CREODK IS THE EU RESEARCH OFFICE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN, THE TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF DENMARK, COPENHAGEN BUSINESS SCHOOL AND THE CAPITAL REGION OF DENMARK.

HORIZON 2020:

CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS

HORIZON 2020 NUMBER OF PARTICIPATIONS 2014-2015creoDK partnership performance:190 projects37.6 % of total Danish performance

EUROPEAN COMMISSION CONTRIBUTION 2014-2015creoDK partnership performance:EUR 94.1 M (DKK 702 M)43 % of total Danish performance

FUNDED EUROPEAN RESEARCH COUNCIL PROJECTS 2014-2015creoDK partnership performance:18 projects64 % of total Danish performance

PARTNERSHIP PERFORMANCE

Horizon 2020 is in the middle of its programme period. In many aspects Horizon 2020 functions well. Problems found in the 7th Framework Programme have been untangled.

creoDK fully supports the increased focus on impact and the integration of social sciences and humanities (SSH) across the work programmes. Nevertheless, the creoDK partnership has identified a number of challenges related to the implementation of Horizon 2020.

This paper describes some of the challenges encoun-tered in the daily work with the programme and points to possible solutions that can improve critical issues such as the quality of evaluations and the use of technology readiness levels (TRL) in calls.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

Success rates- More ambitious and better defined impact

requirements in the call texts could reduce the number of proposals and elevate the success rates

Evaluation process - The evaluation system must ensure transparent

and systematic evaluations and adequate in-depth knowledge about the subject matter of any given application

HORIZON 2020: CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS

- Physical consensus meetings should be maintained to ensure evaluation quality and coherence with call text

- Only proposals above the threshold should get detailed feed-back

- Evaluators should be allowed and encouraged to point at cross disciplinary synergies and coopera-tive potentials between similar project ideas

- More two-step procedures should be implemented with substantial feed-back on step 1 in proposals and there should be more time between the two phases

Securing Horizon 2020’s relevance for universities- Provide opportunities for frontier research aimed

at lower Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) – also in the larger collaborative challenge-based parts of Horizon 2020

- A better inclusion of SSH at all TRL stages in order to improve relevance and impact

- To ensure that research is selected based on scien-tific excellence, development activities at late TRL stages where no additional research is required should be funded by separate funding mechanisms

- Funding should be reserved for universities and SME’s rather than big industrial partners. Big industry participants should be encouraged to participate – but funding should be reserved for universities and SME’s with less financial means to invest in research

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In terms of numbers of proposals Horizon 2020 is an overwhelming success. As a consequence, the low success rates constitute a major challenge for the remaining programme period due to the fact that many excellent scientists do not want to spend time on submitting proposals.

Emphasising impact will help maintain a 360 degree focus on all scientific aspects of a given societal challenge. For the societal challenges and LEIT pro-grammes there is a tendency, that SSH participation is reduced to ensuring public support, communication, business models and other “practical” matters of implementing project results and ensuring impact. SSH should always be allowed to deal with more fun-damental SSH research questions regarding organi-zation, implementation, cultural and socio-economic

SUCCESS RATES: CLEARER AND MORE AMBITIOUS IMPACT REQUIREMENTS

aspects of the developed technology. SSH researchers should be allowed to study the feasibility of the desired impact as well as exploring possible other techno-logical and organizational ways forward – allowing the demand side to pull as much as the supply side to push for technological solutions to societal challenges. A more fundamental involvement of SSH will often result in a more fundamental long-term and sustaina-ble project impact.

We would support an even greater emphasis on impact in Horizon 2020. We suggest that the call texts contain very clear, precise and well-defined impact criteria for the projects. A revised approach to impact could also reduce the number of proposals thereby increas-ing the so far very low success rates and a more strin-gent evaluation process.

More focus on maintaining a high quality level of evaluation process should be given. Evaluators must be briefed carefully. It is of great importance that evaluators are briefed in a clear and precise way that mirrors the Horizon 2020 ambitions and the specific call text in a way that do not present any bias towards unofficial preferences. A system to ensure that eval-uators have understood the call text correctly should be developed in order to avoid unsystematic evalua-tions. In addition, it is - in this regard - important to ensure that evaluations are based only on explicitly mentioned criteria in the call text. This will increase transparency and fairness in the evaluation.

In general, physical evaluation consensus meetings ought to be maintained. Written communication is often not sufficient for high level exchange of opinions and arguments between evaluators. Consensus meet-ings would also help prevent disparate evaluations.

EVALUATION PROCESS:AN ADAPTED SYSTEMATIC APPROACH

Evaluations should have a format that allows applicants to learn from the experience. To ensure high quality evaluations whilst containing the workload of evalu-ators we suggest that, within Societal Challenges and Leadership in Enabling and Industrial Technologies actions, only proposals above the threshold will get detailed feedback.

More two-step procedures with substantial feed-back on step 1 in proposals in combination with more time between the two phases could be a way forward. One could add 10 pages to step 1, in order to allow for more substantial evaluation before step 2 and for more substantial feedback.

We also suggest that evaluators of project ideas should be allowed or even encouraged to point at synergies and cooperative potentials between similar project ideas of sufficient quality. Hence, helping applicants identify potential new consortia set-ups should be encouraged.

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Horizon 2020 should provide possibilities for excel-lent and impact-driven researchers to conduct basic research with a view to creating novel knowledge and transform this knowledge into application. With an increased focus on demonstration, upscaling and other manifestations of testing innovation the use of increased TRL in calls under the pillars Industrial Leadership and Societal Challenges comes across as a natural development. The risk is that too much fund-ing is given to projects at the high end of TRL at the expense of research situated at the lower and middle level. Europe risks that the best researchers from the university sector lose interest in Horizon 2020 or change strategy and focus more on the bottom up instruments of the Excellence pillar – rather than contributing to solving the Societal Challenges.

We should be careful not to think that strategic research aimed at solving defined societal needs can only be conducted at high TRLs. It is of great impor-tance to secure opportunities for frontier research aimed at lower TRL levels also in the larger collabo-rative challenge-based parts of Horizon 2020.

The official definition of a Research and Innovation Action states that this instrument only can include “limited demonstration or pilot activities aiming to show technical feasibility in a near to operational environment”. However, it is seen that activities very close to market application are expected in RIA topics.

SECURING HORIZON 2020’S RELEVANCE FOR UNIVERSITIES: EVEN FUNDING ACROSS THE TRL

At the same time many evaluators give low scores to projects that keep within the official boundaries of the RIA for not pushing closer to commercial testing or use, thus in reality negatively judging the proposal for something they are not intended to be.

Furthermore, funding research more evenly across the TRL would have a larger effect in terms of generic research findings and impact. To ensure that research is selected based on scientific excellence, development activities at late TRL stages where no additional research is required should be funded by separate funding mechanisms. Research funding should be separate from development funding. Including SSH at all TRL stages is crucial to ensuring relevance and impact.

The increased focus on impact has led to multistake-holder-consortia in which universities, public bodies, end-user organizations and industry work together in research and innovation projects funded by Horizon 2020. This is a positive development. We support that small and medium sized enterprises should be able to receive funding. Equally, we support that big indus-try players such as multinational companies should be entitled to participate in Horizon 2020 projects. However, we would like to question if it is proper that big industry with large reserves of capital should be entitled for funding in Horizon 2020 in view of the scarcity of public funding for research and innovation.

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CAPITAL REGION DENMARK EU OFFICE, CREODKcreoDK is the EU research office of the University of Copenhagen, Technical University of Denmark, Copenhagen Business School and the Capital Region of Denmark. creoDK’s goal is to strengthen the involvement of its four partners in the European Research Area and especially in the Horizon 2020 EU Frame-work Programme for Research and Innovation.

UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGENWith about 41,000 students, more than 5,100 researchers and 11,000 research-based publications the University of Copenhagen is the largest research and education institution in Denmark.

TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF DENMARKDTU is an elite technical university of international scope and standard whose mission is to develop and make use of the natural and technical sciences for the benefit of society. DTU is one of the largest technical universities in Northern Europe with 10,600 students, 2,000 researchers and more than 3,000 research publications. 5,800 employees focus on research, education, providing scientific advice, and innovation, thus con-tributing to increased growth and welfare.

COPENHAGEN BUSINESS SCHOOLBy national and international standards CBS, established in 1917, is an excellent university with a distinctive business profile that takes a broad approach to business in society today. With approx. 650 full-time researchers and over 23,000 students, CBS is one of the largest business schools in Europe. In 2014 CBS researchers produced close to 1800 research-based publications.

THE CAPITAL REGION OF DENMARKThe Capital Region of Denmark provides health care and regional development for 1.75 million people and employs around 4,000 active researchers. With eight hospitals and more than 60 % of all clinical research activity nationwide, the region is by far the largest clinical research and innovation environment in Denmark. The Capital Region of Denmark issues around 3,800 research-based publications annually.

creoDK Capital Region Denmark EU OfficeRue du Luxembourg 3, B-1000 BrusselsTel.: +45 45 11 02 98creodk@regionh.dk, www.creodk.eu

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