The European Science Foundation(ESF) is committed driving progressin research and innovation via high

quality science, and it therefore provides theEuropean research community with servicessuch as peer review and evaluation, as wellas support to career tracking. The ESF alsocollaborates internationally on researchprogrammes, which it co-ordinates in almostevery scientific domain, while it also hosts high-level expert boards andcommittees to support researchers inachieving their objectives.

SciTech Europa Quarterly spoke to the ESF’schief executive, Dr Jean Claude Worms, aboutthe changing R&D&I landscape in Europetoday and how the European ScienceFoundation continues to play a role infostering innovative advances.

Perhaps I could begin byasking how you wouldcharacterise the EuropeanR&D&I landscape today?Where do you feel thebiggest hurdles – andindeed the most significantareas of potential – lie?Of course, the European Science Foundation nolonger deals with research policy per se; we areessentially now here to provide researchstakeholders, both public and private, with servicesthey can use to guide their decision making.

That being said, as a part of the Europeanresearch landscape we have our own views onthe situation and this is perhaps characterised bya perceived lack of a large-scale cross-bordercollaborative research funding instrument. This issomething that we had in the past and which cost

the taxpayer relatively little in terms of budget(perhaps a few tens of millions a year, which incontext is not massive and which, indeed, wasused to generate or leverage research fundingfrom national sources which enabled researchersto co-ordinate and collaborate across the variouscountries both within and beyond the EU).

It is possible to argue that other instruments existin Europe, such as COST and, of course, Horizon2020 and the Framework Programmes generally,but they also existed in the past alongside thelarge-scale cross-border collaborative researchfunding instrument which has now disappeared.

The reality is essentially that a consolidation inEuropean funding instruments has resulted in anet deficit in such funding by several tens ofmillions of euro, and that this was being used toleverage in turn hundreds of millions at thenational level. This is an important issue, and onethat has been characterised by both ourselvesand others.

In addition, the objectives laid out in the LisbonTreaty are not being fulfilled in terms of funding(a couple of countries may be meeting them, butmost are not). I therefore believe that Europe issimply not spending enough on R&D&I; certainlynot at the level envisaged over a decade ago.

Connecting science

Dr Jean Claude Worms, chief executive of the European ScienceFoundation (ESF) spoke to SciTech Europa Quarterly about the

changing R&D&I landscape in Europe today, from funding to theEuropean Research Area (ERA), and how the ESF continues to play

a role in fostering innovative advances

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Dr Jean Claude Worms

Europe is simply not spending enough on R&D&I; certainly not at the level envisaged over adecade ago

Furthermore, there is now a distinct sense thatthe various research organisations at nationallevel have folded back upon themselves meaningthat rather than progress towards moreintegration in Europe there is now a collection ofdifferent national policies.

What effect, then, is thishaving on the EuropeanResearch Area, which is nowa legal entity?In order to have something that would trulymake sense we would need a European policyon research that is agreed by all partners. Thereality, however, is that we have almost as manydifferent policies as there are member states,with the possible exception of the ECFramework Programme.

Regarding the evolution of the FrameworkProgrammes, various things have been discussedabout their future, and it is still not clear what itwill look like moving forwards. Many user surveysand discussions have been carried out and, ofcourse, Pascal Lamy’s High-Level Group’s reporthelps to provide some direction, although it isdifficult to see whether the Union will follow thator not.

One of the difficulties in the FrameworkProgramme is its relative lack of long termsustainability. That is, a project is funded for(typically) three years, and then another takes itsplace and they are not necessarily connected.This has the advantage of supporting creativityand innovation by sponsoring bottom-upresearch, but on the other there are many areasthat require longer term support, and theytherefore suffer from a lack of long-term vision.

The commission is fully aware of this, but thereare also other views on this issue too, so what willhappen remains unclear. But from a personalpoint of view, I would like to see FP9 emerge witha better balance between bottom-up and top-down funding for some areas of research.

An additional aspect that concerns me is that thestakeholders, the taxpayers who are actuallyfunding this research, have a legitimate desire tounderstand what science is for. And we musttherefore find a way to judge the impact ofscience. However, this needs to be done withcaution because when a set of indicators ormetrics to judge the impact of research is beingdesigned, the tendency is for this to be done in avery quantifiable manner by judging applications.Of course, when it comes to fundamentalresearch such indicators are inadequate; theoutcomes of basic research aren’t predictable.

Too rigid impact measurement indicators riskdiscouraging creativity; they could lead, forinstance, to the suppression of funding in areas

that would be deemed unproductive with regardto short term investments.

The ESF is now in a positionwhere it provides services toits clientele. Do you feelthere are things that areperhaps missing at theEuropean level (and perhapstoo much bureaucracy in theFramework Programmes)which render your serviceseven more necessary?The European Commission is trying hard tosimplify the Framework Programmes and reducethe bureaucracy. But, of course, these arecomplex instruments and the projects they fundinvolve numerous partners. And they have to beconducted in a way that includes a solid level offinancial control because they are dealing withpublic money. The European Science Foundationhelps researchers with this, ensuring that both thecomplexity and the importance of financial controlare well-understood.

Our expertise and experience has been developedover the past four decades and we are able todeal with issues such as research management,project management, financial reporting, HR-related issues, full transparency in the evaluationprocess, full accountability about the use offinance, and many other areas which were atrademark of ESF in the past (where we fundedmore than 2,000 programmes and networks andsupported some 300,000 scientists). Our role is

essentially to act as research evaluators and thenas the co-ordinators of research projects.

There are two main pillars to what we do at theESF. The first is research evaluation. Here, weconduct peer review and evaluations. Peer reviewinvolves assisting public or private researchinvestors to evaluate grant proposals they receive– either advanced-type levels of grants,professor-types or high-level proposals with highlevels of funding, or indeed post-doctorate smallergrants. The basic idea here is that theseorganisations – which can be national researchcouncils, universities or private researchfoundations – are providing money for researchthrough various schemes and they want to sub-contract or outsource the evaluation task in orderfor it to be carried out independently with soundmanagement of conflict of interest and biasissues, as this is something that cannot alwaysbe achieved at the national level. In some cases,they also want to be relieved of the administrativehurdle of dealing with that themselves.

Regarding the evaluation of programmes,institutions, national funding schemes, nationalresearch schemes: this is an area we are nowstarting to address to a greater extent. Whenuniversities, for instance, are appointing aprofessor or another high level position such asa director of a university hospital, then we canhelp by using the tools we have developed forresearch evaluation. This essentially meansassembling panels of experts who meet,complemented or not by remote evaluation, andwork to reach a consensus on a variety of issues

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The ESF’s role is essentially to act as research evaluators and then as the co-ordinators ofresearch projects

based on an agreed set of indicators regardingwhat needs to be evaluated. We have done thatfor a number of countries in central Europe, forinstance, and have recently started to supportuniversity hospitals by helping them to identifytheir next director and other high level positions.

This first pillar of our activity is thus aimed atproviding benchmark evaluation practices forexcellent research. The other pillar deals withthe management aspect. Here, once a projecthas been agreed on or a grant received –whether or not this is for an EU project – theissue then becomes about managing andsupporting the community by relieving them ofpart of the administrative hurdle of managingthat contract. We are a part of these projects,whether that be as a partner, a co-ordinator orproject office, or as a work package holder for aspecific area of expertise.

This second pillar is mainly centred on supportingresearchers and SMEs regarding EuropeanUnion-funded projects, but we also engage inprojects funded by other entities – for instancethe European Space Agency (ESA).

And, of course, there are other aspects of ouractivity that are no less important but which dealwith a lower level of finances. For instance, wehost several expert boards and committees invarious fields –including space, nuclear physics,and radio astronomy – who provide advice to anumber of supranational agencies, entities, theESA council of ministers, for instance. These arehigh level bodies that don’t have a legal entityand so which rely on the ESF to provide that, aswell as for the hosting mechanism and themanagement of the activity of the secretariat.But they also want to maintain theirindependence, and they develop theirrecommendations that they feel as appropriategiven their bit.

Another interesting activity we are involved inconcerns career tracking. We would like to seethe development of a European career trackingplatform because although some countries andsome universities have such an instrument, manydon’t, and certainly not at a consolidated level inEurope. The result is that as a continent we do notknow where our PhD holders go and what kind ofcareers they pursue, and so we don’t know thingslike the balance between academia and industry.

We have therefore already conducted twoprojects based on surveys of PhD holders, andthese have delivered some interesting results. Inow hope that we can find a way to get thevarious stakeholders including the EuropeanCommission to support the launch of such aplatform at the European level.

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When it comes to the ERA, itis fundamental for variousCentral and EasternEuropean countries to buildcapacity in research andreinforce their integration inand contributions to theEuropean researchlandscape. How can the ESFhelp here? And howimportant is the recently-announced partnership withthe EuroScience associationsenable this to evolve?The type of expertise that the ESF has developedover the years is linked to being able to supportcountries where there is a need for this capacitybuilding. Some of our members, for instance fromBulgaria, or others, benefit from these servicesand we can help them in terms of evaluating theirresearch mechanism, the funding mechanisms,and the various aspects of the national system,as well as by supporting their search to accessEuropean and similar funds.

As a grassroots organisation, EuroScience isalso trying to do something similar, so wewanted to combine our efforts and see whetherwe can do something more important and notduplicate our efforts.

The second reason we decided on the partnershipis that EuroScience has been hosted by the ESFhere in our headquarters in Strasbourg for sixyears, so there was something of a naturaltendency to see what we could do together.

What does the future holdfor the ESF?There are essentially two priority areas for usmoving forwards. The first is to reinforce this peerreview pillar so that we are able to develop abroader customer base and a larger share ofmultiannual contracts that will provide anenhanced level of financial stability.

The ultimate goal here is to be able to position theESF as the premier service provider in peer reviewin Europe, and the starting point for that will be tobroadcast the fact that we have what it takes toprovide excellent peer review for excellent research.

Secondly, I would like to develop the ability to actas a support platform for central and Europeancountries to in the area of capacity building forresearch. Alongside this, of course, our projectmanagement activities will also continue.

Dr Jean Claude WormsChief ExecutiveEuropean Science Foundation (ESF)http://www.esf.org/

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Moving forwards, the ESF will become positioned as the premier service provider in peer reviewand scientific-support services in Europe