Research grant evaluation
Channel: Initiative for Science in Europe
Date: 2021-03-18

The Initiative for Science in Europe (ISE; https://initiative-se.eu/) is a science-advocacy group, whose membership includes a large number of European learned societies and prestigious fellowships alumni associations.  The Researchers' Careers Task Force at ISE has been conducting a long reflection on the organisation of academic research in Europe, with a focus on the systemic structural changes that will be necessary for Europe to remain an attractive place to do science, and a competitive economic and scientific powerhouse.

Within that context, ISE is organising a webinar dedicated to the theme “Research Grant Evaluation”.  As access to academic funding becomes increasingly competitive, funding bodies, grant review panels and reviewers are asked to evaluate increasing numbers of individual applications, with success rates plummeting sometimes in the low digit percentages.  This creates a vicious drive for individual scientists to submit more and more applications in the hope to get at least one funded.  This represents an enormous wastage of public resources as more money and time become dedicated to writing or evaluating unsuccessful applications.  Yet solutions have been proposed to fundamentally change the system, or to facilitate and streamline that process.

This webinar saw experts from funding bodies and policy makers debate the current issues and solutions that have been proposed to improve that situation.

Moderator: Renaud Jolivet (MCAA)

Panelists:
- Kasper Gossink (Dutch Funding Agency - NWO)
- Catherine McCammon (ERC panel member) 
- James Morris (Science Europe)
- Frédéric Sgard (OECD)