Funding, News and Announcements

CIHR continues to undergo substantial reorganization and/or renewal of its administrative structures, including the recent hiring of 3 new executives/Directors for the College of Reviewers, Partnerships & Business Development, and the Common CV. I would expect more shuffling of personnel and program staff in the coming months.

Foundation Scheme – Post Mortem and Preliminary Analysis

The remainder of this meeting was devoted to discussing the outcome of the initial Foundation Pilot and the results of some preliminary analysis of this competition, particularly in relation to previous Open Operating grant competitions (2006/7 to 2012/13, including the last transitional OOG concluded alongside the Pilot). CIHR was quick to point out that there were a number of limitations in carrying out this preliminary analysis, including the fact that the Foundation Pilot was a “managed” competition (meaning that special eligibility requirements were imposed to control initial application pressure) for which an additional threshold was set for early career researcher (ECR) success; sample sizes also differ considerably between the OOGP historical data and the 2014 Foundation Pilot. Finally, different methodological approaches were also used to calculate career stage in each of the programs [CIHR now considers the date of first academic appointment rather than the end date of the last degree awarded; the definition of “Mid-Career” has further been expanded to 15 years of experience rather than the previous 10 years]. That being said, some interesting initial trends were noted:

• For applications self-identified as falling within the “Clinical Research” pillar, a significant drop in the percentage moving on to Stage 3 was observed; otherwise, fluctuations by pillar were relatively consistent over the staged adjudication process.There was a lower % of mid-career and senior researchers at Stage 1 versus what had been typically observed for the OOGP competitions.
• Perhaps not surprising, applicants who held Open funding were more successful as applications moved through the Foundation adjudication process.
• A significant drop in the % of female applicants moving forward from Stage 1 to Stage 2 was noted; this was true also for those female applicants who identified as ECRs, and was consistent across all pillars.
• 43% of the funded applications were from Ontario, with another 27% coming from Quebec; however, from a regional perspective, the funding rate was consistent with the % of applications submitted at Stage 1.

CIHR acknowledged the need for further analysis to assess and validate Foundation Grant competition results in particular areas, including Aboriginal Health, Ethics and Global Health. They will also be “drilling down” to look at regional and institutional breakdowns (eg., small vs. large universities). CIHR has promised that a final report will be shared with the research community in the coming months.

There have already been some changes to the 2015 Foundation Pilot process as a result of the experiences with the first Pilot, some more significant than others. Stage 1 Interpretation Guidelines have been revised to ensure that the “Leadership” sub-criterion is applicable across career stages, and new/ECRs will now be reviewed separately at each stage of the competition. To address concerns expressed over the significant overlap seen between the “Productivity” and “Significance of Contributions” sections, CIHR has provided some more clarifying language in the Guidelines but is not considering merging these sections or changing the weighting of these sections for adjudication purposes at this time. The Foundation CV has also been modified, with increased limits for publications, presentations, recognitions and supervisory activities as well as new sections for “Reviewer and Assessment Activities” and “Memberships”.

In response to the many concerns expressed by UDs, applicants and reviewers alike over the asynchronous discussions and related poor quality and – at times – highly inconsistent reviews, CIHR is looking to shrink the window for Stage 1 on-line discussions to make them somewhat “more synchronous”, and will explore the operational requirements for introducing fully synchronous discussions at Stage 2. They will also be looking to provide more support for virtual chairs (VC), including (i) building into ResearchNET the ability for these VCs to flag an application for discussion and (ii) developing a means for direct communication between VCs and reviewers so that chairs can prompt reviewers to revise and/or expand their reviews as required. Additional training materials for performing “quality reviews” are also being developed. CIHR confirmed that individuals submitting to the 2015 Foundation Pilot would not be permitted to review other applications in this upcoming competition.

Finally, UDs brought up the need for much greater clarity around budgets for this Foundation Scheme, and requested that CIHR provide a budget envelope to applicants in advance of Stage 2. CIHR will be exploring the feasibility of doing so, but acknowledge this will be particularly difficult for “non-CIHR funded” researchers.

Other Stuff

I wanted to make you aware that the first phase of a two-phase call for applications under “Healthy and Productive Work” has now been launched.

As allows, please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Regards,

Mark Filiaggi
CIHR University Delegate
Associate Vice-President Research filiaggi@dal.ca
(902) 494-7102