Trust Researchers A declaration to the attention of the | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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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 Israel34 comments. (Note: Some comments are not made public accessible.) 30 Apr 10:33 Israel Bar Ilan University Nadav Shnerb Laisser Explorer 30 Apr 18:57 Israel Bar Ilan University Andre Reznikov I support it. 24 Feb 15:06 Israel Bar-Ilan University Jean-Paul Lellouche I fully agree with this initiative emphasizing on research rather than the current burden of accounting and administrative reporting that stole from each of us some expensive time. There may be numerous ways to cope with the issue of accounting and activity control that may be make more friendly and effective. All the best, JP Lellouche 30 Apr 09:12 Israel Bar-Ilan University Moshe Deutsch Every minute spent on beurocracy is a minute less for research ! 30 Apr 10:33 Israel Bar-Ilan University Aren Maeir The EU research related processes are in dire need of simplifcation - and of using simpler, and more clearly understandable language! 18 Feb 10:40 Israel Ben-Gurion University Opher Donchin Science works best when scientists can enjoy and love their work. 7 Mar 11:42 Israel Ben-Gurion University David Golomb There is a large overlap between the deliverables, the annual report and the review in Brussels. The process should be streamlined and the written deliverables should be canceled. Instead, papers that are published or have been submitted for publication should be submitted also to the FP7 administrative officers. 8 Mar 19:41 Israel Ben-Gurion University Ronen Brafman Complex programs with complex rules imply that the scientists that receive funding are not necessarily those who can do the best science. It gives an advantage to scientists with the best administrative support that can help them overcome these hurdles, and the best political skills. Experience is important, but what should be important is scientific experience, not administrative experience. 7 Mar 13:49 Israel Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Simon Barak I recently coordinated a grant application for a large-scale collaborative project. The grant proposal process is a massive burden taking two or three months of intensive work and concentrating on this alone. Many of the questions asked in the proposal guidelines are repetitive and unnecessary. One ends up spending too much time on dissemination activities than on the research itself. The proposal becomes a 70 page document!! Surely the whole grant procedure can be streamlined to make it more attractive to researchers to apply. 14 Apr 12:29 Israel Feldman Brody & Associates Graham Feldman Audits should be assurance reports (known as audit reports not audit certifiactes) with resonable assurance that the figures are true and fair not 100% accurate. Beneficiaries with few satff working on project currently need up to 20 staff and 20 cost invoivces checked (per type of cost), meaning that these small projects need effective 100% audit. finacail audits should be audits of finacial procedures and control;s and limited checking of documenst to ensure procedures and controls are efficiant and adequate. 15 May 21:10 Israel Hebrew University Baruch Schwarz I have participated in five projects funded by the EC community, and coordinated four of them. While I consider the EC projects as extremely valuable opportunities for fostering research and development, the administrative burdens -- especially the writing of too many reports, and the difficulty for researchers to coordinate actions with their own adminsitration, make it difficult to enjoy the potentialities of the projects. 18 Feb 07:07 Israel Hebrew University Jerusalem Israel Yechezkel Barenholz It is very important to reduce administrative burden from grant applicants as this became the most cumbersome of grant submission and the benefit of it is not clear 17 Feb 11:12 Israel Hebrew University of Jerusalem Sergiu Hart Someone who can say precisely how many hours s/he thought about a scientific problem on a specific day did not really think about the problem, but rather about how to fill the timesheet forms ... 17 Feb 15:25 Israel Hebrew Univesity of Jerusalem Nir Friedman I find the reporting requirements of EU grants excessively cumbersome and reflect distrust of researchers. 22 Feb 12:38 Israel Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research Esther Lubzens National contact offices should offer a simplified short training course for scietists aspiring to coordinate a project or/and to those awarded a project on the financial and legal aspects of coordination of projects. Moreover, cooridnators should have the option of distributing payments according to the results submitted by partners. 3 Mar 16:05 Israel Technion Alex Gordon All the FP-6 External audit issues became unbearable since the EC aims to cover itself from any potential accuse. They make all the prticipants pay through negative contravercial patronizeed mean which cause behavioral damage to the Administrative staff who are afraid to make any move which include self responsibility. By this way they paralize the research activities, create a longlasting conflict with the research community and eliminates participation of hurted researchers in the programs. It may lead to a beautiful quite world where nobody disturbs the Commission since nothing is done. 29 Apr 12:19 Israel Technion Jack Lavan more freedom and trust is needed in the case of budget management of EC projects. 3 May 16:30 Israel Technion Izhak Etsion I do hope that this act will indeed simplify doing research in Europe. The administrative burdon required so far from the researchers is much too much. 3 May 21:40 Israel Technion Eli Ben-Sasson EU funding and reporting principles should be similar to those of leading research funding agencies worldwide, such as the those of the United States National Science Foundation (NSF). 4 May 11:06 Israel Technion Simon van Dam While basic control measures are important in order to ensure that public funding is used for the purposes it is intended for, currently the measures are an overkill and it actually deters many very talented researchers to participate. It would be a great research topic to see whether the costs of excessive measures as incurred both by the EC and the institutions, partnering in FP7, would indeed not exceed the loss of potential participation. In addition, it would be great to measure the excessive costs of the measures versus the potential loss due to fraud and other abuse & misuse. It is my gut feeling that the cure is more harmful that the illness. 4 May 14:24 Israel Technion Dov Dori Siplifying funding procedures will significantly raise Europes position in R&D. It is a must! 5 May 06:24 Israel Technion Yehudit Judy Dori This is a very important action the EU needs to take in order for researchers to spend time carrying out excellent research rather than paperwork 3 May 20:50 Israel Technion - Israel Institute of Technology Hillel Pratt Having seen the administrative maze my colleagues have to go through in handling EU grants, I have so far refrained from submitting. I think researchers time is better spent doing what they do best - research - than handling endless paperwork. 6 May 00:25 Israel Technion - Israel Institute of Technology Dan Tsafrir Requiring researchers to submit a report of their daily activities (how many hours each day) is much too much. 3 May 16:11 Israel Technion Faculty of Medicine Noam Ziv Please simplify!!! Its impossible to do science this way!!! 24 Mar 06:50 Israel Tel Aviv University Felix Frolow Kids from Beskydy mountains, 12 minutes after finishing university, are positioned as scientific officers of the projects and overrule scientists with the highest international credentials 3 Jun 15:57 Israel Tel Aviv University Ron Shamir Requiring hourly (!) reports by PIs and students is exaggerated. Overly detailed reporting, auditing and monitoring requires a considerable effort and attention for a non-productive and non-scientific work. 29 May 09:26 Israel Tel Aviv University Nir Shavit I am a computer scientist. I have had a very difficult experience with EU grant administration. I think the EUs notion of how science works is wrong. I fear this is one of the reasons European science lags behind American science. We need to fix this. My experience is that EU granters and regulators focus too much on deliverables, to such an extent that instead of science we are reduced to software development. We cannot spend time perusing new directions because we must deliver software...and without promising deliverables, its hard to get funding. In the end, this software will anyhow never be used, because software is only used if there is technology transfer into industry, and this does not happen because regulators insist on it, it happens because companies are exposed to breakthrough ideas through papers, talks, and not because we will give them software. The administration of the EU grant funds themselves is overloaded with bureaucracy, to the point that I found I am greatly distracted by the fund administration, and need to employ people just to take care of this administration..this is an unnecessary waste of time and funds. Its is OK to check what funds are spent on, but one must trust scientists that they are spending it on science. Could the few exceptions that are bound to occur justify the excessive spending on control mechanisms? Look at science in the US, with the NSFs looser bureaucratic process and more vague insistence on deliverables. Is it less successful than the science in Europe? So let us rid European science from these overheads, and perhaps with the burden lifted, European science will be able to rise to the levels of creativity and influence we see in America. 29 May 21:03 Israel Tel Aviv University Daniel Cohen-Or I agree with the declaration 9 Mar 11:43 Israel The Hebrew University ofJerusalem Alon Warburg The fact that many companies were established and make a profit by initiating & coordinating writing of proposals and then go on to manage the consortia formed attests to the incredibly cumbersome bureaucracy involved at every level. Similar large projects funded by other funding bodies are incomparably less difficult to manage 3 May 19:16 Israel The Technion, Israel Institute of Technology Yoav Livney to simplify is to understand! 11 Feb 08:10 Israel Weizmann Institute of Science Boaz Avron Effort Reoprting / Timesheet requirements should be modified to be in line with the reality of the academic research environment. A researcher in academia knows and can clearly attest for the purpose of transperance and autdit on what days he worked and on what days he was absent as well as what projects he is involved in for every month. However the idea that a researcher can on a daily (as opposed to monthly) basis precisely (as opposed to a subjective best estimate) provide an hour by hour breakdown of the time he was engaged in each project each day is inherently a misconception. Thus the EU financial regulations need reviesion ASAP in this respect. 24 Feb 17:32 Israel Weizmann Institute of Science Nachum Ulanovsky The EU should definitely simplify the procedures for submission and reporting of EU Grants, including FP7 and ERC grants ! 14 Apr 16:48 Israel Zeev Savion Ltd. Zeev Savion A to Z Israeli R&D. R&D programs initiation and coordinator. Back | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||