Earma 2021: Study author says result offers reassurance given push to online working during pandemic
The evaluation of applications for EU R&D funding schemes has not suffered despite it increasingly taking place remotely to reduce costs and greenhouse gas emissions, the annual conference of the European Association of Research Managers and Administrators has heard.
David Pina, a manager at the Research Executive Agency that administers many of the schemes, told the conference on 16 April that “remotely you get the same end result” as with in-person grant evaluations.
“Although we are going through changes in the way we work…we are still able to deliver the same type of results,” added Pina, who has carried out numerous studies on such evaluations.
He was the first author reporting a study of more than 75,000 applications made between 2007 and 2018 to the EU’s Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions scheme, which funds activities including trips abroad and training for researchers. The report, published in January in the journal ELife, said the shift to remote evaluation had “little impact on the outcome of the peer review process”.
Pina said that while many EU grant evaluators preferred to come to Brussels in person, the finding that digital means of work were not inferior was especially important given that the shift to online working has been hastened by the Covid-19 pandemic.
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