The ERC published its annual report on the evaluation of funded projects during 2020, highlighting the positive outcome and impacts of ERC funded projects.
The European Research Council (ERC) published its annual report concerning the qualitative evaluation of completed projects funded by the ERC in 2020. The ERC supports excellent investigators and researchers to pursue ground-breaking and high-risk/high-gain research. In this context, the ERC conducts peer-review assessments complemented by other programme analyses, providing an overall view of the quality and scientific impact of the funded research. The report analysed a total of 225 projects funded under the European Union’s 7th Framework Programme (FP7). The projects cover all three scientific domains of the ERC, namely Life Science, Social Science and Humanities, and Physical Sciences and Engineering. The report is divided into two parts: the overall assessment of the project’s achievements and nine multiple-choice questions concerning several aspects of the project such as outcomes, impact, interdisciplinary and the high-risk/high-gain component.
The conducted study has highlighted that 17.9% of the projects led to a “scientific breakthrough” and 63.5% to a “major scientific advance”. These results are in line with the outcomes of the previous years. Only 18.6% of the evaluated projects were assessed as either “incremental scientific contribution or no appreciable scientific contribution”. The output of the investigation showed that the ERC is achieving its goal of financing research of high scientific impact and that the funding decisions are not exempt from risk.
Another finding confirmed the strong interdisciplinary nature of the majority of projects. More than 70% of the investigated projects led to results that apply to areas of research, which concern additional topics regarding their main focus. Some of the projects brought together research areas that previously did not have interaction. Moreover, nearly half of all projects had already generated an impact in other fields than science, for example on the economy, society and policy-making. Two thirds of the projects are expected to have further impact on the medium and long-term.
The results showed a strong indication that there exists a positive correlation between the projects overall grade and the degree of interdisciplinary. Projects that led to significant advances or breakthroughs were assessed as being more interdisciplinary. Simultaneously, projects that were categorised as having incremental or no applicable scientific results show a lower degree of interdisciplinary. Similarities were found between the overall grade and the impact of the projects on the economy, society or policy-making. Projects, which received an overall higher grade, have already had a more significant impact on the economy and society. In this context, these projects are more likely to have an impact in the future.
Overall, the report showed that the ERC is achieving its goals of funding high-risk/high-gain projects with a significant scientific impact. The results of the evaluation suggest that these components contributed to highly successful projects. Furthermore, the development of ground-breaking ideas in new and emerging fields is supported.