ERC grants information: Information Transition of the ERC to Horizon Europe - Operational considerations

[Susanne Henningsen]

See link:

http://erc.europa.eu/news/transition-ERC-to-Horizon-Europe-Operational-considerations


  Transition of the ERC to Horizon Europe - Operational considerations

Update | 17-12-2019

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*The ERC’s mission and funding principles have been fully maintained by 
the European Union (EU) Parliament and Council during the negotiations 
on Horizon Europe, the successor programme to Horizon 2020. The ERC 
Scientific Council acknowledges this fact with satisfaction as it is in 
line with its position paper 
<https://erc.europa.eu/news/erc-scientific-council-statement-position-erc-next-eu-framework-programme> 
on that matter. Consequently, it is working to ensure a smooth 
transition of the ERC to Horizon Europe, which is expected to start in 
January 2021 and cover the period until the end of 2027.*

*With this information note, the ERC Scientific Council is sharing its 
tentative planning for the 2021-2022 ERC calls for proposals. This note 
also presents some of the main novelties it is considering to introduce 
in its effort to continuously ensure world-class peer review evaluation. 
These adjustments are part of a broader reflection and adaptation 
process engaging both the Scientific Council and the ERC Executive 
Agency, the Dedicated Implementation Structure serving the ERC. This 
process is expected to continue in the coming years.*

*Planning of 2021-2022 calls for proposals*

As in previous transitions between consecutive EU research and 
innovation framework programmes, the calendar of the calls in the 
initial year of Horizon Europe may differ from the calendar of 2020 
calls for proposals.

All mono-beneficiary ERC calls (Starting, Consolidator, Advanced Grants, 
PoC) are expected to be launched in 2021 and 2022, but their opening and 
closing dates will be shifted so that the first calls will be launched 
only in January 2021. The Scientific Council expects the call schedule 
to be back to the usual opening and closing timeframes by mid-2022.

The modified planning will likely not include a Synergy Grant call in 
the ERC Work Programme 2021. This call will probably be included again 
in the Work Programme 2022. The Scientific Council’s intention is to 
launch this call in the summer of 2021 with a deadline in November of 
the same year.

Any shift in the calls timetable is not expected to affect the 
eligibility periods of candidates applying for ERC Starting and 
Consolidator Grants. These eligibility periods are based on the time 
elapsed between the date of the first PhD of the applicant and the 1st 
of January of the budget year to which the Work Programme refers. The 
possibility to extend these eligibility periods in individual cases for 
specific reasons, as established in previous work programmes, is 
expected to be retained.

*ERC panel structure*

The Scientific Council continues its mandate to ensure a world-class 
peer review system based on fully transparent, fair and impartial 
treatment of all proposals. Therefore, it is planning to introduce 
several changes to the structure of the ERC evaluation panels, which are 
laid out in the work programmes year after year. As science constantly 
evolves, such a revision process is constantly ongoing. The Scientific 
Council continuously monitors the balance between panels in terms of the 
number of proposals assessed in each call, the disciplinary coherence 
within and across panels, and the place of interdisciplinary research in 
the panel structure.

This monitoring has pointed to the urgency of reviewing the panel 
structure in all three domains but in different ways, and with no 
prejudice to the fully bottom-up nature of the ERC calls for proposals.

With regards to the Social Sciences and Humanities (SH) and the Physical 
Sciences & Engineering (PE) domains, application patterns have led the 
Scientific Council to introduce two new panels:

  * A new SH panel (SH7) entitled “Human Mobility, Environment and
    Space” is expected to be introduced to cover research in the fields
    of human geography, demography, health, sustainability science,
    territorial planning and spatial analysis; its descriptors will be
    largely drawn from the descriptors of previous panels as laid out in
    Work Programme 2020;
  * A new PE panel (PE11) entitled “Materials Engineering” is expected
    to be introduced, for research relating to “Advanced materials
    development: performance enhancement, modelling, large-scale
    preparation, modification, tailoring, optimisation, novel and
    combined use of materials, etc.”. Its descriptors will largely be
    drawn from the descriptors of previous PE panels as laid out in Work
    Programme 2020.

Concerning research in the Life Sciences (LS) domain, the unequal share 
of applications to different panels and the emergence of projects 
covering multiple fields of research crossing different panels has led 
the Scientific Council to redefine the contours of the panels and enrich 
their descriptors.
The panel structure that the Scientific Council expects to be in place 
for the new calls in 2021 is available here. 
<https://erc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/document/file/new-ERC-panel-structure-work-programme-2021.pdf>

*ERC Advanced Grant evaluation*

The Scientific Council has decided to align the ERC Advanced Grant 
evaluation process with the processes used for the Starting and 
Consolidator Grant calls by introducing interviews of applicants in Step 
2 of the evaluation.

The Scientific Council felt indeed that ERC Advanced Grant candidates 
should be given the opportunity to defend their proposals with panel 
members in an interview. This will also enable panel members to probe 
proposals more deeply by means of a direct exchange with applicants.