The assessment of funding proposals has come under renewed scrutiny in Norway and beyond, after researchers flagged receiving wildly different responses to the same project from the European Research Council (ERC) and the country’s own national funder.

Svenn-Erik Mamelund, head of the Centre for Research on Pandemics & Society at Oslo Metropolitan University, said he sent “pretty much the same” application for funding to both the ERC and the Research Council of Norway’s FRIPRO scheme, proposing to merge “laboratory research and social science to study the long-term health effects of historical pandemics”.

While the ERC gave his proposal an A, although ultimately it could not provide funding, FRIPRO graded it 4 out of 7, meaning the application had “several shortcomings” despite meeting the assessment criteria well. “What am I? A top-ranked European researcher, a low-ranked Norwegian one, or both?” Mamelund, who raised the perceived disparity in ,����������.

FRIPRO applicants who receive a score below 5.5 are blocked from reapplying for an additional “quarantine” period, on top of the standard waiting period, which was “concerning” for applicants whose proposal may have been unfairly graded, Mamelund told ̽����Ƶ.��

̽����Ƶ

Lotte Thomsen, a psychology professor at the University of Oslo, had a similar experience, receiving an ERC starting grant in 2022 after two rejections from FRIPRO.

“It’s not that the proposal was somehow significantly improved when I applied to the ERC,” Thomsen said. “It’s just that at the ERC, it was people who actually knew about the science and the field that were evaluating.” She believes FRIPRO has improved since her last rejection, she stressed, with proposals sent to more relevant reviewers.

̽����Ƶ

Although his proposal was not ultimately funded, Mamelund said he received 13 pages of extensive feedback from the ERC, “with detailed and individual comments from seven of the reviewers”. In comparison, FRIPRO’s feedback was “a couple of pages long, with quite generic and unified feedback from the three panellists”.

The issue is not limited to Norway: Adina Akbik, now associate professor of European politics at Leiden University, noticed a similar difference in feedback quality when she was based in Germany. Only two reviewers considered her application to the German Research Foundation’s Emmy Noether Programme for early career researchers, from which she was ultimately rejected, while she received commentary from 10 reviewers – “that’s a lot,” she said – after applying for an ERC starting grant.

Wei-Li Hong, assistant professor in geochemistry at Stockholm University, said his successful proposal for an ERC consolidator grant was assessed by “eight reviewers, with extensive feedback on all aspects”. A successful application to the Swedish Research Council, meanwhile, received feedback “in a summarised format by the committee,” he said. “Details were less revealed to me.”

Akbik received the ERC grant on her second application, and told THE, “I’m still using the feedback I got now that I’m developing the project.” Thomsen, too, said her ERC reviews “directly improved the research that we’re [now doing”, adding, “Even the reviewers who were more critical or negative about the project, their feedback was super useful.”

̽����Ƶ

“I quite like the assessment process of the ERC – the questions sent to reviewers are quite specific and well-covered,” said Hong. “It would be nice if national [funders] could adopt a similar model to the ERC.”

Mamelund made a similar recommendation to Norway’s research funders, saying, “FRIPRO should also consider employing larger panels that would give a more robust review process [and] asking their reviewers to give separate, longer and more detailed feedback”.

In cases such as his, when a national funder gives an application a significantly lower score than the ERC, Mamelund said the former “owes the research community a thorough and self-reflective account” and a potential re-evaluation process.

emily.dixon@timeshighereducation.com