellent research ideas), to the detriment of UK science and technology. Nowadays we operate in a highly competitive global environment; if UK science and technology wants to survive, it can't carry on shooting itself in the foot in this way. I look forward to hearing what changes the BBSRC intend to make.

I very much agree with the author’s viewpoints regarding the identified issues and the proposed solutions, especially regarding the implementation of a double-blind initial stage and improving transparency and fairness, such as the rejection of poorly written assessor comments. Also, I believe it is crucial not to hinder excellent bids from resubmission solely due to committee workload constraints. Criteria for permitting or disallowing resubmissions should be more transparent, and the procedures for resubmissions and their assessments need simplification. I think it could easily take 2-person months to write a bid. Prior to even the announcement of a call, the consortium needs typically be established, involving numerous meetings and brainstorming sessions. Throughout the preparation phase, the team’s collective efforts in iteratively refining the technical approach, participating in regular meetings, and aligning with the call’s specific requirements demand a substantial amount of time. The amount of work related to ethics, data management, resource planning, IP, internal reviews, etc. are equally significant and should not be underestimated.

Surely, as academics (ie intelligent, analytical and proven problem solvers), when inefficiencies such as this are identified, we really should be doing our best to solve them, not just continually wasting such vast sums of money on what is a deeply flawed system. Well done Professor Smith for outlining the case so succinctly and providing some instantly testable solutions to trial. Any comments from UKRI?

I wrote the following in 2012, when I was a PhD student. It outlines a structured approach to proposal writing, replacing some of the competitive aspects of the process with collegial cohort-based collaboration instead. This could potentially be piloted as an informal layer on top of existing programmes like the UKRI's New Investigator Grants. The suggestion would differ from in-house mentoring at institutions, by being organised per discipline at the national level. Considering the historical technologies for doing science, it makes sense that public funding for research is administered via a competitive, hierarchical model. Science is too big for everyone to get together in one room and discuss. However, contemporary communication technologies and open practices seem to promise something different: a sustained public conversation about research. The new way of doing things would "redeem" the intellectual capital currently lost in rejected research proposals, and would provide postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers with additional learning opportunities through a system of peer support. JISC ran an experiment moving in this direction (the "JISC Elevator"), but the actual incentive structure ended up being similar to other grant funding schemes, with 6 of 26 proposals funded (https://web.archive.org/web/20120602143148/http://www.jisc.ac.uk/blog/crowd/). It strikes me that if we saw the same numbers in a classroom setting (6 pass, 20 fail), we would find that pretty appalling. Of course, people have the opportunity to re-apply with changes in response to another call, but the overheads in that approach are quite high. What if instead of a winners-take-all competitive model, we took a more collaborative and learning-oriented approach to funding research, with "applicants" working together, in consultation with funders -- until their ideas were ready? In the end, it's not so much about increasing the acceptance rate, but increasing the throughput of good ideas! Open peer review couldn't "save" the most flawed proposals; nevertheless, it could help expose and understand the flaws -- allowing contributors to learn from their mistakes and move on. With such an approach, funding for "research and postgraduate training" would be fruitfully combined. This modest proposal hinges on one simple point: transparency. Much as the taxpayer "should" have access to research results they pay for (cf. the appointment of Jimmy Wales as a UK government advisor) and scientists "should" have access to the journals that they publish in (cf. Winston Hide's resignation as editor of Genomics), so, too, do we as citizen-scientists have a moral imperative to be transparent about how research funding is allocated, and how research is done. Not just transparent: positively pastoral.

I note with interest that the Independent Review of Research Bureaucracy, led by Prof Adam Tickell, cited the funding application process itself as the major cause of unnecessary bureaucracy, identifying the amount of effort required verses the chances of success as a key point. It noted that there is a significant opportunity to reduce the amount of wasted effort, so that application processes are proportionate to the chances of success. It also recommended that funders should experiment with application processes to reduce burdens for applicants, including greater use of two-stage application processes, where information required increases in line with the likelihood of being funded. It further recommended limiting the number of applications requiring full peer review. I see also that in the government response mention is made of double-blind stages. These are all urgently needed revisions in my view.

Others in the comments have mentioned success rates as low as 11.7 and 10 per cent. These figures are well below the economic viability of the bidding process, by which I mean the cost of generating bids is greater than the value of funding on offer. This has been shown in various studies. The main issue I see is to reduce effort on unsuccessful grant applications. I see one person commenting has suggested an approach where applicants work with funders to develop project ideas. Sandpits have been used in this way but again tend to favour the same groups as there is often an assessment stage involved in securing attendance. Having a multistage bidding process is another way to allow a strong bid to be worked up, and where unsuitable bids are weeded out early on, before the applicant has invested a lot of work. Adding some form of anonymity for applicants also seems fairer, as does allowing for resubmission of fundable bids.

I agree entirely with the author’s viewpoint - I would also add that the application process could be improved by making the content of the application commensurate with the amount of funds being requested - rather than a flat structure across the board.

I am an ECR and currently have the joy of trying to get a post doc position. As part of this I was employed for 6 months to write 4 bids last year on behalf of a PI. None were funded despite one receiving top scores from 2 out of 3 reviewers with an overall score of of 5.5. The AHRC recently released the panel data for that one and it appears only four bids were funded. So now I’m unemployed and have 3 submitted bids im waiting on which I wrote in my own time, unpaid, with 1 further in progress. I don’t hold out much hope for any of them and have decided these will be my last tries. Am now looking to work in industry instead as the prospect of endless short fixed term contracts dependent on getting more research funding to stay employed is demoralising.

I am an ECR and currently have the joy of trying to get a post doc position. As part of this I was employed for 6 months to write 4 bids last year on behalf of a PI. None were funded despite one receiving top scores from 2 out of 3 reviewers with an overall score of of 5.5. The AHRC recently released the panel data for that one and it appears only four bids were funded. So now I’m unemployed and have 3 submitted bids im waiting on which I wrote in my own time, unpaid, with 1 further in progress. I don’t hold out much hope for any of them and have decided these will be my last tries. Am now looking to work in industry instead as the prospect of endless short fixed term contracts dependent on getting more research funding to stay employed is demoralising.

I am an ECR and currently have the joy of trying to get a post doc position. As part of this I was employed for 6 months to write 4 bids last year on behalf of a PI. None were funded despite one receiving top scores from 2 out of 3 reviewers with an overall score of of 5.5. The AHRC recently released the panel data for that one and it appears only four bids were funded. So now I’m unemployed and have 3 submitted bids im waiting on which I wrote in my own time, unpaid, with 1 further in progress. I don’t hold out much hope for any of them and have decided these will be my last tries. Am now looking to work in industry instead as the prospect of endless short fixed term contracts dependent on getting more research funding to stay employed is demoralising.

I completely agree, the current research funding application system is very inefficient. Many of the suggestions the author presents would make for a much fairer and transparent process which would help to ensure good research proposals don't go to waste.

It’s all subjective I suppose, but it is strange how the AHRC handout millions for what to many seem like lightweight arts projects that appear to offer little real long-term value, while so many arguably more worthy science projects get rejected. No wonder the Taxpayers’ Alliance is calling for new measures to assess the value for money of publicly funded research projects, including an independent mechanism to analyse funding outcomes.

How about an actual lottery if the proposal meets a threshold? In my last rejection, it felt like they are clutching at sraws to explain the decision.