ASTRONOMY GRANTS PANEL 2010

Report by Chairman to Community

By now, grant applicants will be receiving their results, and people are
eagerly waiting to hear how the next round, with new-style consolidated
grants, will work. Most of that information will come formally from STFC,
but I thought it would be appropriate to write a short more personal
report, on behalf of the Astronomy Grants Panel members. Probably the
most immediate thing you all want to know is that the upcoming submission
deadline has been shifted to May 4th. We hope to make announcements by
October for new funding starting April 1st 2012.

THE 2010 GRANTS REVIEW

This round we received 16 rolling grant (RG) applications covering a very
wide range of science and requesting 95 RAs and 8 Technical posts. We
also received 98 standard grant (SG) applications - 33 in Astronomy
Observation (AO), 21 in Astronomy Theory (AT), 21 in Solar Science (SS),
and 23 in Planetary Science (PL). Most of these asked for one RA, but
some for two, and some for none - i.e. applicant FEC time only.

Every application had multiple referee reports, and an assessor, who
writes an initial report before our panel meetings. Rolling grants also
have one or more additional subject-specialist assessors. The
applications were then discussed in four separate panel meetings lasting
a total of ten days. As in previous years, there was a specialist panel
for each of AO, AT, SS, and PL, and a rolling grant panel. First AO+AT
met together for two days and reviewed standard grants in their areas,
followed by a third day in which AO+AT and RG members jointly met and
discussed individual lines in the rolling grant applications. That
process was then repeated for SS+PL and the RG panel. The RG panel then
had two further two-day meetings, in which applicants came to Swindon to
give presentations followed by a Q&A session.

The final output was a ranked ordering of grants, which STFC could work
down through once they knew their budget situation. To help us arrive at
that ranked list we used, as in previous years, a scoring system based on
ten different categories with various weightings, such as scientific
excellence (weight 5), productivity of investigators (weight 2), and
quality of the impact plan (weight 1). Each category is scored 0-5, with
each possible score defined by a standard wording such as "Competitive
with the best science funded worldwide". This scoring system is really
for internal use to help our discussion, but it does enable us to make
clear political statements about absolute quality, with our hand on our
hearts (see below).

The aim of the AGP has always been that a pound spent on standard grants
produces the same quantity and quality of science as a pound spent on
rolling grants, and likewise for the different scientific areas. Of
course this is non-trivial to achieve. This year we paid even more
attention than usual to this, with much cross-reading of grants between
panels, as well as extended discussion.

BUDGET

You will all be aware that because of the CSR, announcements of results
were delayed until January. In 2009, as announced, the grants line was
cut significantly, but with the effect in 2009 softened by extra money
from RCUK. In 2010, we were expecting that full cut to be applied, but of
course we were worried that the CSR process would result in an even
larger cut. We were relieved to find that this was not the case, and the
grants budget line seems (for now at least !) to have stabilised.
Currently the budget allows for roughly £9M of new commitment each year,
which corresponds roughly to 55-60 RA awards. Of course that level of
grant expenditure is unsatisfactory, and represents a substantial decline
over both the peak in the recent past and the historic baseline of around
90 RA awards per year. I intend to take up that subject in another arena,
but I can let you know that I made this point forcefully to PPAN, which
understood and will consider programme priorities in due course.

RESULTS

In total STFC is able to fund 56 of our recommended RA positions,
together with 7 FTEs of Technician posts, and a small number of visitor
grants and "FEC only" grants (as well as assorted computers and
equipment). Of those 56 RAs, 42 were from rolling grants, and 14 from
standard grants. You will note that, as has long been the case, the
success rate is much higher in rolling grants than in standard grants.
This is partly because the community can try for standard grants every
year, so we are always looking at a larger fraction of the community, but
also because of a kind of self-review combined with negative feedback;
holders of rolling grants generally only put forward a little more than
they reasonably expect to get. It was clear to the AGP that the best
standard grants were absolutely as good as the best rolling grants, but
the standard grants also contain a long tail of things which are rated
lower.

Note that STFC is able to fund only 30% of the request overall. (44% of
rolling grant request and 14% of standard grant request.) A large
fraction of all grants were rated "fundable". In total, 84 lines were
rated "fundable at high priority", so STFC is able to fund two thirds of
what we feel we ought to be funding. There were 76 lines where the two
most important scoring categories (scientific excellence and
international competitiveness) had scores classing them in both these
categories as either level with the best in the world, or leading the
world. We thought of this as the "Cable Test". You will remember that
Vince Cable, referring to the RAE, provocatively noted that only half the
research going on in universities was world class. Well, for astronomy,
136% of the funded research is world class - in other words, STFC does
not even fund everything in this category. This is an extra-ordinary
statement which we hope that STFC will use to their advantage.

THE STFC GRANT MECHANISM REVIEW

During 2010 there was a review of STFC's grant funding mechanisms. I was
consulted, and in turn consulted the panel, so that we wrote a combined
AGP input. We stressed the advantages of both rolling grants (uniformly
high quality, cost effective for both applicants and STFC) and standard
grants (encourages innovation, fast turnround).

As you all know, the recommendation was for a new consolidated grants
system, so that we keep at least some advantages of the rolling grant
system, but lose the current standard grant system. I won't wade through
the details as I expect you all know them, but you can read the final
report at

http://www.stfc.ac.uk/News+and+Events/20115.aspx

Both the AGP and the office were originally assuming that the new system
would be implemented in 2012, because the report was not made until
November, and because in 2011 STFC is also obliged to transfer grant
administration to the new Shared Services Centre, so office staff were
already rather busy ! However, STFC Executive are keen for the change to
happen quickly. I am aware that the community are understandably
frustrated with the lack of timely guidance, but this has been a very
challenging timescale for the office staff to meet.

This is the main reason that the decision has been taken to delay the
submission date for this round to May 4th.

IMPLEMENTATION OF THE NEW GRANT SYSTEM

Formally, implementation is being undertaking by a working group in STFC.
Informally, the astronomy grants staff have consulted extensively with
the AGP over implementation issues. As you can imagine, the
psychodynamics of this is quite complicated, and it's up to STFC to
formally communicate guidelines, but I thought I would make a few points:

(i) We are encouraging STFC to be "tough but flexible" on the issue of
appropriate groupings for consolidated grants. There are obviously issues
around disciplinary organisation as well as departmental boundaries. STFC
will issue some guidance, but are expecting some case- by-case
discussions. Consortium grants, where people from different institutions
club together around some theme, are welcomed, but do be aware each
individual can only be on one grant - so you might need to choose between
your departmental grant and a possible consortium grant.

(ii) In the future, we want to bring the submission date forward to
February, and carry out the reviewing as efficiently as possible, with
the aim of making announcements in September. This is aimed at giving at
least six months notice of new funding.

(iii) We were worried that newly appointed academic staff may find they
have no opportunity to win funding for three years. We have therefore
argued for a kind of "new blood" scheme that will allow out-of-cycle
applications, that can then be subsumed into the next consolidated grant
round. This will follow strict rules, and will have only a modest budget,
and so should be fiercely competitive. This suggestion was viewed
positively

(iv) Applicant presentations will be abandoned. We have to treat
everybody the same, and simply cannot do this for all the envisaged
applications regardless of size. However, we are adding an extra round of
feedback from all applicants. As well as responding to referee's
comments, we are intending to send applicants "assessors questions".

(v) However, this does allow us to have a single week-long HST-style
panel meeting. At the beginning of the week, the specialist (AO,AT,SS,PL)
panels will meet in parallel and produce ranked lists.

The chairs and deputy chairs will then stay on to compare the ranked
lists and produce a final merged result. We are also considering changing
the boundary lines between the specialist panels - for example instead of
having AO and AT, having near and far universe panels, or of adding an
instrumentation sub-panel.

(vi) Travel and visitor grants will be merged in straight away.

Merging of PATT grants will be considered for a later round.

(vii) Applications will be expected to be divided into scientific
"strands" or "projects" or "themes" (we haven't agreed the words yet but
will very soon !). This is simply to make the application easy to read,
and easy to partition for review. There is no obligation to make these
themes link together or present a coherent plan, but if course if you
want to do so, that is fine.

(viii) Astronomy grants will not have a core vs non-core distinction.

In trying to arrive at a definition, it became clear that the number of
such posts would be small, at the cost of considerable administrative
complication. The kind of staff that the particle physicists had in mind
when arguing for this distinction are in astronomy groups almost always
on project grants or have indefinite contracts and go on as DA. The
overwhelming view of the AGP was to maximise simplicity and not have this
distinction.

(ix) It is intended that all consolidated grant holders will have the
kind of flexibility currently associated with rolling grants. In other
words, if some great new scientific direction comes up during your grant,
you can use the money to pursue it; you will be judged on your success,
not narrowly on whether you do exactly what you said. Of course this is
subject to the usual rules and custom and practice about what is
appropriate expenditure.

(x) In the steady state, groups will submit a new grant application
roughly halfway through the existing grant, i.e. once every three years.
Each grant will be awarded three years worth of money, but with the
ability to spread the spend over four years, so that for example a key
postdoc coming from overseas can be offered a three year contract even if
they can only start six months in. The details of how this will be
achieved are under discussion, but the intention is clear.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It has been a pleasure to work with the astronomy grants staff at STFC

- Kim Burchell, Diane Greening and Rachel Atkins and Colin Vincent of
course. They work hard, are very efficient, and always friendly and
helpful. It has also been a pleasure working with my colleagues on the
panel. It is a rather scary and difficult task, and one which is carried
out with great sincerity and scientific integrity. It is also worth
saying thank you to everybody in the community who submitted referee's
reports - they are crucial to the whole process.

Andy Lawrence, Edinburgh, Feb 1st 2011