Evaluation process

This call will follow a two-step evaluation process that will comply with the principles of transparency, equal treatment and non-discrimination. Your application is evaluated in competition with the other applications by an international peer review panel.

Formal eligibility check and evaluation of pre-proposals

The Joint Call Secretariat (JCS) will check all proposals to ensure that they meet the call’s formal criteria (i.e. date of submission; number and category of participating countries; inclusion of all necessary information in English; appropriate limits on length; signature of the letters of intent). In parallel, the JCS will forward the proposals to the national/regional funding organisations, which will perform a check for compliance with national/regional regulations.

Each proposal passing both eligibility checks will be evaluated independently by three reviewers for a first evaluation (see evaluation criteria below). Potential conflicts of interests of the evaluators will be taken into consideration during the allocation of the proposals.

The reviewers will perform the assessment of the pre-proposals and complete a written evaluation form with scores and comments for each evaluation criterion.

During a Peer Review Panel (PRP) meeting, the reviewers will discuss all proposals and agree on a consensus score for each proposal. The outcome of the PRP will consist of 3 ranking lists (one ranking list for each topic).

To avoid conflicts of interest, reviewers with a conflict related to a specific proposal (i.e. co-publication with one of the applicants during the last 5 years, current collaboration with one of the applicants, same research centre as one of the applicants, personal or professional links with one of the applicants that may compromises the reviewer impartiality, involvement in the preparation of the proposal) will not participate in the discussion of that proposal.

The board of funders will meet to decide which proposals will be invited to submit a full proposal based on the reviewers’ recommendations and to ensure a reasonable balance of requested and available national/regional budgets.

Pre-proposals which do not pass this assessment will not be invited for the full proposal stage. The consortia will receive a summary review report without scores written by one of the experts in charge of evaluating the proposal.

Formal eligibility check and evaluation of full proposals

The JCS will check the full proposals to ensure that they meet the call’s formal criteria and have not changed substantially from the respective pre-proposals (e.g. composition of the consortium, the objectives of the project or the requested budget). In parallel, the JCS will forward the proposals to the national/regional funding organisations, which will perform a check for compliance with national/regional regulations.

Each full proposal passing both checks will be allocated to three reviewers taking the potential conflicts of interest into consideration.

The reviewers will perform the assessment of the full proposal and complete a written evaluation form with scores and comments for each criterion (see evaluation criteria below).

During a second PRP meeting, the reviewers will discuss all proposals and produce 3 ranking lists of proposals recommended for funding (one ranking list for each call topic). To avoid conflicts of interest, reviewers with a conflict related to a specific proposal will not participate in the discussion of that proposal.

The final summary review report prepared by the reviewers will be sent to the respective project coordinators.

Ethics and legal requirements

Please note that at the full proposal stage, applicants will be required to complete a self-assessment checklist for ethics and to provide details on safety, animal studies, genetically modified organisms and microorganisms, environmental hazards and waste handling, data management, statistical methods, ethics and legal issues.

Applicants should anticipate this requirement and ensure that they have consulted with relevant experts to verify the feasibility of the project, and that the proposal can be completed within the defined budget and within the prescribed time window.

Ethics review

Full proposals recommended for funding by the PRP and selected for funding by the board of funders will undergo an ethics review by an Ethics Panel.

Ethics experts will remotely check the selected proposal for their compliance with ethical norms and regulations. A meeting will also be organised for a discussion between the various ethics experts.

If necessary, the ethics experts may ask the consortium for clarifications. The Ethics experts may highlight some vigilance points that need to be monitored during the implementation of the funded project.

Only those proposals approved by both the scientific evaluation and ethics assessment (complying with all central Horizon Europe and regional/national ethical requirements) will be funded.

Decision

The funders will take their funding decision, based on the ranking lists established by the PRP, the available funding and the Ethics panel recommendations.

The JCS will send by e-mail the funding recommendation to the project coordinator, who is then responsible to communicate this information to the respective project partners.

Redress procedure

Applicants can appeal against the evaluation outcome if they suspect a breach in the implementation of the evaluation and selection procedures. This redress procedure only covers the procedural aspects of the evaluation.

Please note that a mere disagreement with peer reviewers or panel members’ comments are not grounds for an appeal. The redress procedure will not call into question the scientific or technical judgement of appropriately qualified experts.

The applicants shall submit their appeal against the evaluation outcome to the JCS via e-mail up to 7 calendar days after the date of the notification of evaluation outcome sent by the JCS at the end of each step (evaluation of the pre- or full proposal).

For an appeal to be admissible the following conditions must be met:

• The appeal must be submitted by the project coordinator of the proposal to which the appeal relates
• Only one appeal per proposal can be submitted after each step
• The appeal must contain the following minimum information: the name of the call for proposals, the proposal acronym, the title of the proposal, a description of the alleged shortcomings of the evaluation procedure.
• The appeal must demonstrate a procedural irregularity, factual or manifest errors in the evaluation process, misuse of powers, or a conflict of interest.

Appeals that do not meet the above conditions, or do not deal with the evaluation of a specific proposal or express mere disagreement with the result or the reasoning of the evaluation will be judged as not suitable for redress.

Upon receipt of an appeal, an acknowledgement of receipt will be sent by the JCS as soon as the e-mail is read. The acknowledgement shall report the redress process and the anticipated date by which a decision on the appeal will be communicated to the appellant.

All appeals received by the 7 calendar days deadline will be processed together by a designated redress committee and the decision will be communicated to the appellant within 14 calendar days from the deadline for submitting the appeals.

Questions related to the national/regional eligibility decisions will not be handled by the JCS and need to be addressed to the respective national/regional funding organisation.

Evaluation criteria

The evaluation of the scientific quality of your application is made based on three main criteria (Excellence, Impact, Quality and efficiency of the implementation). For each criterion there are several sub-criteria.

Excellence

• Clarity and pertinence of the objectives (pre-proposal and full proposal)
• Credibility of the proposed approach and methodology, in relation to the research objectives (pre-proposal and full proposal)
• Soundness and research base of the concept (pre-proposal and full proposal)
• Novelty, potential to advance the field, timeliness, and innovation (pre-proposal and full proposal)
• Scientific excellence of the consortium (pre-proposal and full proposal)

Impact

• Impact of the proposal to achieve the objectives of the call topic (pre-proposal and full proposal)
• Potential of the expected results for clinical, public health, and animal health, agriculture, or environmental benefit (including economic viability/sustainability where appropriate) (pre-proposal and full proposal)
• Relevance and consideration of the One Health concept (pre-proposal and full proposal)
• Potential for fostering a longer-term international network of researchers. For example, bringing together specific know-how and/or innovative technologies, gathering a critical mass of patients or biological material, sharing of resources (models, databases, biobanks, etc.), and international comparisons (pre-proposal and full proposal)
• Potential reach of the project results, including dissemination and communication measures. Accessibility of the proposed innovative strategy (different geographical areas, different populations including low-resource or underserved populations) (full proposal only)
• Appropriateness of end-user and stakeholder participation/engagement, for example, policy makers, industry, patient organisation, health and veterinary care, farmers, etc. (full proposal only)

Quality and efficiency of the implementation

• Coherence and effectiveness of the work plan, including appropriateness of the allocation of tasks within the given timeframe (pre-proposal and full proposal)
• Adequate distribution of the tasks between the project partners considering the required expertise (pre-proposal and full proposal)
• Strength of the transnational collaboration (balanced geographical distribution of the tasks) (pre-proposal and full proposal)
• Integration of social, economic, equity and cultural dimensions into the proposed research (pre-proposal and full proposal)
• Quality of the proposed Open Science practices, data management, Intellectual Property management, and Freedom to Operate where appropriate (full proposal only)
• Appropriateness of the management and governance structures and procedures, including risk and innovation management (full proposal only)
• Potential exploitation (including strategy to identify and address potential barriers) and relevance of the outcomes of the findings beyond the current project (long term strategy) (full proposal only)
• Contingency plan, including risk assessment and mitigation (including of unforeseen circumstances like Covid-19) (full proposal only)
• Justification of the requested budget and cost-effectiveness of the project (appropriate distribution of resources in relation to project’s activities, partner responsibilities and time frame) (full proposal only)

Proposals not relevant to the call topics and objectives (out of the scope) will not be funded, independently of their scientific quality. The decision if a project is in/out of scope will be taken by the Peer Review Panel in the pre-proposal stage.

Scoring system

Evaluation scores will be awarded for the three main criteria (Excellence, Impact and Quality and efficiency of the implementation), and not singularly for the different aspects listed below the criteria, although these different aspects will be taken into consideration in scoring the main criteria.

The weight of each of the three main criteria is equal.

In order for an application to be considered fundable, the threshold score for individual criteria is set at 3 (of a maximum of 5). The overall threshold for the score for all three criteria together is set at 10. The maximum score that can be reached from all three criteria together is 15 points.