National Research Staff Association of the UK: topic
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Rejections
John Bothwell
Monday, 26 February 2007 10:59 UTC
I’ve just had my latest rejection letter (from the Royal Society for one of their URFs). It went like this…
I write concerning your recent application for a University Research Fellowship (to be appointed in October 2007). When the round closed, a total of 499 applications were received. These applications were then sent out for assessment so that a short list could be drawn up. Applicants that have been short listed are then sent out for further assessment by independent peer reviewers.
At the first stage of assessment, it was decided that your application should not be short listed and is therefore unsuccessful.
Limited feedback may be available and if desired, please send a request to ukgrants(at)royalsoc.ac.uk. Please note that we cannot respond to such requests until the competition has closed, in April.
We understand that this news will come as a disappointment but wish you success in your research career.
Now, I actually think that the Royal Soc are one of the better organization when it comes to giving you feedback on rejections (unlike most University Departments, for example), because last year I got the same thing, wrote back and was told:
Although the proposal is framed around a set of hypotheses, the planned work is largely descriptive. One assessor commented that the molecular tools for developing your project are not yet in place, and whilst microscopy will yield interesting results, you have flagged up the fact that genome sequence exploitation will be the key strength of the system.
Anyway, don’t feel too sorry for me, but does anybody have any other rejection letters (from anything) which tell them why they didn’t get through?
Or you could just bitch a bit; I won’t mind…
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Replies
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What’s probably quite interesting (if controversial) is how applications are judged.
Probably something like this:
http://www.rvc.cc.il.us/faclink/pruckman/humor/grading.htm -
So the key to a good application would be good aerodynamics? Lots of paperclips and stuff?
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Hi John,
Indeed, I got an e-mail from the Wellcome Trust that wasn’t that bad…actually the School of Medicine (where I work) thought this was ‘very positive’ (?) because I was the only person in the school that actually got some feedback. Here it is:
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Dear Dr DiazThank you for your preliminary application for a Research Career Development Fellowship. As you are aware, this scheme is designed for applicants with between three and six years’ post-doctoral experience, who can demonstrate independence in their research programme and have a strong publication record.
The Trust has now considered your request and would advise that you would not be a competitive candidate for one of these Fellowships at this time. However, as you currently have 3 years’ post-doctoral experience, if you were able to strengthen your publications record, with particular emphasis on first author publications, you could consider submitting another preliminary application in the future.
I realise that this decision will come as a disappointment to you but as an alternative route for salary support you could consider the possibility of applying as a named research assistant on a project grant with another eligible Principal Investigator. Details of all our funding schemes are available on our website, www.wellcome.ac.uk.
I wish you all the best in your future research.
Yours sincerely
“Even when the School of Medicine thought ‘this was very positive’, it was hard for me to feel ‘positive’ about it…
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How many first author publications do they suggest you should have?
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Hi Paul,
That’s a very good question. I think this should be about 6 first author publications in very good journals. My problem is that being so mobile, I never have the time to write anything up (well, yes, I’ve written up about 3 publications in Journals, I’m finishing 3 more and I have about 7 in peer reviewed Conferences) but is not enough…toward the end of my contracts I’m more of a “packing” style than “writing” style…for obvious reasons.
That’s why I’m so fed up with “researchers MUST be mobiles” they should acknowledge the great effort of moving around (it’s a personal and professional challenge) and realize that when you’re thinking where to go, the last thing you want is writting papers. -
Well, you see here I have a little issue with the career structure. For I have happened upon the secret of getting published in good journals. Whisper it, lest it slip into the wrong hands:
Be alive for as long as possible.
What does this mean? Well lookit, if most good papers take 3 or 4 submissions to find “their” journal, and if it takes say 3 months to get each paper back, and if you need say 6 good papers, then you need to be alive for: 3×3 x 6 = 54 months, assuming you shoot them all off consecutively. But, oh, wait, you need to apply for funding, do the ethics, collect the data, and then enter the Krypton Factor style RAE? Well double it. And voila, there you have the key to success. Try your hardest to keep alive for 9 years as a postdoc, and you will get your 6 publications.
So, are the people who hit the targets good scientists, or good at hanging on to jobs??? Discuss. (1,500 words, use evidence to support your argument)
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I really hate this kind of feedback – the type that refuses to fund something because it hasn’t all been done and published already. It always amazes me that any new tools/techniques/applications are ever developed in this country when the majority of the reviewer base is so conservative.
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Yeah…I agree with you guys. You are absolutely right Paul, the big thing is “stay as a postdoc as long as you can”. What they are asking to achieve now is impossible for young researchers…and, remember, you MUST be mobile as well…the whole landscape is pretty grim and I understand very well the frustration (in many cases desperation) all over the world from postdocs everywhere.
Sometimes I think: are these people out of this world? Probably very out of the postdoc world, yes. If you have a team that produces a certain amount of papers p/year and you are the boss, of course you’ll be in any of those publications; it’s easy to say that you have 50 publications/year then.
I’ve got a very notorious remark from one senior member of staff one day. I was having a problem and I was stuck, so basically I couldn’t produce results for a while. This senior member of staff said to me: “I don’t understand…this is just an implementation issue”. What the hell is that supposed to mean?
For what I’ve seen, great ideas are easy to produce; the problem (as usual) is to make them work. This is the tragedy of postdocs. Our work is not recognized as we deal with “implementation issues” and not with “great ideas”...OK, enough pestering for today.
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