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| Signatures including commentsRefine your search Show all comments (sorted by date) Show all comments (sorted by length) Show regional comments: Comments from France238 comments. (Note: Some comments are not made public accessible.) 4 Mar 09:44 France ArcelorMittal Research Colin Scott In certain areas we now see professional institutions specialising in preparing and proposing European grant applications. Thats all they do. The fact that these bodies exist illustrates the scale of the problem. 21 May 04:14 France Cabinet de médecine générale Wolfgang B. Lindemann I have participated/participate actuellement in scientific studies in family medicine. The work which one patient to include is so high that I have to limit my participation, 4 Apr 12:21 France CCSTI Centre de Culture Scientifique, Technique et Industriel Michel Belakhovsky ERC should be boosted 16 Mar 11:24 France CEA Claire Antoine Multiplication of funding agencies (European, country, region, local, private...) and low chances to get funding lead us to write minimum 4-5 proposals for the same project, each one with its own rules, so you cant just copy-paste one to another. It takes 2-4 years (of proposal writings) to get funding for a new, innovative project. Fortunately it is the same situation for our main competitors across the ocean, so we manage -sometime- to stay ahead in the competition. Let’s imagine an efficient world, where it is easy to get a small budget to check the feasibility of new ideas when they come and where the risk is better established when it comes to the development of larger projects... 22 Mar 16:44 France CEFE Philippe Jarne Any solution that may simplify the current jungle, any solution trusting what researchers are doing (i.e. excluding working report every months), though not going in a pure ERC direction (huge grants to few persons) is welcome 15 Feb 15:39 France CEFVIANA maria do céu Pereira de Sousa Research projects should be based on trust. Methodologies should be based on ICT management facilities. Small actors could be possibly part of the Game. Financial tools should be adapted to the aim R&D. 31 Mar 11:50 France Cemagref Sylvain Labbé Please, prefer a two step selection processes of research projects in order to avoid that a lot of consortium consume a lot of time in writing huge proposals. 12 Feb 18:14 France CEMES - CNRS Marc Monthioux Scientists are educated and paid to make science. Research work and good use of public money would benefit of making administrative procedures related to European programs lighter. Deliverables, tight planning, and risk assessments are certainly valid for manufacturing industries but are non-sense notions if applied to research. 15 Feb 09:26 France CEMES CNRS Wolfgang Bacsa The current funding situation on the national and European level seriously limits my research activity. I pledge to come back to reality and let us not get lost in ideas which are not practical. How can research groups form 5 corners of Europe seriously work together without knowing each other? There is a better way to spend research funds than having expensive project meetings. It does not make sense to write instructions for proposals longer than 20-30 pages long. Neither does it make sense to accept projects and then not fund them! Currently it is often better not to apply for research projects, to save time to carry out research. Yes, one can very well collaborate without any funding! One just needs to meet partners on international conferences. I am convinced European research funding can be substantially improved and more effective (>100%). Currently we waste expensive funding and put our economic future at risk. It is time to wake up! 30 Apr 15:06 France CEMHTI-CNRS Patrick Echegut Dear European Community staff Please trust european researchers ...please visit laboratories ! Please try to live as a researcher in a laboratory ... And of course you will simplify the forms ... thyank you by advance ..... 3 Mar 05:35 France Centre Edgar Morin, IIAC, Ecole des Htes Etudes en Sc Sociales & CNRS Claude Fischler Excessive formalism leads to denial or neglect of reality. The goal of administrative process should be both to facilitate access to research funding and optimise accountability - not to make access impossible to smaller organisations without specialised administrative units. 2 Mar 17:45 France Centre Laser Intenses et Applications, University Bordeaux 1 Vladimir Tikhonchuk I fully support this initiative 2 Mar 17:48 France Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Murat SAPARBAEV Indeed when participating in EU projects I wasted lot of time for unnecessary technical and administrative details instead of doing research. With time the rules for both applying as well as running projects are becoming more and more rigid. I think Europe should adapt US funding system with more individualized research funding. 10 Mar 14:02 France Centre national de la recherche scientifique Christophe Blondel Scientific research is not an administrative activity. Funding researchers according to their ability to fill application files is a nonsense. We urgently need another way of funding, that would re-establish the long-term confidence to be put on people, even very small groups of people, as the primary criterion. 18 Mar 15:10 France Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) Alain Pénicaud Up to now, I have refused most invitations to participate to EU based grants. red tape is overwhelming. Europe deserves better. Having to pay public money to consulting cabinets aware of the Brussels rules to have a chance of being selected is shameful. This should be known by the european taxpayer. And when you see applications where science counts for 25% of the mark, you want to cry.... 2 Mar 17:54 France CEREGE (CNRS) Pierre Henry Coordination and reporting in FP7 has one quality: the high complexity of the task has justified hiring high level young scientists as administrative staff. This might be an interesting opportunity in a depressed job market. 19 Mar 12:39 France CIRAD Guy HENRY The cientific incentives for coordinating FP projects are being outweighted by the administrative burdens. Hence, good people are not interested anymore in coordinating important and relevant projects !!! 21 Mar 16:18 France Cirad Emmanuel guiderdoni Being partner of several EU projects from FP4 to FP7 I found that the administrative tasks and reporting, including financial has become with time unaffordable for a scientist, without the tesupport of a financial officer. I would rather prefer a system like US NSF where an a posteriori but thorough review of the outcome of the project is made but leaves the scientist with only scientific issue to address and light reporting during the course of the project. 23 Mar 17:57 France CIRAD Alain RIVAL As a former Marie Curie Fellow, I acknowledge that a lot has yet to be done in order to facilitate resercahers mobility inside and outside Europeans borders. Topics like social security and salary taxation are still headaches and their are hampering a lot of moblity projects. Thus I strongly support the present initiative. 17 Feb 16:36 France CNRS Jean-Luc POPOT The current amount of paperwork that goes with applying for, negotiating, running and reporting about EU grants is outrageous, totally out of proportion with what is actually needed to ensure a responsible use of the taxpayers money, and extremely costly in terms of time and funds. It ends up in our laboratories and organizations having to pay specialized managers or agencies for preparing and running the grants, rather than funding research, and/or in wasting on mostly unnecessary if not utterly non-sensical paperwork the time of highly skilled and experienced scientists. In addition, this crushing bureaucratization favors predictable, unimaginative research by well-established scientists to the expense of creative, risk-taking projects by younger ones. It is a dramatic example of mismanagement and waste of resources. None of the innumerable requests for simplification by the scientific community has ever resulted in anything else than still more complexification and the bloating of a costly administration to handle the mountains of useless data that we are asked to provide. It is high time to reverse this trend. J.-L. Popot, co-ordinator of two EU projects. 24 Feb 11:45 France CNRS Gérard CHOLLET Research funding should have a memory. Software developments and databases should be distributed to the community. Successful project should have a priority for further support. 25 Feb 17:36 France CNRS Martin Hytch Please evaluate projects on scientific results not bureaucratic skill. 26 Feb 11:36 France CNRS Olivier VALLON In case the declaration does not make it clear enough: people who designed the administrative requirements of European programs do NOT understand how research works in academics. For example, the requirement that researchers involved in FP7 programs sign monthly work statements where they must enter their daily involvement in each and every work package of the program, is utterly stupid. Any researcher who would be ready to spend time doing this is probably incapable of independent thinking, hence interesting research. He/she must have nothing interesting to do during the day. He/she should not be awarded funding. 28 Feb 21:21 France CNRS Bruno Coutard How should I declare the time spent to fill Timesheets and administrative work ?! RTD, Mgt ?! 1 Mar 17:11 France CNRS Frederic Partensky Basic (marine) research was well supported during FP4 and FP5, but since FP6 there has been a deplorable drift away from basic science to the profit of highly focused applied science projects. This is forgetting that without a solid basic science basis, applied science will not survive very long by lack of novel ideas to exploit. Also, the influence of lobbies is heavier than ever: they act by imposing restrictive key words in calls that prevent any flexibility and chances that others than lobbiers themselves can answer the call. Also Europe has favored highly bureaucratric projects like networks of excellence, a considerable waste of money, which had hardly anything to do with (good) science. 1 Mar 18:37 France CNRS Laurent MEIJER More paperwork = less research More trust = more creativity Administration serving Research, not the opposite ! 1 Mar 22:33 France CNRS Colomban de Vargas I had the chance to work both in the US and in France as a group-leader, and I can tell you.. things are also centralized in the US (Washington), but adminitration is much, much, much simpler. I dont see how we can compete in these conditions. 2 Mar 12:18 France CNRS Daniel Choquet Time sheets are a non-sense 2 Mar 18:34 France CNRS Vitaly Volpert Senior researchers have to spend most of their time for administration. In many cases, this is because of excessive bureaucracy and bad organization. 3 Mar 09:23 France CNRS Anne-Marie DELORT To save time is very important to keep our research efficiency. 3 Mar 10:14 France CNRS Gwenael Piganeau it is a shame that creativity and originality of research projects are irrelevant without capacity (and tenacity) to use administrative language for grant application. 3 Mar 14:01 France CNRS Henri Godfrin The efficiency gained through the additional funding provided by the EU research programmes is severly reduced by the rigidity of the present system. Research, as well as its administration and evaluation should be made without micromanagement. 3 Mar 15:32 France CNRS Claude Didry Research is managed against Reason, with a permanent control over the researchers activity and in a fordist perspective Research and its freedom requirement is ignored by the other General Direction of the EU Commission. 3 Mar 17:48 France CNRS Michael Baker In particular, the filling in of time-sheet and resource/workpackage forms could be abolished, and replaced by a simple yearly signed declaration on honour, that the persons have devoted 100% of their time to the project. The filling in of such forms constitutes a major burden. 5 Mar 15:53 France CNRS Bernhard ZEIMETZ In 2006 I have sent a detailed proposal for improvements to the EC, specifically regarding Time Sheets, but the only reply was thank you for your input. I will send it to FFG- Austrian Research Promotion Agency for discussion and distribution. 9 Mar 18:03 France CNRS Francois RICAUT k 10 Mar 07:53 France CNRS Jean-Christophe Gimel What do we find if we add the time spend (=money) of all the persons involved in the application process for EU funds ? Is it of the order of the amount distributed ? Id like to have this information. 10 Mar 09:48 France CNRS Michel Diaz Administrative work and constraints, and so delays, are increasing each year. As a consequence, we are becoming less and less efficient in research output. 10 Mar 11:21 France CNRS Childerick SEVERAC Researchers are honest; they spend their research grant wisely. Lets stop being audited by accountants or waste time with micromanagement. Lets be more flexible with grants and more innovative research wise. STOP MICROMANAGEMENT OF RESEARCH, IT ONLY PRODUCES POOR RESEARCH! 10 Mar 12:33 France CNRS David Mainprice More emphasis must be placed on high quality applicants and projects rather than diffuse quality on larger and larger scaled networking activity if Europe is to remain at the forefront of world science. 11 Mar 11:04 France CNRS Pierre Chavel this is really a political issue. Individuals in the system do their best, but the tendancy is clearly an ever increasing mistrust in our fair use of EU fund to conduct the research agreed. We would like to do that research rather than fill forms. 12 Mar 10:55 France CNRS Andrey KAJAVA A good initiative 12 Mar 23:19 France CNRS Henri BENISTY Surely simple rule of thumbs instead of detailed cost claims would ensure a use of money at least 95% similar and would free at least +15% of our brains, hence we would gain at least +10%. Together with responsibility, the next thing to think about is how to trigger nucleaction and propagation of high quality research, with consortia as basic entities (the size is good and sound in ex-STREP for example), but also with a vision of before and after. Before, 10% money spent on meetings aimed at defining foreseen consortia + projects (with short submissions drafted to further form short-lists validated by modest panels) could be very very useful to trigger the emergence of the proper groups rather than by mere acquaintance (only good at the top of the spectrum) . After, 10% money for directed rearrangement, to bridge toward the next initiatives while improving the outcome of the main project, would be useful. With such inlet and output pipes, the need for assessing excellence in 15 Deliverables of 10 page reports each would be greatly alleviated. 18 Mar 18:38 France CNRS Dominique Ferrandon Time spent on red tape is time not spent on science... 20 Mar 12:47 France CNRS Jacqueline de Bony Its a pity to ask a researcher more and more management time and competences instead of more and more time for developing research 20 Mar 18:50 France CNRS Emmanuel Balanzat I have more than 30 years of experience as physicist doing research in France. I am convinced that years ago we did much better Science with much less money. The obvious reason is: we did what we are supposed to do, Science and not filling forms and constructing schemes and collaborations with the only purpose to be “EC like”. The EC founding system, and to some extent, also some national systems (ANR in France for instance) leads to an indecent misappropriate use of public finance and to a clear decrease of the efficiency of our community in producing good quality Science. 22 Mar 08:42 France CNRS GOURBILLEAU Fabrice We are no more doing research, job for what we are paid and that we like.. We are just wasting our time to fill EC forms and documents and thus loosing efficiency. 22 Mar 14:06 France CNRS Marcel Lambrechts The rules applied at ESF is a nice/efficient example. Administration is minimised, so researchers can focus on research. Why wasting time on progress reports. Progress reports are too often judged by non-specialists in the field who have not the competence to judge the reports correctly, or are hardly red. Results should be published in scientific journal tracked/judged by specialists in the field. 22 Mar 15:57 France CNRS Thierry Boulinier If some politician and/or administrative person high up in the European bureaucracy reads these comment, I sincerely hope that they can realize what they actually mean...This is serious stuff: the system can be much improved by being simplified !! Not the reverse... 24 Mar 08:47 France CNRS Dominique PACOT Let people continue to do their job and focus on research. Dont penalize those who work the most. 24 Mar 10:02 France CNRS Jean-Pierre VILCOT Bureaucracy is killing innovation!! Time is not compressive, whatever the amount you spend!! Research work shall be targeted to increase European competitiveness in a worldwide scope and not to feed an internal inflationary bureaucratic system. 24 Mar 11:04 France CNRS Didier STIEVENARD please, simplify the administrative control (time sheet). Give time to people to perform research and not administrative tasks. make severe control on the scientific results and on the use of money à posteriri. 24 Mar 22:25 France CNRS Javier Escartin Administrators of science should be at the service of science. Now scientists are at the service of EU administrators instead. 3 Apr 15:13 France CNRS Thierry POINSOT Let us start doing research and stop writing meaningless administrative reports. We are spending more time answering all administrative requests from officers than working on the contracts themselves. The EC has been grouping projects to delegate the work to others (the coordinators). Build smaller projects and add scientific experts to evaluate them, not accountants... 14 Apr 16:06 France CNRS Eric J Kremer > 4 weeks of administrative work at each reporting period. We need to be held responsible for the use of public money, but the burden should not be draconian. 29 Apr 16:15 France CNRS Alan Pradel The more we waste our time with administrative stuff, the less we study. 30 Apr 10:03 France CNRS Malcolm Buckle I agree with the document 30 Apr 16:36 France CNRS Luis Garcia-Alles Funding proposals are often discouraging due to excessive administrative demands and because over years the number of partners to gain visibility is increasing steadly. 30 Apr 17:15 France CNRS Sevket Sen Project too much concerned applicated sciences. Procedures of submission of projects too havy 5 May 11:11 France CNRS Wim Crusio Please take the application forms away from the managers and make them scientifically realistic! 5 May 21:51 France cnrs jean-louis gallani keep politics off of science. 10 May 08:31 France CNRS Christopher Herbert The administrative burden strangles innovation in science 10 May 08:32 France CNRS Francois Lacroute I have seen around me that the most brilliant researchers heading a team were spending more and more time on writing reports and grant applications to the detriment of the research sensu stricto .A better organization of the founding administration is clearly necessary if on want to avoid the sterilization of the european research. 16 May 19:46 France CNRS Robert FUCHS Essentially all funding applications have become way too cumbersome. Strikingly, most applications gradually look alike as if the different funding agencies are implementing new additions by merely copying each other. Please simplify, it will help the reviewing process. Sometimes reviews turn out to be poor in quality, this can be a major problem..... How to improve and monitor the quality of the review process itself ? It may help to pay reviewers for their work. 18 Mar 10:03 France CNRS - MNHN Emmanuel Gheerbrant Stop the bureaucracy, help and support the research in Europe at all levels! 5 May 14:53 France CNRS - IPMC Bernard Mari I totally agree: excessive paperwork is killing science. 26 Feb 21:23 France CNRS - LBME Emmanuel Kas Red tape will ultimately kill European research. And heres the red herring: how many instances of scientific fund abuse or misuse can be established by our beloved bureaucrats in Brussels or Strasbourg? I can think of many on their part, but they dont seem to be held accountable and a simple signature appears to suffice to justify their overhead and other forms of compensation, usually for NOT doing their job... Presumption of innocence not being big in our business, instead of just being suspected of being guilty, why dont we just collect a huge amount of purchase orders for petri dishes and pipetman tips and use the money through front companies in Luxembourg (an EEC member...) to splurge on 3-star meals and stays at 5-star hotels? Lets do it ! 3 Mar 20:36 France CNRS / Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon Brian B. RUDKIN European financing of research offers unique means to bring together complementary european and international expertise to address questions of potential interest to society as a whole. This challenge itself is great - that of fulfilling the administrative demands is greater ! This initiative should permit researchers to work with administrators and technocrats to streamline the procedures so as to reach a mutually-acceptable modus operende. 30 Mar 16:53 France CNRS / Muséum National dHistoire Naturelle Mathieu Joron Scientists do not go through the hassle of applying for grants solely for the bureaucratic beauty of spending the money according to EU rules (however appealing that may be). The purpose of a grant is of course the research and scientific output, which should be the primary criterion to evaluate the spending, and which can only be assessed after the research is done, or at specific times during a project. A proposal goes through a harsh selection and budget evaluation before being accepted. Trying to continue evaluating the spending during the course of a research project through real time bureaucratic control is counterproductive, and a real burden to the process of achieving the scientific goals for which the money is allocated in the first place. 12 Feb 15:15 France CNRS and Université Paul Sabatier - Toulouse III Jean-Pierre Tuchagues As a participant to, and the coordinator of European Research programmes, I have fully experimented the burden of inefficient European administrative bureaucracy, spending lots of time in useless red tape instead of carrying out research for these programmes: it is vital for European Research to urgently move toward efficiency. 18 Feb 14:02 France CNRS Institut Nicod Gloria Origgi Indeed research has to be accountable. But if the procedures of control and quality assessment suffocate the target structure (knowledge production) by forcing researchers to invest their creative resources in writing useless reports and slicing work into artificial tasks and deliverables, there is no gain for anybody, neither for researchers, nor for the civil society and even less for agencies and governments that want to compete for international excellence. Trusting not only researchers but research practices is the only way of coming up with real innovation. 5 May 13:06 France CNRS IPMC UMR6097 Simon SZMIDT Lot of time waste for untrusted researchers 19 May 15:01 France CNRS Laplace Gilbert Teyssedre The tremendous increase in management time and competences asked to all researchers at the various levels of organization is detrimental to the global efficiency of the system. 19 Feb 18:48 France CNRS, Institut Neel Valerio Olevano I add that what I do not suffer more is that the EU pretends to rule the Scientific Research using schemes invented for Business and Economy by economists, not by scientists. A Research Project is not a Business Plan to restructure an Industry. Milestones, deliverables, rigid time-sheets, are not at all appropriated to drive the true scientific research. They only add over our shoulders an immense load of needless bureaucracy. 5 May 10:51 France CNRS, Muséum national dHistoire naturelle Jean-Denis Vigne The time that we waste with excessive administrative verifications is much more expensive for the European community (in terms of salaries) that the reduction of expenses that the European community obtains with these administrative verifications. 26 Feb 15:58 France CNRS, Univerrsity of Perpignan Michel Delseny Please simplify funding rules, forget about huge consortia which are almost impossible to manage and dilute money. Give high priority to high scientific quality projects involving a limited number of partners. Also forget about public acceptance or public concern when basic research is involved (eg GMO). 5 May 17:40 France CNRS-Université de Strasbourg Charles Hirlimann Real democracy is based on trust, heavy bureaucracies are based on suspicion. 13 May 17:47 France CNRS-University Georges Lambert it is obviously necessary 3 Mar 17:28 France CNRS/Université Blavette Didier Time spent by researchers to justify their research time is a TOTAL WASTE of research human potential, this costs a lot as a consequence and a NO SENSE in research for people (researchers precisely) who really knows what is research. What is the meaning of a 100% full time for a researcher? Research time has no absolute sense as researchers may spend their week end, part of their hollydays or parts of nights to research and they often work much more than the official 35 hours. Things should be judged on results. Time alloted to a project is the only responsability of researchers. Would have been Einstein allowed to make research on relativity within European rules and discover E=mC2 considering its heavy agenda exceeding 100% of a full time on other subjects (Brownian motion, interpretation of photo emission...)? 4 Mar 23:14 France CNRS/University paris South-11 Alain BOSSEBOEUF Heavy administrative tasks imposed by european projects certainly prevent the deposition of proposals for many researchers. 3 Mar 13:01 France CNRS3349 Denis Roizard too much is too much! Lets save our time for Research. 20 Mar 18:42 France collège de france and université de Strasbourg jean-Marie LEHN drastically simplify administrative red tape for proposal submission and reporting keep scientific evaluation in the hands of competent scientists evaluate program officers 18 Mar 15:45 France Commisariat à lEnergie Atomique Jean-Christophe Gabriel When the cumulated effort on all applicants to fill in applications represents more than 10% of the fund available there is something wrong in the system and it represents a terrible waste. 17 Mar 15:20 France CREATIS Sébastien Valette Researchers spend almost as much time writing project proposals and reports as writing scientific papers. But only the scientific papers finally matter, so please help us to be more efficient by shrinking the required paperwork. 25 Apr 23:16 France CryptoExperts Pascal Paillier The administrative management of research projects within the EU framework program could and should be greatly simplified. The human resources one has to invest in bureaucratic tasks when being partner of a research project are dramatically high for SMEs and results in a loss of energy and precious time. We all agree that such a simplification is not easy to plan, but there must exist some middle-ground arangement to save time and effort. 12 Mar 10:41 France Curie Institute Jean-Louis VIOVY Projects should be judged on their OUTCOME and USEFULNESS to EU CITIZENS (e.g. scientific papers, patents, industrial products), and not on the obedience of money spending to rules dictated by people with no experience of the daily reality of research. Researchers are the best (and only) experts to judge of the best way to use grant money in the interest of the project at a given time. Administrative control should be restricted to check that there is no illegal diverting of money to private interests, and control (by scientific and technical experts) of the projects outcome all along the projects evolution should be reinforced instead. For instance, making a detailed registration of the TIME spent on a project is irrealistic and useless (I can spend weeks stuck on a problem in the lab, and find the solution during a 10 mn discussion at a conference, or even during a hike in the weekend: how can timesheets account for this reality of scientific creativity and innovation?). It is even counterproductive, since the time spent in this detailed registering is time lost for active innovation. 31 Mar 16:38 France Diltec Kenza Cherkaoui Japprécierais, simplement pour favoriser la diversité, et bien que je sois trilingue, lusage dautres langues que langlais, y compris pour cette pétition ! I would appreciate, simply for the sake of diversity, although I am trilingual, the use of other languages than English, this petition included ! 5 Mar 15:10 France Ecole Normale Supérieure Jean Roger Every procedure must be simplified !! 17 Mar 02:02 France Ecole Normale Superieure Marie Farge The simplest the best! Research requires concentration. People organizing and managing science should protect scientists from distraction and help them not to waste their time. The present situation is counter-productive for the quality of research. We are overwhelmed by financial and administrative tasks for wich we have no special talent. We are asked to respect strict deadlines for administarive tasks, but not to do research nor write papers or books. The perverse effect is that the system imposes us to give priority to the former (administration) on the later (research). The European taxpayers should be informed that this situation has become critical: we waste our time doing administration instead of research. 18 Jul 10:26 France Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan Joseph Zyss The administrative burden has become overwhelming and a hindrance towards joining projects. Which boils donw to an ever narrowing dilemna in-between i) keeping away from proposals and such, thus accepting to face degraded funding conditions and ii) cutting an ever increasing chunk of ones research time towards meeting the demands of sterile and abusive administrative constraints. Which does not mean that researchers should isolate themselves in some sort of unaccountable ivory tower activities, by far. It is just a matter of keeping a proper and decent balance, which is not currently the case with hardly measurable consequences on the attraction of scientific careers upon young people as well as overall quality of scientific outputs as a result of over- and micro-managed time consuming constraints. 2 Mar 21:13 France Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon Vincent LAUDET Why not using example like the Welcome Trust in England ? 10 Mar 15:18 France Ecole polytechnique - CNRS/IN2P3 Olivier Drapier Spending time filling time sheets is a recursive (thus, possibly endless) task ;-) 2 Mar 16:54 France Ecole pratique des hautes études Constantin Zuckerman If we manage to get the regulations simplified on the European level, they might one day be also simplified in France! 10 Mar 12:38 France EHESS (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) Jean-Michel Carrié Decisions in selecting the programs to be financially supported should be based on authentically scientific appreciation rather than formal presentation, political correctness and à la mode kind of argument, which would perhaps imply in the process of dcision making a redistribution of power between scientific and bureaucratic voices. 5 Mar 00:45 France ENS de Lyon Ioan Negrutiu Time is money. Science takes time. Saving time at application stage, saves money for effective science. 23 Mar 21:19 France ENS Lyon Pradeep Das I had a Marie Curie fellowship a couple of years ago, and had to struggle through 3 different files of about 60 pages to fill out the administrative parts of the application. I can only imagine how much worse it is for large international research grants. Science needs to take precedence. 17 May 18:02 France EPHE and CNRS jean-Pierre Bocquet-Appel Do you think that a reading of a notice of about 250 pages, beside in English, simply to apply to an EC grant is very practical and fair? 5 Mar 09:21 France ESO Morgan Berger Good luck! 9 Mar 15:50 France Euro Inter Jean-Louis Bonafe Bear in mind that the future of european high tech SMEs is fully dependent of their capabilities to prepare within universities their future employees with EU funding supports that are more and more spoiled by extra burden. 31 Mar 12:36 France FM Consultants Associates Fulcieri Maltini It is absolutely essential that the bureaucratic procedures shall be reduced to a minimum for all approvals and financial support to EU research as research cannot wait and shall progress fast if we want a competitive Europe. 12 Mar 23:44 France Geosciences Azur Guust Nolet Funding decisions need to be based on the track record of a scientist, as judged by his/her peers, taking into account that young scientists do not yet have much of a record but are often full of good, new ideas. Other considerations, often dear to bureaucrats (international cooperation, economic spin-off) merely distort the hunt for good ideas. 18 Mar 10:04 France Grenoble Universités François Faure Simplifying the procedures is a major issue, as we spend an increasingly long time doing administration rather than research, 3 Mar 10:23 France Group for Neural Theory, LNC, DEC, ENS Boris Gutkin Administrative and reporting procedures must be simplified. One model is the Marie Curie program where the program officers are very helpful and the reporting procedures are reasonable. 3 May 15:33 France HELIO International Laura Wililamson As an NGO that works on energy and governance issues we receive a number of requests to either lead or participate in EU-funded grants. Unfortunately we have to turn down a number of interesting projects simply because we dont have the internal capacity to carry out the required reporting and accounting paperwork on various projects simultaneously. Thus, despite having the technical competency and experience small organisations are at a disadvantage given current administrative requirements. 17 Mar 11:01 France Hispano-Suiza Ariane Saint-Pierre The administrative burden in FP7 and particularly in JTI Clean Sky is very heavy and extremely time consuming. Energy, time and ressources have to be devoted to administrative tasks instead of technical development and technology assessment. Certification is a high burden for small companies having to pay auditors for amounts sometimes smaller than the cost of the audit itself. We hope that the rules will be simplified and that we can get assistance form European Commission and Joint Undertaking on the administrative issues, or get dedicated funding for that type of activities. More flexibility is also required to work efficiently on ambitious and complex projects. I hope the Joint Undertaking autonomy will allow shorter decision processes. Priority should be placed back on technical progress. 4 Mar 10:22 France IFREMER roland Person Financial and administrative rules are too complicate and centralized in the Commission. More delegation might be given to project coordinators to simplify the life of the projects 10 Mar 16:10 France IFREMER ingrid Puillat The main difficulty in managing EU projects is that partners do not understand the process, the expected information and so on, it is too heavy 22 Mar 14:05 France Ifremer Sophie ARNAUD-HAOND The amount of time and funds dedicated to bureaucratic processes is much more costfull than the money it is supposed to help saving. Costfull for research funds, costfull in term of researcher time -lost for science-, and eventually costfull for researchers will and dedication to science. 19 Mar 16:23 France IGBMC/INSERM/CNRS jean marc egly The flexibility obtained by the ERC grant is destroyed by the rules in which we have to justify every thing, every day; This is rather ridiculuous. 12 Mar 09:09 France IGMM - CNRS Edouard Bertrand This is a nice an hopefully succesfull initiative. 12 Mar 00:08 France IGMM-CNRS Marc Sitbon Do you hear scientists choking on red tape? No?.. They may already be all dead. 12 Mar 10:26 France IGMM-CNRS Daniel Fisher Excessive bureaucracy stifles research 24 Mar 10:42 France IMEP Béatrice CABON To compete with other Asian countries who do not have such administrative burden in reporting research in their national contracts, evolution towards simplification is mandatory for EUROPEAN researchers. It will boost efficient research. 10 Mar 12:36 France Indépendant Pouillon Loïc Pour que la recherche soit plus scientifique et moins pécuniaire. 18 Feb 10:39 France INRA ROCK Edmond One can understand that lot of informations are needed before funding a project, however, it seems that this administrative task becomes more important than the scientific aspect of the same project. The time (at least 15 days) and the money (we pay private company for that work) can be used for othet things more directlmy related to our job, i.e. scientist. 9 Mar 09:46 France INRA Stéphane BLANC I have tried to coordinate a consortium on plant virus evolution in 2001. It took me so much time for just preparing the proposal that I have since then stayed away from any EU call for proposal. I want to spend time doing research and science with minimum necessary administrative burden, the ratio Science/administrative burden is way too low with EU fundings, as far as this will be possible, I will seek for fundings from other sources. 18 Mar 09:40 France INRA John Davison One example : the EC has multiple databases of experts. However simply updating ones data in these, is an impossible task. Question: Does a database that is not up to date serve any purpose? 22 Mar 14:04 France INRA Jacques Cabaret When will we get financing for a project with full autonomy (credit card, dispaching of funds into salaries, travel, equipment) and avoid the hassle of planning too much in advance and possibly inadequately the funds? 22 Mar 14:34 France INRA Vincent Vedel Research is a demanding job; being fairly paid with sufficient funding to work properly without spending 80% of our research time to look for money would be a big advance in Sicence. 23 Mar 16:29 France INRA David Barker During recent years the EU scientific administration has gone down a catastrophic path leading to the progressive elimination of small-scale novel research programs due to excessive and obsessional control. There is no better way to discourage young and talented researchers who want to do science and not endless and pointless form-filling. In addition, the current situation of research in the plant sciences is particularly alarming. 23 Apr 09:11 France INRA Francis Martin Stop the administrative burden. Were tired of filling useless forms and never ending reports. 30 Apr 14:38 France INRA Denis Baize Laissez nous du temps pour faire de la recherche plutot que de remplir de la paperasse ! 30 Apr 18:04 France INRA Bruno Fady I agree that the administrative burden for financing research and time spent for it is overwhelming and counterproductive. Time spent evaluating projects is also tremendous and thus not devoted to research. Grants should be distributed at least in part directly to recognized labs. 20 Mar 15:30 France INRA, UMR for Grain Legume Research Richard Thompson Any measure that reduces the sapping bureaucracy associated with EU research funding would be most welcome. Calls for proposals that allow the applicants to develop their own ideas are also very necessary. 25 Feb 18:58 France INRIA Marc Schoenauer Similar effort toward simplification must be made at both European and national levels ... 6 Mar 12:18 France INRIA Albert Cohen Urgent measures: shorter proposals citing relevant related work, emphasis on research contents rather than partnership and description of work details, simplified reviewing and administrative process based on trust, elimination of intermediate (physical) review meetings. 10 Mar 09:28 France INRIA Olivier Teytaud Administrative burden kills research :-( 17 Feb 15:47 France INSERM Yehezkel Ben-Ari The aberrant administrative requests made by the EU that have no equivalent elsewhere are not only costly -need to hire personnel specialised in this language- time consuming for resarchers that have beeter things to do for the community but also lead to a situation where administration dominates over qualtiy of science. Its only justifications is to empower brussell authorities with more personnel and more power at the expense of quality and science. 17 Feb 17:10 France INSERM Brigitte PETTMANN I have been part of four projects in four different framework plans and coordinator of one. The energy I left in this has kept increasing plan after plan to a point I wonder if it really is worth the trouble. Management financing depending on the goodwill of project officers have proven greatly insufficient in some of these networks. Contracts have taken up to two years after their official end to be closed because of administrative and financial reporting problems. So I can only agree about the urgent necessity to simplify all this. 19 Feb 10:40 France INSERM ANNE CAMBON THOMSEN The spirit of the law, responsibility and outcome of research (with scientific evaluation of this outcome) should prevail on cumbersome procedures that kill both spirit and outcome! Being in several EU projects in parallel generates such a burden of procedures that really kills the time devoted to research! Totally discouraging. 19 Feb 12:39 France INSERM Jean-Francois Demonet I benefited from several grants from EU but I was always impressed and annoyed by the enormous amount of meaningless bureaucratic issues to be addressed and endless irrelevant forms to be filled in; it means that scientists loose time and energy to address useless demands; on top of that, probably inaccurate but persistent rumors exist about people participating in boards to delineate new grant programs who were also among the first, and possibly the only successful, applicants to such programs ! improved transparency in the whole process would also be highly desirable. 3 Mar 14:29 France INSERM Goulven Josse Any action aiming at less time-consuming paperwork seems useful. 6 Mar 11:40 France Inserm David Dombrowicz Grant applications should be focused on science rather than on administrative documents, which should be kept to a bare minimum. 20 Mar 19:59 France INSERM Gerard Chaouat I totally agree with HG Rammensee: too much lobbying (even if we did not lobby for our NoE, I afterwards -a a trade union memeber- saw or was told stories or examples of lobbying in action forthe calls) and much, too much, focused calls. As a consequence, several priorities or decreted as such by the European Parliament are just omitted: see , for what I know the best, the status of research in Reproduction, theoretically a priority. Several calls are obviously pre targeted to a single lab, thus preempting the result and limiting competition. As for the administrative rules, yes, they are much too complex. This call is timemy 24 Mar 14:33 France INSERM Sarang Dalal I lost three months of salary because the European Commission took three months to sign their own contract. 19 Apr 10:46 France INSERM Segolene Ayme Rules should should be re-evaluated against their usefulness. My experience is that there is much more time spent by the EC administration on tiny financial details rather than on evaluation of outcomes. The objective of every rule should be re-considered as to decide whetehr it is important. 12 Feb 19:44 France Institut CARNOT, CIRIMAT-CNRS Jacques LACAZE this declaration looks like blue sky: scientists against bobos 23 Mar 09:44 France Institut Curie Mihaela Lupu Financing goes down while paperwork goes up, it has to be a limit to paperwork as financing has one! 24 Mar 17:54 France Institut Curie Mohamed Husain Besides the Points in the declaration, funding for the students persuing research should be made irrespective of Nationality, and must be solely based on the merit. 1 Apr 14:18 France Institut Curie Nathalie Amzallag I really think the simplification of the financial and administrative provisions related to the Framework Programme and other European funding instruments would induce collaborations between european entities in Research and improve the competitiveness of the European Research Area. 16 Mar 18:09 France Institut de Biologie Structurale J.-P. Ebel CEA CNRS UJF Frederic Vellieux Too much red tape kills research - no time left to do what we are paid to do, discovery 24 Mar 11:30 France Institut de Recherche pour le Développement Rigas Arvanitis Most difficult aspect concerns pre-financing in particular wth non-european partner in developing countries. 29 Apr 14:49 France Institut de Science et dIngénierie Supramoléculaires - ISIS Appan Merari Masillamani Hope there is more funding for research and development and the stipend for researchers can be increased (which is well deserved) 3 Mar 16:14 France Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques David Ruelle I found that evaluating a European proposal over the internet took an incredible amount of time compared with similar evaluations elsewhere. 30 Apr 17:51 France Institut des Sciences de la Terre dOrléans (ISTO) Claire Ramboz All reforms increase the number of structures, the number and size of reports to produce. Please, could not Europe show show the opposite way for once. 20 Mar 16:26 France Institut Henri Poincare Cedric Villani The European administration of science is legendary for being complex and heavy. My experience with it has fully confirmed this reputation. We are missing what seemed a historical opportunity for a new, powerful organization of science in Europe. 9 Apr 11:27 France Institut Jacques Monod-CNRS Rosine Haguenauer-Tsapis I participated to several successive european networks. THis was a mak jor financial support for our work, and I enjoyed meeting and discussing with my colleagues. This was a rich experience that I do not regret. But we all spent a lot of time for administrative tasks far from research, moreover, trying to understand the rules, and how the work could fit with these rules. I especially think of the the coordinators of the various networks who probably suffered more than necessary. New simplified rules have to be established, with major input from the scientists, in close connection with administrative people. Research is not industry. Programs have to be established, controls have to be made, but in a different spirit. 17 Mar 12:39 France Institut Laue-Langevin Peter Fouquet I agree that a degree of control needs to be put in place to warrant accountability towards the public, but the present financial accounting rules are by far too heavy. The amount of time and personnel spent on accounting by all EU funded researchers exceeds by far the risk of some black sheep using a lighter accounting practice. 19 Mar 09:56 France Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique Philippe Noirot I am the coordinator of an ongoing FP6 integrated project. A tremendous reduction of the administrative and financial burden would indeed come from harmonised standards of research funding at European and national levels. Stable funding rules would also considerably facilitate the work of administration services at project partners institutions as well as at the EC. 3 Jun 16:29 France Institut national pour la rercherche médical et la santé (INSERM) Guido Kroemer The administrative burden that arises from managing EU grants has become unbearable and de facto detracts researchers from their mission. This statement comes from one of the laureates of the Descartes prize (given by the EU) for collaborative research. 3 Jun 16:28 France Institut national pour la rercherche médical et la santé (INSERM) Guido Kroemer The administrative burden that arises from managing EU grants has become unbearable and de facto detracts researchers from their mission. This statement comes from one of the laureates of the Descartes prize (given by the EU) for collaborative research. 3 Mar 11:14 France Institut Pasteur FORTERRE Patrick If the trends toward increasing administrative burden is not reverse, the best scientists will stop to ask for European money. 19 Mar 17:10 France Institut Pasteur Jacob Seeler As scientists, we might better apply to EU Regional or Agricultural funds, instead of framework programs. First, because the budgets are *much* bigger, and second, because administrative control is much less! Are we all too dumb? As it is, the best and brightest will soon stop applying for EU funding, or will quit Europe altogether, leaving the EU to administer mediocrity. Curbing bureacracy therefore has strategic importance: lets keep our smart people here! 24 Feb 07:44 France Institut Telecom ParisTech Jean-Claude Belfiore Time and energy spent in useless bureaucracy, increasing every year, is time and energy that we cannot devote to our research work. 1 May 18:40 France Institut Telecom/ Telecom Bretagne Sandrine Vaton Too much time spent on bureaucracy issues. We hardly have time for research itself. 23 Mar 10:21 France Insttut Curie/CNRS Marie Dutreix Administrative tasks are using up 20% of the research time (filling complex papers and reading the one filled by colleagues). It is useless and unproductive... 29 Apr 16:11 France IRIT, Université Paul Sabatier (Toulouse-3) Serguei Soloviev simplification and trust are urgently needed 29 Apr 19:07 France IRIT, Université Paul Sabatier (Toulouse-3) Martin Strecker European research programmes currently seem to favour huge consortia that have the means to do intense lobbying in Brussels. They consume most of their resources on management and coordination, are too large for real cooperation and have a particularly low input-output ratio. It would be more efficient to support smaller structures. 31 Mar 13:16 France IUT dAngoulême, University of Poitiers Lucian Dascalescu Projects should be attributed to reasearchers who are able to contribute to the progress of science, no matter what are their abilities to fill in financial forms. 10 Mar 10:16 France IUT-Caen, UCBN and CRISMAT-ENSICAEN Daniel Chateigner Waste of time, money and efficiency: this is actual reality of most big organisation 2 Mar 18:08 France Jean Lamour Institut UMR 7198 CNRS stéphane heuraux Less than 5 % of our work time should be spent to administration tasks for asking financial support and for justifying it (including scientific reports). 10 Mar 11:09 France LAAS-CNRS Yves Deswarte Administrative tasks are eating too much of my time ! 30 Mar 08:49 France Laboratoire dAstrophysique de Marseille Michel MARCELIN Research is already complex enough that it does not seem appropriate to add more complications with administrative problems... 31 Mar 11:17 France LAM jean-luc gach better searching than filling out forms ! 3 Mar 18:59 France LEESU ENPC University Paris-Est Martin Seidl The research need small targed oriented programs, with a good and adequate partnership and not huge programs which need special staff to manage them. 10 projects of 1 billion produce better and more intersting results than one project of 10 billion. Though the actual EEC tendency is towards bigger programs. Time to rethink the strategy and reverse the tendency. 29 Mar 12:31 France LESIA - CNRS - Observatoire de Paris Zoltán Hubert I especially agree with: Risk taking : Research and innovation are risk taking activities. An appropriate level of tolerable risks is vital for success and should be supported by European research programmes. 30 Mar 14:47 France LESIA, Observatoire de Paris - CNRS Pierre Colom as a former EU FP6 task coordinator, I fully understand your concerns, and support your declaration. 29 Mar 15:55 France LESIA-CNRS-Paris Observatory Jean-Louis Bougeret I am convinced that the present financial and administrative provisions related to European research funding seriously limit the competitivity and efficiency of European Research altogether. 30 Jun 22:23 France LOGMA sa François MALBRUNOT Unfortunatelly, I expereinced myself in several projects including European funding, the complexity of the procedures and systematic delays for getting effective payment. 19 Mar 16:06 France LTDS, Ecole Centrale de Lyon FOUVRY SIEGFRIED Please turn back to more simple system with less administrative time consuming processes like it was with the original BRITE project (beginning of 90s) Small, fast and efficient research projects ! 3 Mar 13:38 France Mediterranean Institute of Neurobiology (INMED), INSERM U-901 Piotr Bregestovski The system can be improved and simplified. Financial reports are too complicated. There are strange restrictions, particularly, concerning buying of equipment. Time-sheets: what is it for? 30 Apr 12:24 France Mueum National dHistoire Naturelle Evelyne Heyer Prodecude need to be simplify at the application level and further simplify during the project, including the possibility to take new avenue and risk 29 Apr 16:18 France Muséum national dHistoire naturelle Jean-François Alexandre VOISIN too much administration kills administration, as well as the concerned institution. 30 Apr 11:45 France Muséum National dHistoire Naturelle Jean-François Ponge Research is passion Research is endeavour Research is better world Research is not bureaucracy 30 Mar 09:59 France Observatoire de Paris Stéphane Erard The level of detail requested in budget justification is counterproductive, and is extremely time-consuming. This should be negligible compared to research activities, and this is not. Restrictions concerning founding utilization are tough but do not insure that the objectives will be met. 29 Mar 11:20 France Observatoire de Paris & CNRS Laurent Pagani Heavy bureaucraty kills the creativity. Be light! 3 Mar 09:52 France Observatoire Oceanologique de Banyuls sur Mer, CNRS/UPMC Hector Escriva Just to say that from 100% of working time, about 30-40% is dedicated to writing proposals and another 30-40% for writing reports, timesheets etc etc. So European countries and EU are funding only 10-30% of the research time. I think this become quite expensive for everybody. 25 May 13:07 France Organisation Name Last Against the humiliating, captious and expensive lack of discernment of the RD-G since the 6th FP. 31 Mar 15:59 France Paris 8 Joseph ARDITTY The inumerable declarations as to the priority given to research by both the EU and the member states will sound ridiculous without adequate funding and with bureaucratic corseting instead. 12 Mar 09:27 France Sagem Jean-Thierry AUDREN French government has recently sent its position paper proposing concrete measures for the expected simplification. This paper has been discussed in France among research actors and got a large agreement. I support it. I guess other countries did the same. EC must take in account these proposals. 16 Feb 15:55 France Station Biologique Daniel Vaulot I used to be a great fan of European Union science programs. I had fantastic collaborations and very fruitful research until FP5. But since FP6 they have become so big and so adminstration loaded that I have turned to other source fundings. Worse of the worse were the networks of excellence, which should be called, network of mediocrity.... 5 Mar 13:55 France SUBATECH joerg aichelin As spokesperson of a European network as well as as proposer for several European fellowships I am confronted with the demands of the European administartion. In countries like France where only the lab directors have a secretary all the administration has to done by scientists. 31 Mar 15:25 France UFRT Pierozak Isabelle Une version de ce site dans dautres grandes langues que le seul anglais aurait été une idée judicieuse... 15 Mar 15:35 France UMR CNRS 520 Université V. segalen Bordeaux 2 Rene LESSIRE Too much controls ( time sheeets, financial reports, scientific reports,...) and restrictions (to use money only for which it was been describe inthe project, no liberty to change the use during the project). A lot of time consuming which is not in favor of research advance ! As a reseacher we need money of course but also a lot of liberty in conducting our research work. A final expertise considering both financial and scientific aspect will be sufficient. 3 May 21:25 France Univ. de Provence Julien Keller La bureaucratie, y en a marre... 18 Mar 10:05 France Univeristy of Strasbourg Deirdre OCarroll Double auditing of research expenses and lack of clear and up-front guidelines from the EC for handling FP7 MC IOF expenditure between outgoing and return institutions has been very time consuming. Much of the burocracy falls on the researcher, when it should be handled by the admistrative departments. A good funding principle but discouraging when considering applying for future funding. 10 Mar 07:55 France univeristy Paris 7 veronique arluison Time spent in bureaucracy increases every year and it becomes simply impossible to do our research work correctly 12 Mar 16:03 France Université Blaise Pascal Timothy Druitt We need to simply procudures considerably to avoid excess burden on researchers and to liberate time for the research itself. Researchers in universities are increasingly taken up by administrative tasks at local and national level. Innovative research requires a lot of time. The European Union must try to facilitate the administration of its grants as much as possible. 12 Mar 16:37 France Université Bordeaux 1 Michaël Josse Timesheets, periodic reports on deliverables and milestones, exhaustive justification of each of the cent that were granted, that was my time-consuming activities during a STREP from FP6. This has to be done although the grant was accorded after submission of an extremely detailled and scheduled research project. Moreover the success of the submitted project seems to depend more on the scientific, human and financial management program than on the purely scientific project. And then researchers become managers and may come to forget what is an idea... Europe need ideas. 31 Mar 21:20 France Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 Dominique Ulma Japprécierais, simplement pour favoriser la diversité, et bien que je sois bilingue, lusage dautres langues que langlais, y compris pour cette pétition ! I would appreciate, simply for the sake of diversity, although I am bilingual, the use of other languages than English, this declaration included ! 14 Mar 00:11 France Université de Caen Basse Normandie Bruno Guillet waste of time and energy... 18 Feb 17:57 France Université de la Méditerranée and UQAM Christophe Deissenberg Even if you are financed by EU grants, national bureaucracy tends to add unjustified layers of complexity, obscurity, and arbitrariness to already too heavy European regulations that may create strong impediments against an efficient use of research funds. Getting read of this would already be a big step forward. More generally, I would advocate using a business model: The researcher is free to use his money as he wants. But his output is strictly evaluated ex post, and unsatisfactory efforts are sanctioned by reduced funding opportunities. 4 Mar 23:21 France Université de Lyon Alain Bonnafous Is it preferable to dedicate 80 % of his time to manage the research and 20 % to do research or is it preferable to make the opposite? 2 Jun 11:57 France Université de Lyon Maciej Orkisz simplify procedures, reduce paper, allow smaller easy-to-manage projects, leave time for research ! 6 Mar 23:28 France Université de Paris 8 Vincent Godard Possibilité de soumettre les réponses aux appels doffre dans une des langues de lUnion et pas systématiquement en anglais ! 19 May 12:26 France Université de Provence / CNRS Pierre Haldenwang Let us time, imagination, and energy to do the job. 17 May 18:34 France université de rennes 1 Jean-Michel Launay The delay between a proposal submission and its funding is far too long. European bureaucracy is extremely inefficient. 17 May 16:25 France Université de Rennes I James Mitchell A system that requires professional companies to write the proposal in order to be successful is fine if you are Boeing or Airbus. In the University we have less time and less money to play such games. If the EU is serious about funding research equitably, they should simplify their system. 17 May 18:18 France Université de Rennes I Ian Sims I have coordinated and participated in EU-funded Research Training Networks, and benefited from a Marie Curie Chair, and am convinced of the benefits of EU research funding especially in fostering collaborations and structuring research efforts. But the work now needed, not only to apply for such funding, but also to fulfil all the complex financial and reporting requirements, has reached such a level that many researchers (and their institutions) no longer feel that it is worthwhile. This must change. 29 Apr 15:39 France Université de Strasbourg Vicens Jacques no comment 18 Mar 09:10 France Université de Strasbourg & IPHC Ronald Noë I have participated in 2 FP6 programmes and appreciate the financial support I received, but I would nevertheless never do it again unless the level of bureaucracy is lowered considerably. I had a full time assistant for the forms, weekly time sheets and reports, but could have had a post-doc instead and have been much more productive. 12 Feb 17:09 France Université de Toulose Gwenael Rapenne So obvious ! 29 Apr 14:43 France Universite de Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines Francis Taulelle The constraints for applying and for managing european projects are so heavy that it produces a loss of efficiency instead of an increase of efficiency in research. Not only risks in research but also in managing funds has to be managed properly... 22 Feb 17:38 France Université de Versailles St-Quentin-en-Yvelines Martin OCONNOR Since the 6th Framework programme, the direct human resource costs for respecting the onerous administrative information and reporting requirements for the preparation, subsequent administration and documenation of multi-partner research projects, have become so heavy that the result very often is real reduction, rather than building up, of scientific capacity in the policy relevant domains of the European research programmes. Also, there is a shift away from intellectual integrity towards managerial formalism. 9 Mar 16:58 France Université des Sciences et Technologies de Lille Christophe Vieren Without freedom, no research ! 10 Mar 10:20 France Université du Maine Armel Le Bail The declaration is also valuable for the french research administration in universities. The systematic a priori triple checking of everything, even for a train ticket, makes researchers feeling constantly suspected of fraud, and discourage them. 29 Apr 14:36 France Université du Maine Florent Calvayrac We end up in a situation where more than 100% of the available work time of permanent researchers (arguably, the most qualified, or at least the ones with the most experience) is allowed to writing proposals, evaluating them, and managing obscure administrative rules for someone who does not have a master degree in law and public administration. Actual research is almost only performed by PhD students and postdocs, which is a good formation for them but wastes some potentially productive years for still young permanent researchers. I am not sure that the relative anarchy of research which was practised until the early eighties was less productive or creative in the end. 31 Mar 12:28 France Université François-Rabelais de Tours De Robillard Didier Japprécierais, simplement pour favoriser la diversité, et bien que je sois trilingue, lusage dautres langues que langlais, y compris pour cette pétition ! I would appreciate, simply for the sake of diversity, although I am trilingual, the use of other languages than English, this petition included ! 10 Mar 12:27 France Université Lille 1 Bruno BEAUFILS Trust is what is lacking the most. Europe as well as every participating country should trust their researchers and facilitate their work and not be suspicious at every level. That point does not conflict with the necessity to verify that public funds are not wasted or hijacked. 7 May 18:54 France Université Lyon I, Institut Camille Jordan Francis Filbet I manage an ERC starting grant project and unfortunately spend too much time with administration tasks. 10 Mar 15:36 France Université Montpellier 2 Yves Rouillard I dont want to make a timesheet for a powermeter costing 4000 Euros. My powermeter has been used approximately 200 times this year. Each time during 20 minutes. I have been told I should write the time of each experiment carried out with this sensor. Who will read this ? Nobody. What is the interest of it ? None. Making a timesheet for a powermeter is like making a timesheet for a pen. 15 Mar 12:54 France Université P. & M. Curie Fabrice Kordon It is important that researchers do not spoil most of their time during a project by trying to fit complex financial regulations.Money should be spent in a flexible way according to the needs of the project and also the opportunities that may not have been planned (e.g. a Ph. D. student may not be available when planned but an engineer or a postdoc yes and vice-versa). 10 Mar 13:18 France Université Paris 13 Charles DESFRANCOIS The european jargon is really a new language that researchers should not have to learn. The multiple requests of the EU proposals are really discouraging for many excellent researchers. 3 Mar 16:41 France Université Paris12 GRIMES Said Facilitations are needed to simplify things for reserach. No more complications for researchers if we really want to develop scientific investigations everywhere. 9 Mar 18:55 France Université Paul Sabatier Thierry Millan My job is teaching and researching not spending my time to fill lot of documents 31 Mar 15:48 France Université Rennes 2 Philippe Blanchet I would also appreciate, as a multilingual European citizen, the use of several languages in a supposedly multilingual Europe, in official documents (tending towards English only) and... this present declaration! 31 Mar 16:25 France universite Sorbonne nouvelle Maria Candea very well, but why this petition is only in english ? de ce petitia aceasta este numai in engleza ? pourquoi cette petition figure seulement en anglais ? porque esta petiçao foi escrita so em ingles ? 10 Mar 09:01 France Université Toulouse-le Mirail Patrice Bouyssières Je suis pour une simplification et une clarification des procédures administratives qui encombrent actuellment mon domaine professionnel : lenseignement supérieur et luniversité. 4 Mar 09:13 France University Lille1 Jacques Foct With my deepest respect for bureaucrats and an indefectible admiration for their sustained innnovation spirit in administation complexity, may I suggest: In case it would be too difficult to make the system more obscure, more dissuasive choose simplicity and efficiency. 26 Feb 11:33 France University Montpellier 2 Patrick Berrebi This administrative burden is a strong barrier for small teams participation 22 Mar 20:53 France University Nice Sophia Antipolis Bernard Rousselet Thank you for organising this declaration 2 Mar 18:45 France University of Avignon Jean-Francois Bonastre I wish to have an easy way for European collaborative research funding. The current system is a way to give money for companies, not for research. And we lost all the time and the money in administrative work! I wish to have a long term funding for new, uncertain research ideas, not for improving known (and sure) approaches. I wish to see a way for young or unknown researchers to start to work on new ideas. Now the money is dedicated at 99% to big, known teams and people... 3 Mar 14:45 France University of Grenoble Pablo Arrighi It would be interesting to compute a ratio between the time spent on a project calls (including time spent by all the people drafting their response to the call, but whose project are not eventually selected!) and the manmonth time of actually funded research. This ratio would be a rather good indication of the cost-efficiency of these calls. I am scared that this ratio may be lower than one for a number of calls; entailing that the call has an overall negative impact on EU research. If so, research money would need be made available by more direct means (lab funding etc.) 3 Mar 17:46 France University of Paris (7) François Guyot Science needs to be integrated at the european level. To achieve this, the application procedures and project managements must be as simple as possible. 10 Mar 23:09 France University of Poitiers UMR6503 Emmanuel GARNIER Please reduce the administrative burden of EU funded projects. Too much is spent for reporting 1 May 11:15 France University of Rouen Vic Norris Bureaucratic correctness (BC) is wasting vast amounts of our time. 24 Mar 21:43 France University of Sciences and Technologies of Lille Abdelillah Hamdouch During the last 10 years or so, bureaucratic tasks and administrative burden imposed on researchers have become so heavy that they have literally cannibalized the time devoted to research itself. Even worse, this evolution has been counterproductive as it has created a real repulsive attitude of researchers as regarding submission of new projects for EC funding. As a result, I believe that many good researchers have become reluctant to seek European funding, as well as public funding in general (as many European countries have replicated and sometimes gone beyond silly EC rules...) and prefer increasingly look towards private funding, at the heavy (scientific) cost to give privilege to very applied and more business oriented research. Basic and prospective research, the very source of creativity expression and of genuine new knowledge production, are therefore sacrificed or threatened not by market logics, but thanks to the myopia of bureaucrats and political decison-makers who very often even ignore what is genuine research, and the very commitment of researchers in what they do. The US, China and some other countries are not so silly: they have understood that researchers must do research first, not fill silly-crazy administrative files (and, in addition, be suspected of misusing the few money they receive), even if reasonable control (preferably post control) is needed. Cheers! 8 Mar 04:42 France University of South Brittany Jean-François FELLER It is a main issue to simplify programs management and not delay grants payement 20 Mar 16:44 France University of Strasbourg Thomas Ebbesen In addition to the broad statement of the declaration, the programme officers that oversee the projects should all be scientists, and they should be evaluated for their effectiveness by the project coordinator after the closing of the project. 5 May 22:05 France University of Strasbourg Mebarek Alouani Science should be conducted, overseen, and refereed by scientists. Keep bureaucracy out. 19 Feb 11:24 France University of Toulouse Martin Giurfa After being funded in the framework of the FP6 I am not sure I want to repeat this experience given the administrative nightmares experienced and the absurd requests from administration in Brussels...This people should have a handbook about how to kill science in an efficient way... 9 Mar 23:57 France University of Toulouse Jean-Michel Bruel save our research time 6 Mar 11:44 France University Panthéon Sorbonne Denise PUMAIN Please save our research time by simplifying administrative procedures and enhancing peer review quality 15 Feb 10:54 France University Paris Diderot Roberto Di Cosmo There are two issues at stake here: * inappropriate accounting practices imported from the consultancy business into research activities, like ridiculous time-sheets requested as evidence of researcher involvement in the project, and too complex financial guidelines, that have fostered the emergence of a whole new business of EU project consultancy firms that offer their services to run our research project. We should be judged on project results, not on project management. * inappropriate selection of EU research project proposals: the scoring of proposal with 1/3 for research, 1/3 for implementation and 1/3 for impact seems nice for a high level politician, but in practice it also ends up fostering a whole parasite business of professional proposal writers that turn a few more or less innovative ideas into hundreds of paperwork, then needing other professional experts to decode them. Funding without selection and without evaluation is not possible. But we should select and evaluate excellence in research and innovation, not professional fund raising and fund spending activities. 18 May 09:34 France University Rennes 1 Eric Collet We spend a lot of time writing proposal and applying for funds. Once accepted, please leave us do our job on the project itself. 5 Mar 17:11 France UPMC Florent SOUBRIER I strongly support this initiative, because the adminitrative burden results in a limitation in our research capacity. 20 Mar 09:50 France URGV Plant Genomics Heribert Hirt After 20 years of EU projects with a constant increase in administrative nonsense and a corresponding decrease in scientific contents, many institutions have now reached the point to dissuade researchers to participate in EU projects. The reasons for this position mainly lie in the fact that the amount of administrative tasks and involvement has surpassed a critical threshold beyond which scientific funding has become of limited interest in comparison to other funding possibilities. This is a deplorable state for European Research and requires immediate and courageous action to reset this structure into the steam engine of European research that we all wish to have. 4 Mar 17:51 France XLIM Jean-Pierre Teyssier I only wish that the EC will not add once again a layer of simplification... Back | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||