The results of the 2009 Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s Discovery grant competition were announced on Friday. Generally the results are released in mid-March, so the delay was part and parcel of a series of odd events for this competition.

Rob Annan provided a very good summary of some of these issues in his blog. To summarize:

1) The results were announced by the Right Honourable Gary Goodyear himself (Canadian Minister of State, Science and Technology). Usually the DG program doesn’t rate ministerial announcement. See the press release here.

2) The second news release put a slightly different spin on the “good news” reported by Goodyear. For example:

• the success rate has declined
• the total amount of funding for the program was flat over the last two competitions ($349.3 million), however, the average award has increased by $4,000 per year. Technically speaking, the total number of applicants has been declining over the past three years, but the variance in total applicants in 2007 and 2008 was largely due to fewer new applicants. (Email me if you want the 2007 and 2008 detailed competition statistics.) In any event, the increase of funding per applicant is more related to the fact that fewer people applied and even less were successful.

Apparently, NSERC will be presenting more comprehensive stats on the competition soon. This is significant because detailed analysis of the Discovery competition doesn’t usually get released until September.

(I wonder if the delayed announcement is due to an attempt to provide competition analysis with competition results?)

Of course, it makes sense (to try) to be more transparent in this competition in anticipation of the heightened scrutiny related to the partial implementation of the new peer review process.

The new process attempts to disconnect the scientific merit of the applications and applicants from the award of funds through a scorecard system. Theoretically, this will reduce cronyism by funding applications based purely on relative score versus less qualitative factors.

I am looking forward to seeing the detailed statistics.

NSERC has announced that the results of the 2009 Discovery grant competition will be delayed. Start calling your Grants Officer after April 16th.

The waiting continues. . . .

I promised a review shortly after the changes occurred. It has taken me a little bit longer, but here it is:

NSERC has to appeal to several different audiences, therefore I understand the need to focus on the ‘why research is important’ message to the public on the home page with the slick slideshow. The look is definitely fresher and friendlier to the public. That being said, the five second refreshes on the slideshow gave me an excruciating headache and made it difficult to look at the rest of the home page. The home page is definitely weighted towards public communication and the media. Besides the success story slideshow, there are more than four direct links to ‘Media Room’ content.

After being subscribed to their RSS feeds for over a month, I am disappointed. They have seven separate feed channels, but the segmentation of the actual content is limited. Most of the content they post is syndicated to all the feeds, which leaves the signal to noise ratio pretty high.

My other pet peeve with the feed system is that even when you click on the links within the feed to read more detail, you don’t necessarily jump to the appropriate article. Perhaps there is an error with my reader, but there were certain articles that I had to search for and had trouble finding on the media page. This has happened more than once, most notably with the recent Strategic Review and Budget release. Again, perhaps this particular post is an anomaly, but it is missing from the main newsfeed on the home page and media room pages. (Note: it does exist on the program news page.)

The left sidebar and header menus content and organization look similar to the old version of the site. Clicking through the left sidebar to particular audience segments, such as “Professors” or “Partners”, results in a change to the left side menu to provide information specific to that group. An additional feature is the dynamic locator line that tells you exactly where you are in the navigation and allows you to return to previous menus. No matter the audience, there is simply a glut of information available on the site. However, I am not really sure if there is a solution – I guess the newbies will have to grin and bear a few hours of online research to get a grasp of the vast number of programs available and whether they are pertinent to their research plans.

As a highlight, there is a handy new link directly to the application forms and program instructions on the right sidebar. I love this feature of the site – it was the portion of the old site that I had bookmarked and used all the time!! It is the best resource on the site to find information quickly when working on specific applications.

Happy navigating!

NSERC just posted a direct commentary on the strategic review, budget 2009 and NSERC program changes on their website. Nothing really new here – but you get to hear it directly from Dr. Fortier.

I’m coming to this topic a little bit later than everyone else since I’ve been trying very hard to limit my posts about research politics, but I can’t hold it in any longer. When Budget 2009 came out, I wondered where the tri-councils were going to make the cuts to their budgets. Anecdotally, the originally perceived $87 million in cuts is now more likely to be around $147 million over the next three years. This is in contrast to the $10 billion (US) increase for research in the United States. Yuck.

Anyway, the Presidents of the various tri-councils apparently sent out letters to stakeholders on February 19th and McLeans.ca posted the content of those letters on February 23rd in a blog post titled “Let’s play Cut the Granting Councils!” These letters outlined where the cuts will occur. Here is CAUT’s summary. And here’s mine:

SSHRC’s cuts:

• eliminating health-related research that is eligible for funding under CIHR
• no more Research Time Stipends (RTS)
• (Not stated directly in the letter) elimination of the Intellectual Property Mobilization (IPM) program, however since they were only contributing $150,000 per year to the program, this might have not been substantial enough to note.

CIHR’s cuts:

• Open Team grants program discontinued
• IPM program cut

NSERC’s cuts:

• Centres for Research in Youth, Science Teaching and Learning (CRYSTAL) program will be phased out; funding for the five current centres will not be renewed once commitments are complete
• Post Graduate Scholarships (PGS) will limit Masters students to one year (and as an aside, NSERC announced yesterday that it was discontinuing the MITACS/PGS program)
• University Faculty Awards (UFA) program eliminated (not exactly breaking news as this program was closed 2 or 3 years ago)
• Research Capacity Development (RCD) program will not continue, the seven pilot awards will not be renewed
• Major Resources Support (MRS) program will provide support to major resources that are unique on a national or international scale (and the difference is???)
• Special Research Opportunity (SRO) program will be discontinued. (This is disappointing as this program had the most potential for increasing timely and innovative research (outside of fixed funding cycles) in the absence of an industrial partner.)
• IPM program cut

In my opinion, NSERC and CIHR are taking the brunt of the cuts. NSERC does state that the Discovery grant program budget will increase slightly (from $323 million in 2008-09, to $326 million in 2009-10); but the whole concept of increasing the number of scholarships, while limiting the term of the MSc awards just makes me think of robbing Peter to pay Paul. If researchers are supposed to demonstrate that they are supporting highly qualified personnel (HQP), but can’t ensure that they have the base funding for students (through their grants), will an assumption of attracting PGS students be an acceptable alternative? How much pressure will there be for MSc students to convert to PhD programs to ensure scholarship funding?

However, one upside of cutting so many different programs at NSERC is that perhaps there will be some trimming on the administrative side to result in those “operating efficiencies” they mentioned earlier? I say this with my tongue firmly in cheek, as I know how overloaded most of these administrators are, but I also recognize that this is not the perception at large.

Somehow, I also feel like many of these cuts are in contrast with the objectives stated in the federal S&T strategy “Mobilizing Science and Technology to Canada’s Advantage (2007)”. Yes, there is more of a push towards trainees, but still, if there is no operating funding for this influx of personnel to use for research – what is the point?