ERC 2024 Work Programme has been adopted by the European Commission. The new work programme includes some new elements in the evaluation of research proposals, in the evaluation process, funding model, and the structure of evaluation panels. You may find below the main changes:
Scientific excellence remains the sole criterion of evaluation for frontier research grants, but the Work Programme introduces changes to the structure of the Curriculum Vitae and Track Record, as well as to the evaluation procedure, where greater emphasis is placed on the quality of the project.
Advanced Grants will be implemented as a pilot call using a lump sum contribution, while StG, CoG, and SyG calls will continue to use the actual cost model.
For StG, CoG and AdG calls a maximum of 44 proposals per panel will be assessed at step 2 of the evaluation. Moreover, a distinction in the scoring at step 1 will be made between proposals obtaining a score of A and invited to step 2 of the evaluation, and proposals obtaining a score of A but not ranked sufficiently high to be invited to step 2. The latter proposals won't be subject to resubmission restrictions. ERC National Contact Points have been informed that these changes will not affect neither the overall success rate of the calls nor the panels.
A new evaluation panel (SH8-Studies of Cultures and Arts) has been created in the Social Sciences and Humanities domain. This new panel combines cultural studies, art history, architecture, music and musicology, visual and performing arts, museum studies, cultural heritage and other related fields from SH5 with social anthropology from SH3. The title of the SH5 is changed to "SH5-Texts and Concepts". The title of LS3 is changed to "LS3 – Cell Biology, Development, Stem Cells and Regeneration" to make it explicit that both stem cell and regeneration biology fields are addressed. Lastly in "LS5-Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System" panel a new sub-title (“In humans and all other organisms”) has been added to make it explicit that the panel covers research in humans, as well as in other organisms. These changes in the panel structure aim to balance panels in terms of the number of proposals assessed in each call, the disciplinary coherence within and across panels, and the place of interdisciplinary research. Applicants are encouraged to familiarize themselves with these changes before the publication of the calls. You can review new panel structure here and the rational of the revisions here.
Indicative call calendar can be seen here. Consolidator Grant call is expected to be launched and close earlier than usual. Also as of 2024, Proof of Concept Calls will have two instead of three cut-off dates.
Information about most of these changes have already been shared with the public (in December 2022, and March and April 2023) by the ERC Scientific Council.
TÜBİTAK ERC National Contact Points will organise a national information day in order to share these changes. Please visit our webpage and don't forget to subscribe to our e-bulletin.
For your question please contact us: ncperc@tubitak.gov.tr.