Earlier this year EPSRC held a Cross-Disciplinarity and Co-Creation in ICT Research Call, with a closing date for outline proposals on 14 June. A panel was convened to consider these in early August, and some interesting points came out of this.
- First, it was extremely popular. There was up to £5M available for this call and EPSRC was planning to fund 6-10 bids. The information day in April was oversubscribed, and the final number of outlines received suggest that the final success rate will, at best, be around 7-10%.
- Second, sticking to the five criteria was key. These were clearly set out in the Call Document, and were:
- Demonstration of Cross-Disciplinarity and Co-Creation
- Evidence of Added Value from this Collaboration
- Suitability of Applicant Team to Deliver the research
- Institutional Support
- Potential to Influence the ICT Community
This may sound obvious, but given that applicants only had a two page case for support to set these out, it was not only helpful but crucial to use these as a framework for making the argument. Although ‘national importance’ and impact would be important in the full proposals, these five criteria were key for this outline stage. As I’ve said before, panellists tend to be time poor, eminent people who don’t necessarily have a knowledge of your area. Explain exactly how you, your team and your project ‘fit’ the parameters of the call.
- Third, you had to make clear what you were actually going to do. Not only did you need to be clear in your methodology and in what you’re going to do, but also in the way the disciplines would work together. This should include the ways in which the different disciplines interact with each other and ‘co-create’ new knowledge.
- Fourth, most of the discussion was around the cut off points. The panel had to prioritise the applications, and those at the top and bottom of the list were fairly clear. Where most of the discussion took place was around the cut off point for those that would be invited to submit a full application.
- Finally, the institutional support was very important. Saying that your university will give you standard resources (such as space to work in) is not good enough. There needs to be a real demonstration of commitment, such as PhD studentships, seedcorn funding, or even a wider explanation and justification of the strengths of the research environment.
Photo by Uriel Soberanes on Unsplash