RESEARCH FUNDING:Researchers across Europe are fed up with the EU's web of bureaucracy when it comes to funding for research – and they're making their voices heard
OVER 9,000 people from academia and business – including some from Ireland – have signed an online petition set up in response to the increasing convolutions of EU research funding and regulatory procedures.
One frustrated researcher writes: “Having moved to Europe from North America some six years ago, I find the EU funding bureaucracy a nightmare to the extent that I am discouraged from applying as it takes far too much of the most precious resource I have, which is my time.” It’s an arresting statement, and one of many comments posted by aggrieved researchers on a website calling for more streamlined EU funding applications and oversight for research grants.
“We see the complexity growing,” says Olivier Küttel from Euresearch in Switzerland, who set up and runs the petition along with Sabine Herlitschka from FFG (the Austrian Research Promotion Agency).
Their day jobs involve helping researchers apply for and manage EU funding for research and, while the European Commission is keen to change the system, the day-to-day frustrations are still there for applicants, according to Küttel. So, by night, the petition organisers are e-mailing researchers and making them aware of the new platform.
Red tape, rule changes and a lack of procedural harmony among funding programmes all add to the irritation and the website allows individuals to register their frustration, says Küttel.
“The commission is trying hard – but you have some EU regulations where even the commission cannot change it,” says Küttel. “And people are annoyed by the complexity so we have given the researchers a voice.”
Part of the issue is the EU’s Framework budget funds a number of areas, not just scientific research, and the scientists need to get out there and make their position known, says Küttel. “Funding research is not the same business as giving subsidies to the agricultural sector for example,” he says.
“What we are saying is: please, commission, look around in Europe; there are many countries financing research and they have a lot of experience in how to do it. The commission and parliament can learn from different countries about how we can fund research with tolerable risks – it has to be accountable, there’s no doubt about it – but we can do it more simply.”
There are moves afoot to change: last year the European Commission held a public consultation that invited submissions on how to improve research funding under the Framework programme. A communication on the matter is expected soon, but the wheels takes time to turn.
“The commission is very aware of the arguments outlined by the Trust Researchers [trust-researchers.eu] and intends to take them into account,” says Mark English, a spokesperson for the European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn.
She has previously said she believes it’s possible to combine a simpler administrative framework for scientists while still managing taxpayers’ money appropriately.
“Indeed, simplification must not stop with the Framework programme alone,” says English. “For the European Research Area (ERA) to function effectively, research funding provided at national level needs also to be accessible and to contribute to a borderless research area. The commission established a Stakeholder Platform early in 2010 with key EU research funders and beneficiaries to draw up common principles governing research funding.”
But for now, Irish and other researchers must still deal with the current system for applying to and participating in the €50 billion Framework Programme 7 (FP7). The size and breadth of the programme and related schemes is partly to blame for the complexity, according to Dr Imelda Lambkin, who directs the Irish support network for FP7.
“The [Framework] programme funds everything from the most junior researcher through to very complex groups of large multinational companies, and it can be an issue for people to find what is right for them,” she says.
A total of 35 “national contact point” individuals help prospective Irish applicants find their way into and through the funding process and, to date, the network has provided assistance and training to thousands of academics and SMEs, says Lambkin, adding that researchers from Ireland are getting the grants in good numbers. “Whether this system works or whether people are over-awed by the complexity, we have got over 500 projects to date in Ireland, accounting for €153 million under FP7,” she says.
“With that level of activity, Ireland’s success rate to date is above the EU average. We are not talking about a situation where Irish researchers can’t take part in the Framework programme because they don’t know how.”
The European Commission is working on simplification and one area of improvement has been a reduction in financial oversight of SMEs, particularly those participating in a minor way on EU projects, according to Lambkin, who is based in Enterprise Ireland.
“Nearly three years into Framework Programme 7, here in Ireland we have more industry participation and more funding to industry in these first three years than in the whole of FP6 [the previous iteration of the Framework programme],” she says.
"We think that the SMEs are responding to simplifications that have already been brought in. And there are a series of steps towards simplification, which we welcome."
But hurdles remain, according to Lambkin. "One is the time to the project start being considerably long. That delay is something a lot of researchers would have a lot of issues with," she says. "Also the wide range of funding instruments remains an issue, and there are different terminologies, funding cut-offs, approaches and procedures."
Researchers need to speak out, she says, and she is supportive of the Trust Researchers initiative. "We look for every opportunity to get the messages across on what is working and what's not working, what researchers need to make life easier."
Large consortia applying for or working with EU funding can make their lives easier by using management companies to help shoulder the burden of administration. It's an approach that has worked well for Child-Innovac, a pan-European project to develop new vaccines for whooping cough and other respiratory diseases. "The goal is to bring new vaccines for respiratory diseases suitable for newborns to the market," says Dr Bernard Mahon, a senior lecturer in the Institute of Immunology at NUI Maynooth, whose group is a partner on the project.
The initiative started life as informal research conversations and some of the key members had already linked up by the time a suitable funding call came through from the EU under FP7.
"We were well-placed: we had already built up that network of connections who we could work with and who we needed, so we were ready to go, scientifically," says Mahon. "Then we employed a dedicated scientific management company who not only took some of the burden during the preparation but they also became a partner once we were funded, and now they deal with the reporting and the management. They use tools that would be more familiar to business than academia."
With less paperwork and fewer management headaches to contend with, the researchers can get on with the job in hand, he says.
Mahon acknowledges the Child-Innovac consortium was lucky to be in the right place at the right time when the funding call came, and in general he would like to see less prescriptive calls that include more options.
"At the moment it's very much about problem solving: the community identifies a problem and sends out a call to resolve the problem. It means there's less opportunity for collaborative work in the 'blue-sky' approach," he says. "I would like to see a lot more open calls with less specific themes."
And if researchers or groups are starting to gear up and look for EU funding, he advises them to link in with the available support networks.
"Speak with the National Contact Points, and most of the universities would have research offices that would be very geared to help you link with Europe," he says.
Researchers also need to get themselves out there and makes their names and capabilities known, he adds. "Networking is key – so go to and speak at European meetings, connect up with the lead people in Europe in your area. Money tends to go to successful groups, so connect up with those groups and show them what you have to offer."
Burden of bureaucracy: Researchers speak out
Over 9,000 people from across Europe and beyond have signed the following declaration online: "We ask the European Council of Ministers and the Parliament to urgently simplify the financial and administrative provisions related to the Framework programme and other European funding instruments considering their important leverage effect for the competitiveness of the European Research Area." Below is a sample of the comments left on trust-researchers.eu
I hope Europe will evolve to a model that has been upheld in Ireland. Science Foundation Ireland provides grant support with minimal red tape for researchers (Ireland) More research and less bureaucracy will mean more results and impact (Ireland)
Signing this list feels like joining a victim support group of those who have suffered administrative nightmares and absurd requests from administration in Brussels . . . (UK)
The administrative burden has been growing, with no obvious or explained need for this growth. As the burden has grown I have been compelled to reduce the time and energy I spend on . . . research and teaching, in order to prepare applications and reports in multiple copies at ever shorter intervals . . . I find the burden of ever-growing evaluation and controlling activities a brake on my work, a discouragement and an insult. I suspect that many who could do excellent research have already given up (Austria)
Innovative Medicines Initiative One SME's experience
GETTING EU funding for one Irish SME has been a complicated process, and in the end the benefits will lie in contacts rather than profits.
Argutus Medical was one of three successful applicants from Ireland for the first call of the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) – a joint programme between the European Commission and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations.
The idea of the €2-billion programme is to encourage research and development of "pre-commercial" technologies to improve drug discovery and development and boost the competitiveness of Europe's pharma sector.
But IMI, which is separate from the main Framework programme, still has some issues to sort out.
"IMI is a learning process – we are the first call to get funded and start up, so we are like guinea pigs," says Joe Keenan, head of sales and marketing with Dublin-based Argutus Medical.
The company is currently working on the Safer and Faster Evidence-Based Translation Project, which is identifying biomarkers that can signal drug-induced injury to the liver, kidney and vascular system. Ultimately the project hopes to come up with improved approaches to monitoring patients for such damage, and it may even improve disease diagnosis.
The IMI funding call went out in April 2008 and the five-year Safe-T project, which started in June 2009, involves multinational pharma, academic, clinical and SME partners.
Keenan agrees with the strict timelines and milestones imposed under the scheme, but the sticking point is the financial return, or lack of it.
"You get a maximum of 75 per cent of costs, including personnel," says Keenan. "And there's a 30 per cent retainer."
He has argued the case for reducing that retainer but the IMI scheme is still not a way to make money for academics or SMEs, he says: "It's a fantastic opportunity but we as an SME have to very carefully assess our involvement financially."
So why do it? The trade-off is that Argutus gets to link in with potential clients: "The responsibilities I have now have grown a lot more than I anticipated, but I have embraced it because of the contacts and networking."
