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In a change that will cause mixed reactions, UK research funding proposals no longer need "impact" statements.
UK researchers will, however, benefit from no longer having to submit a "Pathways to Impact" plan or complete an "Impact Summary" when applying for cash from UKRI – the umbrella organization for the UK's seven research councils. The Pathways to Impact requirement, which had been in place for around a decade, was controversial. But for grant applications made from 1 March 2020, researchers will not have to submit. The UKRI currently invest a total of £7bn into British science each year
"The removal of 'Pathways to Impact' will be broadly welcomed by the many grant-writing physicists whose heart sank at the thought of churning out two pages of boilerplate on the ill-defined socioeconomic impact of their proposed research," says Physicist Philip Moriarty from the University of Nottingham. "Yet despite being a vocal opponent of it for many years, I feel it's important to recognise that it played a role in shifting attitudes regarding the broader implications of academic research. For one thing, the 'impact agenda' led to a greater – albeit, often rather opportunistic – interaction between science and the arts and humanities. Hopefully this interdisciplinary activity will continue in its absence".
The US National Science Foundation requires a "Broader Impacts" statement in its grant applications.
Grant proposals are generally a big time sink for scientists, and the "impact" statement seems like it needs the thickest helping of buzzwords, exaggerations, meaningless generalities, and unfounded optimism. But society legitimately wants to know what it's getting out of the research. Maybe cool results, publications, and productivity metrics are enough?
(Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday February 02 2020, @11:11AM (1 child)
Another thing to fix is streamlining the proposal process. As the OP points out, a ridiculous amount of time is wasted on writing grant proposals. What they don't point out is what this leads to, many, many grant proposal for ten to a hundred times what it really costs because just it's not worth writing a proposal for 40,000, so let's ask for 4M instead, spend 40,000 on the original research, and the remainder on stuff that's interesting but that we no longer have to faff around with grant proposals for.
This is why you get grant proposals for 2.5M for an earthshaking impactful study into the history of Ethiopian pottery in 4,000BC.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday February 02 2020, @02:45PM
IDK about your pottery analysts, but around here a skilled man-year costs our corporation about $200K, $400K if they're a consultant without benefits or continued employment expectations ($100K if they're an intern not expected to produce anything valuable in the majority if cases...)
Factor in the costs for field expeditions to Ethiopia, the government permitting process for excavation and exportation of culturally significant historical artifacts (they must be significant if there's a $2.5M grant to study them, eh?, I'd expect to tithe the authorities, at a minimum)... it sounds to me like your $2.5M grant is probably only going to fund 5 people for barely 2 years, one of those people to be full-time employed writing and processing the followup grant proposals.
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