It's hard to know without reading them, and perhaps 40 is too much for a innocent explanation, but ...
It's common that the head of the laboratory submit the applications for each project, so 40 application may mean 40 subteams with 2-6 minions each (where each minion has a Ph.D. or is a graduate student.) Usually when the paper is published, the head of the laboratory is the "last author".
Now it's getting common to make an AI cleanup, like fixing orthography and grammar and perhaps reduce the text to 5000 characters. Without reading them it's hard to know if this is the case or it's nonsensical AI slop.
> It's common that the head of the laboratory submit the applications for each project, so 40 application may mean 40 subteams with 2-6 minions each (where each minion has a Ph.D. or is a graduate student.) Usually when the paper is published, the head of the laboratory is the "last author".
I believe this is the reason they are limiting it. A not of grants require the PI to spend at least some percentage of their research time on the project. PIs trend to ignore that requirement. As a result big names were getting a huge number of grants and early career researchers were getting none. Requirements like these give other researchers a chance.
It's common that the head of the laboratory submit the applications for each project, so 40 application may mean 40 subteams with 2-6 minions each (where each minion has a Ph.D. or is a graduate student.) Usually when the paper is published, the head of the laboratory is the "last author".
Now it's getting common to make an AI cleanup, like fixing orthography and grammar and perhaps reduce the text to 5000 characters. Without reading them it's hard to know if this is the case or it's nonsensical AI slop.