High quality evaluation and valuable feedback to proposers are important features for FET. Therefore we have run a survey among FET proposers to collect their feedback on the FET evaluation process and perception of a number of novelties introduced in H2020 FET calls.
Feedback survey
The objective was to collect direct, factual and anonymous feedback from the proposers on the FET evaluation process and in particular on their perception of a number of novelties that were introduced in 2014 in the FET evaluation: 16 pages proposals, specific evaluation criteria, single step submission and evaluation, Evaluation Summary Report (ESR) as a collation of the 4 Individual Expert Reports (IERs) and of an overall panel comment.
This survey is complementing an independent expert 'Observer report' and it is used as input to further improve our evaluation processes.
The survey was sent in April 2015 to the 827 FET proposers:
- from the FET Proactive call "Emerging themes and communities" (184 proposers)
- from the first cut-off date of FET Open call for RIA actions "Novel ideas for radically new technologies" (643 proposers)
194 proposers replied to the survey representing 23% of the applicants.
Main findings
New system very well appreciated
- 96%* in favour of 2 deadlines per year (half budget) rather than 1 (entire budget)
- 92% prefer to receive the 4 IER (8% prefer the 'consensus')
- 74% satisfied with 16 pages proposals (versus 22% not satisfied)
IERs useful but their quality needs to improve
- 56% find the IER sent back as "useful" (versus 18% "useless")
- 57% satisfied by the quality of ESR (versus 42% not satisfied)
- 56% consider the evaluation to be fair & of good quality (versus 38% not satisfied) - satisfaction heavily correlated with the evaluation outcome (successful/failing)
Low success rate not discouraging proposers
- 88% consider to resubmit to FET in the future (same or other proposals)
- 8% are discouraged by the success rate, 7% by the fairness
Evaluation criteria can be made more clear
- 67% consider the evaluation criteria as 'clear' (while 24% disagree)
Follow-up actions
Short term actions have been taken to further reinforce the quality control of the Individual Expert Report (IER), to ensure sufficient time for detailed discussion of all highly scored proposals by the panel (in particular the ones with diverging opinions) and to make sure that the panel does communicate back to the proposer its final decision by a more systematic use of the "panel comment".
Additional measures will be implemented with the new Work Programme 2016-17 including further clarification of the FET evaluation criteria.
*% calculated after excluding the 'no opinion'
Survey findings (312 Kb)
