Carol Monaghan – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Carol Monaghan on 2016-06-06.

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what proportion of research proposals submitted through the Joint Electronic Submission System which have been judged to cross the boundary between the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the UK Space Agency have gone through to peer review.

Joseph Johnson

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) runs a remit query service which enables researchers to discuss proposals in advance with the UK Space Agency (UKSA) should they consider their research idea to fall between discipline boundaries. This enables research council staff, and those from UKSA, to agree on which agency or council is best placed to carry out peer review to assess the merits of the proposal. Where a proposal is cross-disciplinary, UKSA and EPSRC work together to agree a leading council/agency to carry out peer review functions, with reviewers selected from both organisations. There has been one project in the last three years which was submitted to EPSRC through Je-S and was assessed by programme managers as cross boundary. The proposal went through the peer review process and was funded.