The British governmental body responsible for funding research and postgraduate training in engineering and the physical sciences, known as the EPSRC, has been getting some bad press recently. But I couldn’t help being impressed by their new fellowship policy, which was pointed out to me by fellow OT blogger Sylvia McLain.
As my regular readers will know, I strongly object to post-docs being judged against arbitrary sell-by dates, which do not allow any wriggle-room for personal situations. In other words, there should be no magic amount of time beyond which not achieving a permanent research position constitutes failure. A person who takes time out to raise a family, for example, might need a bit more time to publish the same amount of papers as a person who is unencumbered – but this does not mean that the latter deserves an academic research career and the former does not. Rather, let each vie in open competition for the same fellowships and be judged on their own merits. In last year’s Science is Vital careers report, we found that many younger researchers objected to being categorized in this manner, and had been personally affected by its fallout. For this reason, we specifically called for “the abolition of eligibility criteria that effectively discriminate against older postdocs or those who have followed a non-traditional career path.”
So imagine my surprise when I read the EPSRC’s new fellowship policy:
Eligibility conditions based on years of post-doctoral experience or permanent academic tenure will no longer apply; as this doesn’t allow for variations of career paths across the EPS disciplines. … A person specification will be used to describe the desired attributes for each career stage, shifting the focus away from eligibility defined by years of post-doctoral experience towards a competency-based approach with an emphasis on the skills and attributes that leaders (and aspiring leaders) need to be able to demonstrate.
I am thrilled to see a research council making a commitment to judging people on their own merits in this way, and I do hope it is the start of a trend that might spread to all the others. Quality comes in many forms, and the most obvious candidates are not automatically the best.
Well, that sounds like a win! Although I’m not sure what a “person specification” is.
Do you have any contacts within EPSRC who might be able to provide insight on how influential the SciVit careers report was in making this happen?
oh, it sounds interesting. Of course, little cynical me wonders how this selection will go but… it might not matter really since it is different from “clear cut year cut off that has really nothing to do with what you’ve achieved/done”.
It’s always a nice feeling knowing that things can change and views can be challenged!
Hope this is the beginning of something more widespread… It would help alleviate some of the anxiety during the post-doc years for sure.
The horrid term ‘person specification’ is borrowed from UK recruitment jargon – it’s one of two things you see when a job is advertised (the other is the job description). Given the snail’s pace of government bureaucracy, I would have thought this change was on the cards before we made a fuss about the topic. But then again, you never know!
That is excellent news, but will other research councils follow suit? The six/seven year cutoff always seemed to favour those who have a clear run right through PhD and post-doc, with no accommodation for slow years, or changes of direction.
I don’t know if it will spread, but I am sure that this step has not gone unnoticed by the others. One of the main objections against relaxing sell-bys is that there might be an inundation of applications and not enough people to judge them. Evidence against this is the MRC Senior Non-clinical fellowship, which also has no cut-off dates, yet last year attracted only 30 applicants. From what I’ve gleaned from talking to various colleagues, people tend to instinctively know their own ‘level’, and not apply for awards that they know are out of their depth. This is why I don’t think relaxing the dates will lead to abuse of the system and flood of bad applications to overwhelm the committees.
I hope it does spread. My experience is that there is a strong sense of pressure to get applications together before the cutoffs, where taking a little longer to think and develop a project might give a better chance of success. I think on a faculty level there are enough checks and balances in place with internal peer review and research committee oversight that I don’t think the funders will be flooded with inappropriate applications either.
This is a great move and i hope one that others follow. I have always been frustrated and perplexed by the UK Research Councils eligibility criteria; they largely favor the hare over the tortoise, but we all know who wins the race 😉