Representatives of the Network of Academic Solidarity and Engagement, Galjina Ognjanov and Gazela Pudar Draško, attended a meeting on February 18 at the invitation of the Science Fund, and on the occasion of a letter from the Mass for Improving the Transparency of the Fund's competition.
The meeting discussed the progress of the Promis competition, as well as the new planned program Ideas. The following was pointed out to us regarding the objections that were submitted:
1. The Science Fund strives to organize the application process in the way it is done in the countries of the European Union, in which it has the support of the EU Delegation and the World Bank. These two institutions are also donors who provided funds for the functioning of the Fund, and therefore the Fund must respect the rules they set. The implementation of the Fund is accompanied by visits to other similar institutions in the EU countries, on the advice of the donor, in order to get a picture of the rules and practices that can be transferred to our context.
2. The problem of uneven reviews was noticed and this aspect will be improved in the next calls in such a way that all three reviewers must agree on the evaluation, that is, exchange arguments related to the evaluation of the projects.
3. The request to publish the complete list of reviewers was temporarily rejected, because the Fund has a small number of reviewers in the medical and social sciences, so there is a fear that the anonymity of the procedure will be compromised. There is a need to expand the base of reviewers through a competition that is always open. The reviewer base of the Fund for Science includes exclusively foreign researchers, from more than 60 countries at the moment, as stated to us.
4. Problems with reviews were pointed out to us, which were late and used to be of poor quality. To the remark that the deadlines for completing the entire Promise cycle were initially unrealistic, the answer was that they had to launch Promise in order to be able to withdraw funds from the World Bank and that this was done even though they were aware that the system was not ready.
5. We were pointed out to the problems coming from institutions and researchers (lack of information about their status/title, ignorance of the administration at the institutions, issuance of invalid title certificates, instead of delivering a decision, etc.). The fund intends to work on strengthening institutions for applying. However, it was clear from the discussion that many problems stem from the fact that the competent Ministry does not have adequate and complete databases with data on researchers. Also, the problems that the scientific community already has regarding the method of payment of compensation for work on projects and related to other aspects are transferred to Promis and other programs, which would be solved by specific by-laws that are currently missing in relation to institutional funding.
The general impression is that the Fund is open to communication and that, within its competences, it wants to work on improving its work and to build a relationship of trust with the scientific community.
