Minister of Science: Problems in defining excellence in research

The conference "Towards a new concept of the Excellence in Research?" organized by the Foundation for Polish Science in collaboration with the European Foundation Centre was held in Warsaw on 13 and 14 October.

"Excellence in research is the aim of Horizon 2020, the objective of national strategies and a criterion of the grant decisions. Therefore, we are trying to define what constitutes excellence, and to find the criteria for determining it, because on these criteria we base our decisions" - said the Minister of Science and Higher Education Lena Kolarska -Bobińska.

President of the Foundation for Polish Science Maciej Żylicz said in an interview with PAP that in competitions for grants, experts evaluate the applications filed by researchers and try to select the best, excellent projects. However, this involves a number of dilemmas and problems in comparing projects. According to the organizers, the conference in Warsaw should allow experts to exchange views and work out as the most effective ways to select the most innovative applications among thousands.

Prof. Żylicz told PAP that the applications of scientists are evaluated in the so-called peer review (scientific review) system - researchers in a given field are evaluated by other scientists working in a similar field of science. According to Prof. Żylicz, the current system is quite conservative. "If the reviewer sees that the project may end successfully, he says that the application is good. But maybe sometimes we should to do things differently - bet on something that is very risky? Then the reviewer does not know whether the project will succeed, but if it does, it will be a great discovery!" - wondered Żylicz. He admitted that every foundation or agency assesses that risk differently. The conference allows foundations from all over Europe to exchange their methods of risk assessment.

Minister of Science admitted that whether the research project is considered excellent or not, often depends on the context. It turns out that scientists from different disciplines can have different approach to the concept of "excellence" - mathematicians will evaluate the quality of research differently than literature experts. Besides, in the evaluation of proposals excellence is usually defined in opposition to other studies - the project is considered to be "excellent" when it is better than the other projects. The assessment of the application is therefore affected not only the quality of the project itself, but also the quality of other projects in the competition, and the persons who evaluate the project.

Head of the European Research Council (ERC), Jean Pierre Bourguignon also acknowledged the problems in comparing proposals. He reported that every year the council assesses 10 thousand applications and grants 1 thousand grants. He admitted that one of the problems was, for example, distribution of funds among the various fields of science. Another difficult question is also whether the evaluators should rate better the researchers from the best research centres, which leads to the concentration of funds in units that already are the best. Bourguignon also pointed out that the problem might be comparing the value of publications - after all, it is difficult to measure the vitality of the work, or the contribution of a person to the preparation of the study.

The conference "Towards a new concept of the Excellence in Research?" was attended by scientists and representatives of European foundations awarding research grants - in total approx. 200 participants.

PAP - Science and Scholarship in Poland

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