The peer review evaluation process has been carefully designed to fund projects irrespective of the gender, age, nationality or institution of the applicants and other potential biases. The evaluations are monitored to guarantee transparency, fairness, and impartiality in the treatment of proposals.
For the RIA/IA/CSA topics, proposals are evaluated remotely by at least three experts, each scoring the proposal individually.
This is followed by a discussion by the Consensus Group, in which the individual experts agree on a common position, including comments and scores for each proposal.
Unless otherwise stated in the specific call/topic conditions, the timing for evaluation is around 5 months from the deadline for submission.
The three main evaluation criteria on which the experts base their evaluation of the proposals are:
Excellence: Innovation beyond state of the art, soundness of the methodology proposed, suitability to the specific topic, appropriate consideration of the gender dimension and open science;
Impact: Pathways to achieve the expected outcomes, measures to maximize impact, communication, dissemination and exploitation plans, and positive long-term social, economic and environmental outcomes;
Implementation: The quality of the work plan, risk assessments, the capacity of each participant and the consortium and resource allocation.
Some of Horizon Europe’s funding opportunities (ERC, EIC Transition, EIC Accelerator) include an additional evaluation stage – an interview. Whether online or onsite in Brussels, the interview requires a short pitch presentation by the applicant/s, followed by questions by the jury members or scientific panel. For further information regarding the interview, see the relevant programmes on our website.
The funded projects are those that are rated highest based on the evaluation criteria, within the framework of the allocated budget.
Following the evaluation process, the applicant receives the Evaluation Summary Report (ESR) outlining the strengths and weaknesses and the scores (usually a maximum of 15 points), in accordance with the experts’ evaluation.