Assessing a project
A researcher whose account has been made an expert by a platform sees two extra entries in the researcher portal, under the Expertise group:
- Projects to assess — the proposals assigned to you;
- Expert reports — one report per proposal, the form you fill in.
Nobody but the assigned expert sees a report. It is not visible to the team whose proposal it judges, and it is not visible to the other experts on the same proposal.
Reading the proposal
Open the proposal from Projects to assess. You see it as it was submitted: its identity, the call it answers, its thematic areas, its activities, its keywords, its total cost, its work packages and objectives, and the documents attached to it. Print PDF gives you the whole file in one printable sheet if you would rather read it away from the screen.
Accepting or declining
Open the corresponding report in Expert reports. As long as you have not started, it is New and offers two buttons:
- Start review — you take it on, and its status becomes Under review.
- I cannot review this project — you decline, for instance because you know the team or work with it. The report is closed and the platform assigns somebody else.
Declining is not a failure and takes no explanation. A conflict of interest is better said at the outset than found out afterwards.
Filling in the report
Once Under review, Edit report opens the form the platform wrote for this call. It has three parts.
Scored questions. Each question of the assessment form carries a score between the minimum and the maximum the call has set, and a comment. Both are asked: a score with no reasoning explains nothing to the person who has to decide.
Priority factors. The call may add questions answered by choosing one of several proposed answers rather than by a score. Each also takes a comment.
Overall observation. A free text on the proposal as a whole.
The form is saved as often as you like, and it keeps what you typed: leaving the page in the middle does not lose the work. The Submit review button stays disabled as long as the overall observation, or the comment of a single question, is still empty.
Submitting
Submit review asks for a confirmation, then closes the report: the status becomes Done and the form can no longer be edited.
The portal then computes the result from the scores, against the two thresholds the call has set — a minimum on the critical questions and a minimum on the total:
- Passed — both thresholds are met;
- Failed (critical score) — a critical question falls below its threshold;
- Failed (total score) — the total is below the required minimum;
- Closed — the report was declined or closed by the platform.
The total score and the result are shown at the top of the report.
What the platform does with it
The platform gathers the reports on a proposal and settles its fate. Depending on the call, a proposal may be assessed by several experts; the result of one report is not, on its own, the decision on the project. The call may also open an appeal period on the assessment.
Your own data as an expert
Being an expert is written on your account and can be taken back by the platform. The reports you write, the scores you give and the dates you gave them are kept as part of the traceability of the funding decisions; they stay attached to the file even if you later delete your account, in a form that no longer identifies you. See Your rights over your data.