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Evaluation procedure
How are the proposals evaluated?
ERC Starting Grant proposals are evaluated in two steps by domain-specific expert panels in an international peer review process. Additional expertise is obtained with the help of external reviewers.
Following the submission of the proposal, it will be assigned to a domain-specific panel. The assignment will be made on basis of the Principal Investigator's (PI) indication and the keywords he/she has given in the proposal. The panel chairs will then assign the proposal to the peer reviewers for the individual reviews.
In both steps of the evaluation reviewers will first assess and mark the proposals individually, the final decision about the mark is then taken by the panel as a whole. Panels and external reviewers mark each proposal on a scale of A to C (A = sufficient quality, B = high quality, C = not of sufficient quality) and also give comments.
In the first step of evaluation, only Section B1 (including the Extended Synopsis) of the proposal will be assessed and marked by the reviewers and then ranked according to their marks. Proposals which are placed in category A on the evaluation scale for the person of the PI as well as for the research project will pass on to the second step of evaluation. These proposals also have to be above the budgetary cut-off level of the respective panel (i.e. approx. three times the indicative panel budget).
In the second step, the complete version (Sections B1 and B2) of the retained proposals will be assessed, marked and ranked by the panel. During this process the ERC conducts interviews in Brussels with all candidates who have passed the first step of the evaluation. After conclusion of the panel evaluations, the panel chairs of each research domain will set up a consolidated ranking list for the domain’s proposals which are above the quality threshold (categorized as A on the evaluation scale for the person of the PI as well as for the research project).
Proposals which have been marked above the threshold (A), but fall outside the budget limits of a panel are placed on a reserve list, i.e. these proposals can receive funding if additional budget becomes available for the call or negotiations with other applicants are terminated.
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