The chicken and egg dilemma in Horizon Europe

In my experience as a consultant, I often had to deal with young health researchers who had good research ideas but were held back by doubts about their professional profile.

Do I have enough experience to lead this Horizon Europe project? Am I credible? What will the evaluators think of a project coordinated by a researcher with my CV? Will I have sufficient authority over participating colleagues who have more experience than me?

On the other hand, if these same researchers continue to get stuck because of these doubts and never participate as leaders, how will they gain this experience?

So what is better to do: participate without experience or better not?

An eternal dilemma, like the one of the chicken and the egg.

Let us see together how it is possible to get out of this dead end.

What position does the Horizon Europe program take with respect to the researcher experience?

First, let's look at how the issue of researcher experience is taken into account within the program.
This aspect is part of the criteria by which projects are evaluated. Specifically, regarding Pillar 2, one of the items among the evaluation criteria for Section 3 of the project (Quality and efficiency of the Implementation) reads:

"Capacity and role of each participant, and the extent to which the consortium as a whole brings together the necessary expertise."
Translated into other words, how to demonstrate to possess, individually and collectively, what it takes to complete all the project activities?

The key here is to understand what exactly is meant by the word "capacity."
It is first and foremost technical and operational capacity, that is, being able to carry out the activities assigned to you in the project. How do we demonstrate this kind of capability?

Up to this point it seems quite simple:

• do the skills of the people involved match what needs to be done?
• can I demonstrate that the research team has a track record in the field?
• do I have the tools I need to perform the activities?

Don't think you can cheat though: the people who are involved must be internal to the organization; if you start counting on outsourcing most of the activities, it doesn't count.
If it is the university start-up that is involved and has only one part-time employee, you will not be so credible.
If you have the equipments in the lab, but then you are not able to sustain the volumes required by the project, obviously you will have a problem.

The information that answers these questions will be included in Part A, and in particular in the forms where you will be asked to provide the list of researchers involved, previous publications and projects, and available infrastructure.

But this is not the end of the story, because the European Commission is asking you to go beyond purely technical capacity.

The project is a collaborative effort, bringing together different disciplines. And so:

• are you used to collaborating with units from different countries and different realities?
• do you have a structure that can also easily deal with legal situations?

I have seen projects stop for six months because of the difficulty in drafting a legal agreement to transfer material from one organization to another. Do you have any evidence to show that you are accustomed to collaboration, from all points of view? Point them out!

Also, remember we said that we have to prove that we have what it takes to carry out all project activities?

The project does not end with obtaining a research result. If our result remains within the four walls of your laboratory, and no one uses it, it will not bring any change in the world or in your research sector.

On this point, more questions arise to be answered:

• what kind of experience do you and your organization have in science dissemination and Open Science or Open Access issues?
• do you have a network of contacts that ensures that your results will reach users?
• are you part of nationwide and/or European initiatives that can be leveraged for the dissemination of your results?

All of these elements should not be omitted from the project narrative!

Finally, in case you are the coordinator, how do you demonstrate that you are able to keep all the things together, coordinating different strands of activity, monitoring progress, managing decision-making and project resources, and reporting in a transparent and timely manner to the European Commission?

And this is where most young researchers get stuck. Because they have never had previous experience, and therefore cannot demonstrate that they have the skills to do this.

How do you proceed when the management skills are not there?

First of all, one tries to acquire them!

How?

• by "making your bones" with less ambitious projects, perhaps regionally or nationally funded, but which still involved collaboration with other organizations;
• by shadowing a senior researcher in coordinating a European project;
• trying to learn, through courses, participation in groups online and on social media, discussions with colleagues who have already had this experience. There is always something to learn!

Secondly, by making it clear that there is a structure behind you, willing to support you.

Okay, you may not yet have a solid profile in this respect, but you are aware of it. That is why it is important to make it clear in the project that, in its management, you will involve, internally, the Research Office, or the Grant Office, the Press Office, the TTO, or whoever you need to bring it home, and at the consortium level, you will be supported not only by the best in your field, but also by researchers with managerial experience, whom you have appropriately included in some decision-making and advisory committees.

New in evaluation mechanisms

An evaluation pilot called "blind evaluation" has been launched for Horizon Europe Workprogrammes 2023-2024.
It will apply to calls with two evaluation steps, i.e., those in which a "reduced" version of the proposal is delivered in a first evaluation stage, and, only if it passes the first screening, a full proposal is prepared and delivered.

The two-stage scheme has been in place in the Framework Programmes for many years and is intended to skim through submitted projects, giving priority to those that have very good scientifically sound ideas at their base. In this sense, the application form for a first-stage proposal covers all of the items in the full proposal for Section 1 (Excellence) and only one item in Section 2 (Impact). Everything else (including Section 3 Implementation), is not included in the technical document, and therefore is not even part of the evaluation.

The pilot on "blind evaluation" will apply only to first-stage proposals (i.e., synthetic ones) and will require that proposals be completely anonymous, i.e., contain no details that would lead to the identification of the organizations or researchers participating in the project.

The pilot was introduced to eliminate evaluation bias and, according to experts, could give young researchers with no previous experience in EU-funded projects a better chance of accessing the program.