Ah, EPSRC: they are the story that keeps on giving. You can always rely on them for a headline.
No sooner have they got chemists spitting blood at their remit changes, than they’re saying that only certain disciplines can apply to their fellowships, before crowing about their blacklist-fuelled success rates. You’ve got to love ’em.
Yesterday, having not made any pronouncements for literally days, they issued a press release on changes to their blacklisting procedure. It’s only really tweaking, so put the placards down. In fact, most of the changes are for the better, as follows:
- When calculating your success rate, EPSRC will no longer include applications that were thrown out because your research didn’t fit within its remit;
- Similarly, if you applied to a scheme that has a second/interview stage, and you manage to get to that stage but get rejected after, this will not be held against you in the calculations;
- Finally, if your application was ranked against nine or fewer other applications by one of EPSRC’s panels, and came in the bottom half, this will not be included in their calculations.
So generally a move in the right direction. Now all they need to do is tweak their ‘Shaping Capability’ remit changes, and we’ll be there.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash