Access to Research Infrastructures - Call of 15.11.2000 - Report

Access to Research Infrastructures (ARI)

Report of the chairman of the review panel

For this third call for proposals the panel had to assess the three kinds of activities which are supported by the programme: - transnational access to infrastructures - RTD projects - cooperation networks.

The Commission had received a total of 154 proposals (114 transnational access - 29 RTD projects - 11cooperation networks). Five proposal were considered as non eligible for various reasons (mainly because they were received after the dead-line for submission). The indicative budget for this call was 59 Million euros.

The whole panel (51 members and one observer Mrs Katherine Barker) held a first meeting in Brussels on 6 march 2001. During this meeting members were reminded about the criteria for the assessment of the proposals (5 for access and RTD projects and 2 for networks), and agreed upon the overall procedure:

• The proposals were divided into eight areas : each one of them grouping together proposals corresponding to categories of infrastructures/RTD/networks with similarities or belonging to neighboring disciplines.

• The members of the panel were divided into expert-groups corresponding to the 8 areas.

• A "rapporteur" was appointed for each of the 8 areas ; he was chosen among panel members who did not have a direct knowledge of the infrastructures or RTD projects in the area concerned, being thus completely "neutral" with regard to the corresponding disciplines (the rapporteur for the group dedicated to nuclear physics and astrophysics was thus, for example, a social scientist).

• A "rapporteur" was appointed for each of the 8 areas ; he was chosen among panel members who did not have a direct knowledge of the infrastructures or RTD projects in the area concerned, being thus completely "neutral" with regard to the corresponding disciplines (the rapporteur for the group dedicated to nuclear physics and astrophysics was thus, for example, a social scientist).

The eight areas (corresponding to 8 expert-groups) were the following:

• Hydraulics / manufacturing - Nanotechnologies / high magnetic fields / lasers / free electron lasers - Biological sciences / biomedical sciences - Nuclear physics / astrophysics - Socio-economic sciences / supercomputers - Environment / oceanography / bioNMR- Synchrotrons / neutrons, muons - Structural engineering / energy.

Evaluation of the proposals

The panel held its second meeting during 3 days on 23-25 april. After a brief plenary meeting of the whole review panel, the two first days of the meeting were devoted to the assessment of the proposals by the expert-groups (4 groups met each of the two days). The panel initially agreed that access-contracts selected as a result of the call will require duration of 28 months so as to overlap with future contracts in FP 6. For facilities with an existing contract, the groups would have to take into account the period covered by this contract.

In each group proposals were examined on the basis of the primary assessments, taking also into account, whenever relevant, existing contracts and previous evaluations (during the mid-term review or a previous submission). A consensus mark was agreed upon for each criteria for the panel which, furthermore, proposed a maximum amount for funding. At the end of expert-group meetings, each group produced a list of all proposals ranked in priority order on the basis of the total marks. Proposals for access to facilities, RTD projects and networks were ranked together in the same list. The group also agreed upon an "evaluation summary report" for each proposal which was prepared by a primary assessor, and which reflected the consensus emerging from the discussion between the members of the panel.

Only proposals with a least 70 % of the maximum marks were considered as eligible to a possible funding (proposals with a marking with 0 for one criteria being automatically rejected).

Final global ranked list

The whole panel met at the end of the second day and the third day of the meeting to proceed to the final ranking of the proposals assessed and ranked by the 8 experts groups (all markings were renormalized on the same scale from 0 to 100).

The total funding for the proposals ranked by the groups corresponding to marks between 100 and 70 amounted to 64.08 million euros (109 proposals on the total of 149).

For its final ranking, the panel had at its disposal : - ranking and marking from the 8 groups - priorities within groups for proposals with the same marking (ex-aequo) - information on the localization of the facilities.

The panels decided:

• To adopt without any further discussion the ranking for proposals between markings 100 and 80 according to their markings in their respective groups and priorities within groups
• To proceed to a discussion for the ranking of proposals with markings between 76 and 70 (21 proposals).

For this last ranking we took into account the markings of the proposal within their groups. For ex-aequo (same marking) proposals we have proceeded as following : - priority within the groups was taken into account - priority was given for criteria 1 and 2 for infrastructures (quality of the infrastructures - quality of the research) to rank the proposals. When proposals had the same markings we gave priority for those submitted by an institution of a less-favoured European region (this criterion was applied for 3 facilities in this list).

We thus converged by consensus towards the final ranked list.

General remarks on the list

The final list (down to the available budget of 59 million euros) corresponds to the following repartition:

• Access: 69 proposals for a total amount of 33 721 316 euros (57 % of the total proposed funding)
• Networks: 5 proposals for a total of 2 096 000 euros (4 % of the total)
• RTD: 18 proposals for a total of 23 229 000 euros (39 % of the total).

These 92 ranked proposals correspond to 59 046 316 euros. We have proposed also a reserve list (between ranks 93 and 109) of 17 proposals. The panel taking note of this repartition observed that the balance was rather correct between the three categories of proposals.

The balance between the various scientific disciplines or categories of infrastructures appears also rather fair. One must notice, for example, that four proposals in social sciences and humanities are on the list.

One can observe meanwhile, that very few proposals involve the participation of industry (in several cases instrumentation companies are partners in RTD projects) and that areas linked to European policies as health-policy, agriculture, transport are rarely represented (this is not the case for aquaculture, energy and environment). An emerging sector as nanosciences is well represented, while bio-informatics is not. It might also happen, of course, that infrastructures in these domains are being supported by thematic programmes within the FP5.

As far as the proposals for access to infrastructures are concerned, one can remark that the ranked list include a large variety of facilities : large infrastructures as neutron sources, oceanographic vessels, medium-size infrastructures as NMR instruments, museums and archives, etc.

Regarding the geographic distribution of infrastructures, one must observe that a very limited number of them are localized in Central and Eastern Europe countries (pre adhesion countries).

Remarks on the procedure

At the end of the meeting, panel members held a discussion on the whole procedure for this third call of proposals. The following comments and remarks were thus expressed:

• The size of the 8 expert-groups was considered as satisfactory with a good balance between specialists and non-specialists of the sectors

• A clarification of the role of the rapporteur of the groups appears to be desirable

• Members of the group being not assessors for a proposal should be able to get information through copies of proposals upon request

• Financial information for RTD projects was sometimes considered as being insufficient and experts consider that applicants should be invited by the Commission to be more precise on this matter.

The panel considered also that it would desirable to assess the proposals in the future by giving a greater weight to criteria related to quality of an infrastructure and to the quality of research that external users are able to carry out at the infrastructure (interest for the European scientific community or "European added value" being also considered as an important criterion). Those criteria should also be used in priority for ranking proposals with equal markings.

Pierre Papon