Commission launches quality label for excellent research it can’t afford to fund

A new quality label to give a second life to excellent research applications that nevertheless fail to make the cut in the ultra-competitive Horizon 2020 programme was launched by Research Commissioner Carlos Moedas on Monday.
The seal of excellence will be awarded to proposals that receive high scores from evaluators, but do not win grants.

Unlucky Horizon 2020 applicants can then take their proposals to another funding source, ideally the EU’s regional programme, which has money for research and innovation applications.

However, the Commission said it cannot give any guarantees that certified proposals will go on to find success somewhere else.

In its pilot phase, the seal will first be given to proposals submitted under Horizon 2020’s SME instrument, a competition which gives out individual awards of up to €2.5 million. The scheme has received a deluge of 13,000 proposals in almost two years.

Of these, 2,300 were deemed high-quality. But with enough money to fund only 1,000 proposals, the other 1,300 will now at least have the compensation of the quality seal.

The certificate system could be extended to cover more areas of Horizon 2020, if successful.
“We’ll come back to you in one year’s time to tell you if we were able to leverage more funding,” Moedas said.
Moedas first announced he was working on the seal last February in an interview with Science|Business.