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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 Greece37 comments. (Note: Some comments are not made public accessible.) 5 Mar 11:56 Greece Agricultural University of Athens George Papadakis It is not only the huge bureaucracy that has to be minimised but the liberty to the scientific coordinator should be increased too. And bureaucracy exists in all stages, from proposal preparation to managing the project. 5 Mar 15:04 Greece Agricultural University of Athens Demetres Briassoulis The FP7 calls for proposals have become much more dedicated calls than open calls, as compared to FP6 and FP5, addressing pre-defined specific topics of interest to groups with strong lobbying capacity, able to promote their own topics. This excludes many small but scientifically strong research groups from all over Europe to participate in really open competitive calls for proposals. This, combined with the limited funding available by the EC and too much bureaucracy (loss of productive research person months), does not support the European research competitiveness against the major international competitors. 6 Mar 07:06 Greece Agricultural University of Athens George-John Nychas Submitting in EU, research projects, is not always a pleasure but the administrative issues either scientific and financial is rather a nightmare e.g. filled with boxes and tables on bureaucratic elements, that have nothing to do with the actual science. 29 Apr 10:47 Greece Agricultural University of Athens Antonis Mistriotis Most of the topics announced in the calls of FP7 Cooperation program are proposed by the corresponding Technology Platforms. The participation in the Technology Platforms (TP) further increased the burden of administrative and managerial costs for organizations competing for EU research funds, since lobbying in the TPs is now necessary for promoting a research topic into the calls. In this way, the whole procedure has become too complicated and the difficulties for a really innovative idea to reach the proposal phase have increased. It is urgent to simplify and open the selection process in future EU programs. 27 Feb 11:12 Greece Amerikaniko Kollegio Anatolia/ACT Vincent C Müller The organisation *looks* simple once you know all the details and the nomenclature - but learning these takes too much time. (Thus things look simple to the administrators who have been doing such things for years, but they are not.) - As a coordinator I spend a lot of time explaining these details to others. 3 Mar 20:51 Greece Aristotle University Maria Tsimidou reduce burocracy (time sheets); what we need urgently in depts such as the chemistry one is to be able to buy instrumentation or even be able to pay part of the total cost of an equipment. 3 Mar 09:20 Greece Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Pericles Mitkas The time spent on preparing proposals and administering projects is exorbitant, especially compared to the similar situation in the US. Perhaps, its the price we have to pay for EE integration. 25 Mar 09:09 Greece Athens University of Economics and Business Diomidis Spinellis I have participated in many EU-funded research projects. The administrative burden of those projects is so great that my corresponding publications are consistently mediocre. None of my papers I consider important was directly derived from EU-project results (although I often acknowledge EU funding for the indirect support it provides, such as computing facilities). This seems to be the case across the board. If you look at papers published in top journals and conferences they rarely indicate EU funding. Collaborative research following a prescribed two year plan and detailed requirements for deliverables simply does not work. 30 Apr 11:13 Greece AUTH Maria Lazaridou In fact every coordinator must be supported by a manager if he wants to continue to be only a researcher. But this is impossible so a lot of his time is consummed in managing the economics of the project. 28 Apr 18:30 Greece Biomedical Research Foundation Academy of Athens Yassemi Capetanaki As a faculty in the USA (Baylor College of Medicine) for around 17 years I have written a lot of NIH and other grants. If I add together the time lost for the administrative part of all these grant proposals, all these years, the number is honestly less that the time I have spent for just one FP7 Proposal in which I served as coordinator 22 Apr 11:27 Greece CERTH Anestis Papanikolaou There is an urgent need for the development of effective (time efficient and secure) funding structures and procedures throughout the different EU programmes that will be capable of avoiding all kinds of unnecessary technical and administrative details and thus propote the real substance of the european research. 13 Apr 10:40 Greece CERTH/HIT Evangelos Bekiaris General participation rules in many cases conflict with the specific project contract (DoW) and costs and issues specifically accepted in proposal evaluation and project review are re-assessed in terms of appropriateness and usefulness for the project by non-technical EC staff several years after the projects end. Thus, no trusted and coherent research framework. 17 Feb 00:28 Greece Demokritos National Center for Scientific Research Andreas Theophilou Unfortunately, the prestige and financial reward of bureaucracy is so high, so that many able scientists after a few years of research try to get such a job. 17 Feb 12:53 Greece Dept. Chem., University of Patras Spyros Perlepes I completely agree. 9 Mar 11:56 Greece e-ISOTIS Nikolaos Floratos If simplification doesnt be considered, then the EC needs to foresee and financially support organisations to train and maintain specific personnel for keeping in order the financial and administrative requirements. Also EC should make regular checks for assisting the organisations on what they might be doing wrong. A good alternative for avoiding all this overhead is the provision of lump sum support, even if this means lower budget 10 Mar 14:57 Greece EUGENIDES FOUNDATION Christina Troumpetari We support the establishment of key funding principles based on an appropriate level of accountability. To this end, we propose the implementation of a common accreditation system (an ISO type of system) applying on organisations seeking to participate in EU-funded research programmes. A similar accreditation has been a prerequisite for prospect partners to participate in Community Support Framework calls, in Greece since 2009. 28 Apr 14:06 Greece FORTH-ICS Ioannis Askoxylakis Research funding should be simple and continuous, based mainly on academic excellence. Stop creating “monster” projects (huge IPs), stop encouraging big industries to participate in research projects without real effort (based only on their names and their connections with the Commission). Create the “Researcher History profile” in EU funded projects, based on past achievements, completed projects evaluations, quality of deliverables of completed projects, impact etc, and use it (together with academic metrics like impact factor of journals, acceptance ratio of conferences, patents etc) for evaluation of academic excellence. 26 Mar 13:08 Greece Hellenic Centre for Marine Research Louisa Giannoudi It takes a lot more time to fill in forms than to produce experimental results!!!! 11 Mar 10:21 Greece National Agricultural Research Foundation Sofia Belimpasaki Sometimes we have three different audits for a projects deliverables. There caring more for the financies and not for the scientific work. Most of the times we can not understand all these boxes that we have to fill. Were are scientist and not administrators. 8 Apr 12:54 Greece National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Xenophon Moussas Europe is very rich in human resources, scientists, students, culture, and above all civilization. We continue a three millennia tradition in Philosophy and Science that were both born in this Big Country, Europe. Europe desperately needs a simple system of research funding, that will ensure a budget to any good researcher, that has new bold ideas and has proven that she/he can do research. If we continue a research road paved with bureaucracy, with earmarked research areas and subjects we simply follow the third world country way to science. Europe needs a substantial budget for research and a simple way of submitting proposal once or twice every year, for budgets of up to a few thousand euros. In this way we can ensure world leadership in Philosophy, Science, Technology, Education and Culture and Civilization. 24 Feb 18:24 Greece national Center for Scientific Research Demokritos Konstantinos Giannakopolos Sometimes administrative procedures take more than 50% percent of a Researchers workload and include a lot of irrelevant risk-taking. If impossible to eliminate, both the administrative work and administrative risks must be directed towards individuals specialized on such tasks, both on National and European level. 9 Mar 12:01 Greece National Innovation Network Anna ANDRICOPOULOU Evaluation of the E.C. projects, project analysis and action plan, E.C. project management, Institutional Framework of the National and European Community legislation. Knowledge of the procedures for the national fiscal and accountancy legislation. Establishment and development of infrastructures for the support of SME. Mentoring, networking establishment for social policies (employment, entrepreneurship and innovation). Participation in many publications on the promotion of the employment and the entrepreneurship. 17 Feb 12:26 Greece NCSR Demokritos Christodoulos Michael it is necessary 13 Feb 12:42 Greece NCSR Demokritos, Institute of Materials Science Athanassios Boudalis Were Scientists not Managers. Thats what our countries educated us for, and thats what we can be good at. We need LESS bureaucracy and LESS need to make unrealistic promises. We need MORE accountability on our actual scientific work and NOT on our purely managerial skills: http://www.zcommunications.org/scientific-research-in-the-era-of-managers-by-athanassios-boudalis 16 Feb 09:38 Greece Research Center for Astronomy and Applied Mathematics, Academy of Athens Manolis Georgoulis Practices and procedures are in place to ensure the smooth operation of institutions and groups of professionals, in general. For exactly this reason they should be the simplest and most meaningful possible. Dedicated efforts in this direction should be a continual objective for the EU if maintaining a strong, robust, and efficient research program is desired. 8 Mar 16:20 Greece Technical University of Crete Markos Papageorgiou Great initiative! 9 Mar 10:39 Greece Technical University of Crete Christina Christara Please let EU become productive and competitive as North America is. 9 Mar 11:41 Greece Technical University of Crete Nikos Varotsis I fully support this notion. The administration of the European Union funded projects is too heavy, too bureaucratic, it insults the dignity and honesty of the european researchers, it adds up to the costs and imposes heavy burden on the institutions that are involved. 17 Feb 13:32 Greece University of Athens Giannis Papaefstathiou we do not need to re-discover the wheel, just look how NSF works 4 Mar 16:14 Greece University of Crete Nickolas Panopoulos Τhe late Nobel Economist, T.W. Schultz, noted that most working scientists are research entrepreneurs and that centralized control is an anathema to progress. “In the quest for appropriations and research grants all too little attention is given to that scarce talent which is the source of research entrepreneurship. The convenient assumption is that a highly organized research institution firmly controlled by an administrator will perform this important function. But in fact a large organization that is tightly controlled is the death of creative research. No research director… can know the array of research options that the state of scientific knowledge and its frontier afford. Organization is necessary. It too requires entrepreneurs… But there is an everpresent danger of over-organization, of directing research from the top, of requiring working scientists to devote ever more time to preparing reports to ‘justify’ the work they are doing, and to treat research as if it was some routine activity.” 13 Mar 20:32 Greece University of Macedonia Zoe Georganta I am very glad that the issue of trust in the information that researchers may provide in order to get financial support for their research has at last come out in the EU. The administrative work of EU funded research projects is so bureaucratic and consequently so time consuming that it becomes a real disincentive for researchers to get involved. Very recently I completed a project including two Doctorate theses on digital economy. The administrative work was so time consuming that although I could have submitted a similar proposal for a Doctorate project again, I decided that I should not. The EU procedures are in strong contrast with the corresponding procedures prevailing in the US and I believe that this is one of the reasons why research in the EU is lacking. 15 Mar 16:03 Greece University of Patras Angela Ralli Too much time consuming against precious time for research 29 Apr 13:04 Greece University of Patras Spyros Kriwas I agrre completely 23 Mar 16:36 Greece University of Patras Medical School Dennis Synetos EU research needs to decrease bureaucracy and must stop favouring the same research groups or consortia repeatedly. 4 Mar 00:47 Greece University of the Aegean Nicos Litinas Complicated rules reduce significally research effort, productivity and innovation. At the same time they promote useless berocratic work with minimum if any effect in transparency. 5 Mar 17:49 Greece University of the Aegean Helen Briassoulis Simplicity is the cornerstone of efficiency. European researchers must be encouraged and supported to use their most precious resource, TIME, as efficiently as possible. Thank you for paying attention to this important request. 25 Feb 13:25 Greece University of Thessaly Elena Mente The paper work and form filling is inflexible and very time consuming when you upload reports to the European Commision. Back | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||