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The National Committee for Research Evaluation (CNVR) was created in July 2021 as a 15- member consulting body of the Ministry for University and Research (MUR), with the main remit of evaluating research. To mirror the evaluation and grant management procedures of the European Research Council (ERC) it had the goal of aligning Italy with European good practices. The CNVR is in charge of organising evaluation for several funding programmes, such as the projects of national interest (PRIN) for collaborative projects, and the Italian Science Fund (FIS) launched in 2021 for individual grants. But the evaluation of the latest PRIN and FIS calls has experienced delays that have angered Italian scientists. We spoke to Carla Bagnoli, a professor at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia who chairs the committee.
What is the reason behind the long delay for the results of the FIS and PRIN programmes?
Part of the delay was due to the effort of managing an unprecedented amount of funds. For the first PRIN call in 2022 there were € 740 million with 7809 requests, for the second one (PRIN_PNRR) € 420 million with 4472 requests, for FIS there were € 49 million with 1912 requests. Each fund has its own peculiarities and guidelines. At the same time, we were also involved in the evaluation of proposals for the new national centres and extended partnerships. The first screening of abstracts and principal investigators’ profiles was quite fast because it was handled by the CNVR directly for the most part. Things became complex at the following stage, when we did not expect the enormous difficulty for the international recruitment of reviewers. For instance, for FIS we contacted more than 6,000 reviewers based in foreign institutions and only 10% of them accepted.
How do you explain these recruitment issues?
The international evaluation system is a matter of cooperation. Italy is a new player in this scenario and must earn the trust of others. Another source of complication is the bureaucracy involved in the recruitment of external experts.
Do CNVR members have a budget?
We receive a fee of €20,000. Reviewers receive an initial fee, which increases according to the number of projects they are up to. Fees are roughly in line with European standards.
The scientific community had different expectations around these grants.
One problem was communication, because the scientific community was not informed of the complexity behind the CNVR’s tasks. This is something to be improved. The CNVR is a recent institution that needs to be supported by a larger administrative structure.
Where does the revision of FIS and PRIN stand now?
The results of the PRIN 2022 call have just been published. PRIN_PNRR should be finished by the summer. For the FIS, we are concluding the interviews and I expect that once the first call is over, the second one will be shortly announced.
What could be done immediately to avoid similar delays on the next calls?
The critical issues we met this year have been mostly overcome and we will be able to work better in the future. We succeeded in developing a functional platform of international experts for each project or subject, and the next FIS call will start with it. Some structural slowdowns will be still around due to the intrinsic nature of the Italian system. The ERC does not have such bureaucratic hurdles. Surely there have been mistakes, but we eventually managed to do something that seemed impossible two years ago: align Italy with European standards.
