Latest competition shows that NSERC's Discovery Grants program holding firm

The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) has committed $410.5 million in grants, scholarships and fellowships over the next one-to-five years including the all-important Discovery Grants program awards that support the work of fundamental research. The competition marks the fourth year NSERC has employed a two-step process for awarding grants. It is also the third year the conference model has been deployed, which reduced the number of grant selection committees from 28 to 12.

The competition is noteworthy for a modest increase in the average size of grants from $32,000 to $34,000 and is the second year in a row that success rates have increased for both established and early career researchers. The latter were boosted by an injection of $7.5 million — half of the $15 million provided in the 2012 Budget (R$, April 17/12).

The new funding helped early career researchers recover from a significant decline in success rates between 2008 and 2010 when the new selection process was implemented. The largest increase in success rates was experienced by established researchers not holding a grant, although they continue to have the lowest success rate of all categories. Across all categories, 2,161 researchers received awards out of 3,477 applicants for a success rate of 62.2%, up from 57.5% in 2011.

"The budget of Discovery Grants is the highest it's ever been and the number of researchers is over 9,800," says Isabelle Blain, NSERC's VP research grants and scholarships directorate. "Introducing the changes is behind us. Now we're in a maintenance phase."

The number of individual and team Discovery Grants appears to have stabilized but it's well off the peak by FY08-09 when 10,340 grants were awarded.

The latest competition also included 125 Accelerator awards worth $15 million, provided to rising stars who received new DG funding but whose work is considered particularly relevant. The number of Accelerator recipients has reached a stable state with 375 researchers now receiving them in any given year. They provide researchers with an additional $40,000 a year for three years and are made at the discretion of the selection committee.

"For rising international researchers (in the NSERC system), a 5% (year-over-year) increase is not enough. Accelerators allow them to capitalize on their potential," says Blain. "We focus on those who are particularly innovative or take risk or have the potential for great return on investment."

The same can't be said for the post-doctoral fellowships competition. Its success rate has been plummeting in recent years from 21.4% in 2008 to 9.3% in 2011. That trend continues in 2012, with just 98 awards worth $8 million over two years. With 1,254 applicants, the success rate has fallen to another all-time low of 7.8%.

Blain says the low success rate among post-doctoral fellows must be examined in the context of the NSERC's overall funding envelope for people which has remained relatively stable.

"We're managing a stable envelope but we've created new tools like CREATE (Collaborative Research and Training Experience Program)," says Blain. "It's still a training program but there are slightly fewer individual awards because of CREATE, which has value from a policy perspective."

NSERC is planning for the next evaluation of the DG program which will focus on the changes to (and impact of) changes to the peer review system and whether it still meets its objectives. A survey will be issued later this year with the final report due in the fall of 2013.

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