NSERC's core grants program receives solid endorsement from international review panel

Increased funding urged

One of Canada's oldest and largest university research granting programs has received an important endorsement and recommendation for increased funding from an international review committee headed by Dr Peter Nicholson. The committee says the Discovery Grants Program (DGP) of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) is an exceptionally productive investment for Canada, encouraging a high degree of research excellence and affording researchers a base to lever internationally competitive levels of funding from other sources.

The committee utilized NSERC's extensive and comprehensive database going back to 1978 as the basis for its analysis of the DGP, generating new insights into the program that are being welcomed by NSERC as a concrete example of its contribution to Canadian innovation.

"The program is being used to deliver the knowledge advantage in the government's science and technology strategy. We think it (the recommendation for increased funding) is the right conclusion," says Isabelle Blain, VP of NSERC's research grants and scholarships directorate. "There are a number of tools in the NSERC tool kit and this one is very important to provide base funding for a wide range of research funding and for the training of highly qualified personnel."

In 2007, the DGP supported more than 10,000 researchers with $328 million in funding from NSERC's annual A-base of approximately $800 million. While the average grant size is modest ($32,000), more than 80% are awarded for five-year terms and the program has a comparatively high success rate of about 70%.

Perhaps most importantly, the committee report says DGP grants support a researcher's overall research program as opposed to specific projects. That approach gives investigators unparalleled flexibility to adjust their research "in response to results and unanticipated opportunities, encouraging creative and cutting-edge approaches, and interdisciplinary opportunities".

"It's an excellent platform on which to build excellence. It's extremely important as a base and for participation across all fields," says Nicholson, president and CEO of the Council of Canadian Academies. "I'm proud of this report. Nobody has seen this type of information before, at least in the way it is presented … I came to the committee as the least well-informed member with an agnostic frame of mind. And I can say the committee's findings are based on firm evidence."

The review of the DGP ran parallel to a review of the Grants Selection Committee (GSC) Structure headed by Dr Adel Sedra, dean of engineering at the Univ of Waterloo. That committee examined the structure of the GSC and processes related to peer review. NSERC has received the Sedra report and will release it by the end of May. Officials says it echoes and complements the Nicholson report and is also expected to recommend reducing the number of GSCs and make them more flexible and nimble to be able to respond to rapidly emerging fields and areas of research.

classify according to degree of merit

The report also recommends that NSERC sort its proposals and place them in so-called bins ranging from "must fund" to "do not fund" prior to determining how much each successful researcher will receive. Due to the DGP's high success rate — 70% in 2007 down from more than 80% in 2002 — it is only able to provide a fraction of what each researcher requests. In 2007, all awards for the DGP provided 38% of the total requested.

While the report acknowledges that the funding levels are modest, it argues that they are critical in leveraging funds from other NSERC programs and beyond. But the average size of DGP grants dropped 13% between 2002 and 2007 due to the increase in researchers supported through the program. The recommendation to maintain the DGP program grant sizes in real dollar terms is an effective call for increased funding, although an explicit statement recommending more money was beyond the scope of the committee's mandate.

"We want to see a pot of money sufficient so that well-qualified applicants have a real-value grant, inflation adjusted," says Nicholson.

Another unique characteristic of the DGP is the high level of support for the training of highly qualified personnel. Almost 60% of DGP funds go to the training of students, post-doctoral fellows and research support personnel. A recent NSERC on-line survey shows that almost 30,000 individuals receive some stipend support from Discovery Grants.

The committee also revealed that DGP support is "far from uniform across the range of grantees" with more meritorious support being more heavily supported and the top grant holders obtaining more funding from other sources.

Another key recommendation by the committee urges NSERC to consider DGP applicants based on merit alone, and discount the researchers previous success in the program.

"The (Nicholson) report will go to Council in June for a response ... We need to do a lot more thinking about its recommendations including the new (grants selection) committee structure," says Blain. "We've had no discussions with Finance Canada or Industry Canada yet but they need to take place (NSERC president Suzanne) Fortier will present the report's conclusions and go for the government's endorsement. We need to move quickly."

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