‘Painful measures’ to limit resubmissions needed, says ERC head

The president of the European Research Council (ERC) Maria Leptin has said “painful measures” to limit grant application numbers are necessary to alleviate “growing pressure” on selection panels.

In an open letter published on 16 April, Leptin confirmed Europe’s flagship research funding scheme would apply tougher eligibility rules to the next round of grants competitions starting in July.

“These include longer restrictions for unsuccessful applicants from the last two rounds,” explains Leptin, who said resubmission restrictions would be extended by one year.

According to new guidelines, anyone who received a C score at Step One of either the ERC’s main grant call or its Work Programme in 2024, 2025 or 2026 is now prohibited from applying into the 2027 programme. Those receiving B scores in 2025 or 2026 cannot also apply in 2027.

Explaining the rationale for what she called “difficult decisions”, Leptin said the restrictions were “responding to the sharp increase in applications, which is placing growing pressure on peer reviewers and the ERC executive agency”.

With 91 peer review panels, each meeting twice a year in Brussels, the ERC’s system “worked efficiently in the past when each panel had to handle between 50 and 150 proposals”, continues Leptin.

“However, recently the number of applications has been rising dramatically. Some panels now have more than 250 applications to assess and we expect this upward trend to persist. We have increased the number of panel members, but there is an upper limit to the size of a panel, determined by practical constraints and how panels function as groups,” she said.

“There is also a limit to the number of proposals that can reasonably be discussed in the one-week sessions that the panels spend together,” explains Leptin.

While the ERC’s Scientific Council and scientific officers had sought to reduce the workload of panel members using “soft measures”, such as streamlining the evaluation procedure, more radical measures are now needed, said Leptin.

“The only remaining way to mitigate this situation is to reduce the number of applications. We have been relying on soft measures to try to achieve this by communicating the need for applicants to reflect carefully on the right timing of their application and the maturity of their scientific proposal. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of this approach is limited,” she says.

“We must now turn to more direct measures to restrict the possibilities for unsuccessful applicants to resubmit their proposals,” she says, noting “this decision was taken after much discussion and only when it was clear that no other, less painful, measures were available”.

The restrictions could be further increased in future years, adds Leptin, who explains that “first-time applicants who are applying for the 2027 calls should be aware that the Scientific Council may need to impose similar restrictions for the 2028 and 2029 calls, and the unsuccessful 2027 applicants would then be excluded from those”.

“This means that anyone applying this year should consider very carefully whether this is in fact the optimal time. In some cases, it may be wiser to postpone an application to allow the proposal to mature further and improve its chances of being selected for funding.”

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com