The establishment was welcomed by the academic community Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia (Fund), which should encourage the development of scientific research and the application of their results for the sake of faster social, technological, cultural and economic development of the Republic of Serbia. In this context, the news that the Fund will use the best comparative experiences and practices, such as those used in Horizon 2020, in the evaluation of project proposals within its programs, met with the undivided support of the academic public.
How is it Program for excellent projects of young researchers (PROMIS) is the first program of the Fund, it establishes standards, and it is certain that the experiences in all phases of its implementation will determine the way in which the Fund will lead subsequent programs. At this point, it is necessary to point out the following shortcomings of the current process of project selection within PROMIS.
Reviewers play a key role in the evaluation of received projects. The standard in similar European calls is for the list of reviewers to be publicly available before the call is published, which was not the case with PROMIS. A publicly available list of reviewers removes doubts about the review process and contributes to transparency in competitive research funding programs. Therefore, publication of the complete list of reviewers, their names, titles, and affiliations, as well as review instructions, is required.
During the first stage of evaluation, the reviewers rate the projects, and the reviews and comments of the reviewers are known only to the project managers. The second level of evaluation foresees that the Program Board of the Fund gives up to 35 points to the projects from the preliminary list of projects, which completes the selection process. Considering that the distance between the worst and the best placed project from the preliminary ranking list is only 10 points (55 to 65 points), it is clear how important the evaluation of the Program Board is for the final outcome. That is why we believe that it is of crucial importance that this stage of evaluation be transparent, and we request that the evaluations of the Program Board be clearly indicated in the final balance of points for each project that has entered the second stage of evaluation.
This is especially important considering that Act on procedures for the preparation of the Program and selection of Science Fund project proposals publication of the preliminary ranking list in the second stage of evaluation is not foreseen. We believe that it is necessary for the Science Fund to clearly demonstrate how the scoring of project proposals was carried out at all evaluation stages so that all registered researchers and the entire academic public can clearly, unequivocally and transparently make sure that the entire process was carried out in accordance with Act. We invite the Fund to publish on its website not only the final ranking list for PROMIS and all future programs, but also:
1) a complete list of reviewers, their names, titles and affiliations;
2) review instructions;
3) the final list of all proposals that have passed the evaluation with a clearly indicated structure of points won.
These are crucial and minimal steps for establishing and maintaining trust between the academic community and the Science Fund, a body that will play a key role in the system of financing scientific research in the Republic of Serbia.
