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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 Italy138 comments. (Note: Some comments are not made public accessible.) 11 May 14:58 Italy ARPA Emilia-Romagna Vittorio Marletto All proposals should be first screened for the scientific quality of the idea. If the idea is deemed good researchers should get help from Eu to improve the rest of the proposal (administration, management and so on). 17 Feb 18:55 Italy Astrale GEIE Andrea A M Gaifami Simplification means millions of working hours saved all over EU ! 19 Mar 10:28 Italy CEINGE Biotecnologie Avanzate Antonio Simeone To sort-out administrative burden of European Research Funding will certainly open new opportunities in applications and reduce the stress to understand burocratic language frequently far from research activity 19 Mar 10:12 Italy Centro San Raffaele del Monte Tabr M. Laura Feltri We have to devote too much time to fullfill burocracy requirements: it slows down the progress of science. 19 May 11:45 Italy CIRA Raffaele Salvatore Donelli A strong reduction of the time need to fulfill documents and requirements for funding is mandatory. More economic contributions to research centers and Universities for academic and applied research are necessary to make the Europe competitive 26 Feb 11:33 Italy CNR Aldo Gangemi I feel the need of short documents and simple presentations for submissions, in order to reduce the time-to-call. Currently we spend too many person months writing proposals, against a very low acceptance rate: very good research, reasonably, does not get granted due to high competition, but this also impacts on the possibility of doing better research, not only because of low funding, but also because of the time spent in writing proposals. My proposal is too adopt a NSF-like scheme, with funding being released incrementally based on short-term results, and quick assessment of those results: for each phase, the funding increases in case of success. 26 Feb 14:14 Italy CNR Franca Tecchio File Formats are the best guide to create good projects. If Europe developed frames and procedures containing ‘all and only’ needed information, research activity would grow increasing its ‘functional beauty’. 3 Mar 17:30 Italy CNR Stefano Zapperi Someone should estimate the cost in term of man-month spent by researchers in doing bureaucracy (writing deliverables, lengthy reports and other stuff that nobody really reads). This is money that is lost and could be best used for research. 5 Mar 14:32 Italy CNR Valentina Presutti Researchers are not good in administrative work. IF administrative work would be simpler they would do it better and with less effort and frustration. Today, researchers put much more effort than needed in administrative commitments that should be secondary with respect to research work. I personally find also procedures for project proposals very heavy. They require a lot of effort for only submitting a proposal. Most of the time this effort is just lost becuase there is a huge number of submission and many good projects are rejected for lack of funds. Maybe a two step procedure, like that for STREP, would be effective also for other types of project, from many viewpoints, including EU costs for reviews. 23 Feb 10:58 Italy CNR IBIMET SEDE DI BOLOGNA ALESSANDRA DALLOLIO I AGREE. 22 Feb 11:13 Italy CNR-IMEM Institute Claudio Ferrari One cannot spend, in labour cost, a significative percentage of the total cost of the project just preparing the proposal, also taking into account the low average succes rate of the european proposals. 22 Feb 11:49 Italy CNR-IMM Aldo Armigliato According to my experience, the delay in payments from the Commission is strongly increased FP6 (I3 project) with respect to FP5 (IST project). This is quite detrimental to the execution of the planned research activity. 22 Feb 17:44 Italy CNR-IMM Raffaele Scaburri Fundings instability kills deep research! 26 Feb 19:37 Italy Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche francesco antinucci Because of the silly and dull burocratic requirements that tell nothing about the research merits I have ceased to participate to European Reaseach calls. It is much more reasonable and worth while to write proposal for private funding institutions. 22 Mar 22:15 Italy Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche - IAC Gianfranco Mascari Many years ago (1985) i have been selected by the European Commission as Project Officier within the ESPRIT Task Force: yes it was a Task Focre ! Nowdays, as a Researche since 1986 at CNR (Itally) and several very successful projects submission, including the famous DataGrid project its quite difficult for me to recognize the Force of the ongoing Tasks asked to researcher to manage European Projects ! 1 Mar 09:18 Italy Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie della Cognizione Gianluca Baldassarre The European Research System is great for scientists (vital for Italian ones), and very useful for Europe economy and society. It could be even better, and have a stronger impact, with a simpler burocracy. To achieve this goal one principle is paramount, which involves a remarkable change of mentality: from controlling quality a-priori based on rules to cotrolling quality a-posteriori based on evaluation of results. Gianluca Baldassarre 3 Mar 16:57 Italy CRA-MPF Carla Vender Less burocracy, more responsability 4 Mar 12:27 Italy CRA-OLI Adolfo Rosati Dealing with European funding implies learning an unnecessarly complicated bureaucratic language, created by and for office people that evidently do not work in science. Science does not always easily fit into predetermined schemes. Much too often, scientific skills get lost in the meanders of this language. Most times it is impossible to predict exactely the timing and amount of expenses. Without more freedom it is very difficult to deliver the result expected. 5 Mar 20:16 Italy Department of Biology Lorenzo Colombo Applications for research grants in the European Community are oppressed by excessive emphasis on ideal planning and forecasting, which reduces experimental flexibility and adaptation to results from progressing work. This a priori approach delights bureaucrats, but distracts scientists from real science which, by definition, is based on free thought, courageous undertaking and concentrated work in order to surpass what was anticipated. Funding should be based on the scrutiny of previous scientific achievements, trusting attitude towards small-scale projects by young researchers and an enlightened policy to keep supporting research groups that a posteriori showed wise resource use in gaining further scientific merits. 22 Mar 10:35 Italy Department of Biomolecular Sciences and Biotechnology - University of Milan Katia Petroni I fully support this initiative 20 Feb 18:28 Italy Department of Physics, University of Pisa alberto del guerra The burocracy of the trasparency is killing the research 28 Mar 09:06 Italy Dept. Agroenvironmental Sciences and Technology, University of Bologna Roberto Tuberosa Having coordinated a project myself and being presently engaged in EU-funded projects, I fully agree that the complexity of the administrative work is excessive and discourages from coordinating new proposals. I truly hope that it will be possible to simplify the administrative management of EU-funded projects. 17 Mar 09:41 Italy Dept. of Architetcure, Design and Urban Planning - University of Sassari Massimo Fragiacomo A reduction in bureaucracy will allow researchers to do better their job. 23 Mar 18:06 Italy Dept. of Mathematics - University of Pisa Giuseppe Buttazzo The applications forms have to be simplified too! Also, we do not need few huge financements but many small ones. 25 Feb 09:53 Italy DIEGM, Università degli studi di Udine Luca Selmi It is not by filling tens of hourly time sheets per person per workpackage per project that the Commission will find out if the money for research has been well spent. 8 Mar 16:59 Italy Dipartimento di Chimica IFM, Università di Torino Elio Giamello I perfectly agree with the following statement from a Danish collegue: The European Community should, in addition to its own frame programs, and to secure academic freedom, invent and support policies increasing the rate of basic public fundings as compared with external fundings for university research. 5 Mar 12:43 Italy Dipartimento di Informatica, Sistemistica e Comunicazione Marco Antoniotti I support the initiative with the following remarks. (1) The model for funding, with all the amendments necessary, should be the NIH/NSF one with clear deadlines properly spaced in time. (2) Consortia should *NOT* be a requirement; individual project should be evaluated on their merit. (3) The driving force should be high risk/high reward. (4) Probably the most important: separate funding for research from what are in all effect subsidies to SMEs and large multinationals; research and technology transfer programs are different beasts (cfr, again the SBIR/STTR should be the model). (5) Research does not produce deliveralbles. (6) Cut the crap required to establish good management practices etc. 3 Mar 12:22 Italy DITESAF - University of Padova Laura Secco I would prefer to increase the quality of my research than continuosly getting lost in the bureaucracy sea... 18 Mar 12:31 Italy EC Joint Research Centre Guenther Seufert the principles of the declaration should also apply to the direct research actions within the framework programmes 11 Jun 00:05 Italy ENEA and University of Bologna Giuseppe Maino I strongly agree on the declaration and any effort done to improve funding resources for basic and applied science. 18 Feb 18:24 Italy Faculty of Economics - University of Tuscia Giulia Rotundo The teaching charge of University researchers/professors, and the time spent after administration highly reduces the time that can be spent after research. It is a pity to see that the system does not care of such waste of brains. Many high school teachers, that are not involved in research, but that are very competent in teaching would be happy to held classes to the first year students of the University. They know the subject till to that level, they know how to teach, the dont do research.They are perfect for the first year students, it is like a prolongation of the college. What happens is that researchers are used for base teaching. If researchers they are willing to write down their brilliant ideas for a FP7 program, they have to learn administration. But then who is going to do research? 16 Feb 16:12 Italy Fluxology SA Paul Peters Currently much too limited to the academic world + eco system. Procedures are wellmeant but stuck in archetypical rolemodels which filter out a certain breed of high-potentials, maybe even promote mediocrity. Very large overhead as far as participation goes, premature investigation costed me months, which are not translated in revenue. 17 Mar 20:34 Italy Foundation University G. d Annunzio Saverio Alberti Simplification of funding application procedures is essential. The time spent in poorly-suited bureaucracy should be spent in doing research. 30 Jun 13:17 Italy IAMC-CNR Giovanni Fanelli The acceptance of these simple requests of researchers would be a strong political signal about the importance of research for development 22 Mar 12:33 Italy IMATI - CNR Franco Brezzi We all know it, they (the beaurocrats) all know it; please dont force me to talk.... 22 Feb 14:16 Italy INAF/IASF Luciano Nicastro When submitting a proposal, it would be a good practice to quantify and report the actual TOTAL cost of the bureaucratic activities, in particular estimating the amount of time stolen to science. 18 Mar 08:21 Italy Institute of Molecular Genetics - National Research Council IGM-CNR Giovanni Maga A timely initiative that we all hope being successful and providing new more user-friendly and science-oriented EU funding rules 14 Apr 18:16 Italy International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) Enrico Cherubini I wish that the financial and administrative provisions related to the Framework Programme and other European funding instruments will be simplified considering their important leverage effect for the competitiveness of the European Research Area. 12 Mar 19:26 Italy IRCC Emily Crowley I agree, there is far too much bureaucracy. 3 Mar 19:07 Italy ISC-CNR Guido Caldarelli Scientific production can be effectively evaluated from publication on peer-reviewed journals, or other traditional means. Forms and other paper work must be reduced as much as possible 26 Feb 11:34 Italy ISTC- National Research Council Cristiano Castelfranchi The role of Europe for scientific research is fundamental and strategic; this is why the apparatus should be less heavy, and the bureaucratic machinery simplified a lot; while the money should be much more addressed to real scientific and technological advancements, competitive ideas, excellent research groups; not to strong lobbies or pseudo-scientific initiatives. 7 Mar 10:29 Italy Istituto dei Sistemi Complessi - Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche José Lorenzana We need also a simpler system to inform researchers on funding opportunities. 7 Mar 13:45 Italy Istituto dei Sistemi Complessi; CNR Luciano Pietronero Twenty years ago the Brussels Commission was basically serving the Research Institutions and Scientists. Now it looks like the opposite: scientists appear as the instrument to support a plethoric, political and unreasonably complex beurocracy fully focused on itself and often not at all competent. This is a typical instability of many insitutions which should be strongly contrasted. A laudable exception are the ERC-IDEAS projects which are relatively new and still oriented towards their natural target. These should be strongly defended. Enrico Fermi used to say that every 20 years scientific institution should be closed and new ones started to avoid that beurocracy takes over. He was right. 10 Jun 15:48 Italy ISTITUTO DI CHIMICA BIOMOLECOLARE ANTONIO TRINCONE agree 22 Jul 23:25 Italy Istituto di Fisiologia Clinica - Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche Giorgio Soldani I have served as a Co-ordinator of European RTD projects and I found the administration and scientific reporting of these project quite complex. I think the management of these projects should be semplified a lot. 7 Jul 12:16 Italy Istituto di Tecnologie Industriali e Automazione Marco Sacco As coordinator of some projects I would like to have simpler financial and administrative provisions. 3 May 12:41 Italy Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia Antonio Rovelli The cost of bureaucracy is increasingly high in scientific projects. We must reverse this trend. 10 May 19:19 Italy Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia Fedora Quattrocchi The burocracy take the time for good research! It is a mean of power for other figures different than researchers 3 Mar 14:33 Italy Istituto Ortopedico Rizzoli Matteo Balestri In my opinion the cost statement could state the total amount of the costs and the list of the major costs without the amount for each item. 3 May 20:33 Italy Italian Liver Foundation Claudio Tiribelli Make it simpler and more approachable. 22 Feb 16:41 Italy Joint Research Centre Stanislaw Cieslik I fully agree with the declaration 3 May 17:05 Italy Joint Research Centre, European Commission Vittorio Barale excessive paperwork is suffucating the science 28 Mar 17:50 Italy Mediterranea University of Reggio Calabria Andrea Caridi I think that the administrative burden and the financial regulation of European research funding may be simplified very much. 28 Mar 21:12 Italy Mediterranea University of Reggio Calabria Vincenzo Tamburino Byzantine empire collapsed because of burocracy. The ever increasing burocracy explains the main part of italian decline of the past 4 decades; in South Italy burocracy has been assessed to determine a bigger damage than mafia. The responsability of excessive burocracy is often claimed on the European Community; symplify administrative procedures in european research could be a good starting point to be extended to all other fields of EU activity. 27 Apr 17:08 Italy National Council of Research Caterina De Simone Please, reduce the administrative burden of EU funded projects. 8 May 11:54 Italy Parma University Alberto Girlando When I started my University career, I wanted to science and teaching. I do not want to mess up with ridiculous rules, filling up forms over forms, by which I have to state what my reasearch will produce ! Give less money per group, but more free... 19 Feb 16:00 Italy POLITECNICO DI MILANO Simone Colombo The administrative and the management mechanisms ought to be more similar to industrial projects, on penalty of keeping the credibility of European projects low. Currently, projects are seen, perceived and lived as return of paid taxes. Innovation to be achieved requires less bureaucracy and more discretion/responsibility to those managing projects. 24 Mar 11:44 Italy Politecnico di Milano Stefano Crespi Reghizzi The cost of project proposal preparation is too high; the imposition to plan the work into detailed work packages, tasks and deliverables clashes with the risks and uncertainties inherent in advanced research. 18 Feb 08:20 Italy Politecnico di Torino Francesco Profumo Europe needs to compete with the big players (US, China, Japan, India, ecc.), we need to have modern and simple tools to fund education and research. 10 Mar 13:06 Italy Politecnico di Torino Gianfranco Chiocchia An excessive administrative burden leaves no time for true research. 30 Apr 15:51 Italy Politecnico di Torino Marco Carlo Masoero I totally agree with the statement. Europe risks to strangle itself with too many regulations! 30 Apr 16:06 Italy Politecnico di Torino Giovanni-Vincenzo Fracastoro This is really a worthy initiative which could improve not only the work of researchers, but society at large. Stop wasting money and time looking after the administrative matters and start considering the REALresults of our work! This is the only way in which Europe will be able to survive! 30 Apr 16:27 Italy Politecnico di Torino Lorenzo Mamino Sono daccordo sulla proposta 30 Apr 16:32 Italy Politecnico di Torino Paolo Guglielmi Easy rules for easy control means more founding for research 30 Apr 16:42 Italy Politecnico di Torino Bruno Panella At present too much time, also by the scientific responsible of the projects, must be devolved to financing and administrative issues. A strong effort has to be addressed to simplify the management procedures, by giving more weight to the scientific and technical work. 30 Apr 16:50 Italy POLITECNICO DI TORINO Roberto Graglia We all should be happy that in the past century(ies) nobody ever implemented the present EU system to support researchers and basic research works, otherwise we still have to do it without electricity, radio, radio communication, telephone, computers, etc. Do our politicians really think that this grant mechanism is doing any good to our community? 30 Apr 16:52 Italy Politecnico di Torino Marco Mellia As a coordinator of a Strep and as a researcher, Im puzzled by the time I waste to deal with bureaucracy and depressed by the evaluation of the project research result evaluation. Europe must run against US, China and other big countries. Weight the results, get rid of the form. 30 Apr 16:59 Italy Politecnico di Torino Igor S. STIEVANO I completely agree. 30 Apr 21:42 Italy Politecnico di Torino Marco Cantamessa Real research is about quality work in the labs, and delivering results. When too much effort is spent with admin, forms and timesheets, you dont only have a big waste of time, but you ultimately transform researchers into bureaucrats, and Universities into something else. 30 Apr 23:27 Italy Politecnico di Torino Angelo Tartaglia The burden of complying with the European burocracy, both while presenting a proposal and afterwords in case of success, is frightening and time consuming. It requires either specialized and dedicated administrative personnel or research personnel to unproperly dedicate themselves to burocracy instead than to research. The European Union should strengthen the substance evaluation of the quality of the proposal and of the results rather than multiplying formalities. 1 May 18:58 Italy Politecnico di Torino Mario De Salve I completely agree. Research is not bureaucracy. If we waste our time with admnistrative stuff less is the research time and less are the research results. 2 May 15:27 Italy Politecnico di Torino Alessandro De Stefano administrative burden is hard to sustain and expensive Lobbying is often prevailing on research content quality Industries too often participate to promote what they already have. 3 May 10:42 Italy Politecnico di Torino Pietro Mandracci Excessive bureaucracy strongly reduces the innovation potential of research 15 Apr 04:17 Italy Politrcnico di Torino Sergio Benedetto I have been directing two large Networks of Excellence in FP6 and FP7; I fully share the request of a drastic simplification in funds handling procedures 7 Mar 22:05 Italy Sapienza carlo cosmelli When ther is an european project everybody wants to avoid the duty of being the main investigator, it is a big waste of time, just because of burocracy. 27 Feb 08:29 Italy Sapienza Università di Roma Maurizio Lenzerini There is another problem with European Research funding, that is as important as the need of simplifying the procedures, namely the buzzword-based funding scheme. Not only we have to write a huge number of long research proposals, but also we have to pretend that every research proposal has a new, revolutionary idea, denoted by new buzzwords, with numerous and incredible applications. 9 Mar 13:36 Italy Sapienza Università di Roma Ugo Andreaus More money to State Universities 17 Mar 11:15 Italy Sapienza University of Rome Adriana Erica Miele I perfectly agree on the necessity of rules, but most of the time too much bureaucracy leaves not enough time to run the actual research project which is (or could) be financed. 17 Mar 15:24 Italy Sapienza University of Rome - Dept. of Biochemical Sciences Paolo Sarti I agree with this declaration. The feeling is that too much of administrative bureaucracy is discouraging, particularly for young scientists/organizations, and negative for international research network development. 22 Mar 11:46 Italy scuola normale superiore pisa federico cremisi Simplifying FP7 financial and administrative procedures is crucial: every useless administrative effort spent by a scientist is both a scientific opportunity missed by the scientific community and a waste of social resources. 5 Mar 15:44 Italy Seconda Università di Napoli Biagio Morrone Its all true. No time for research only for trying to present a proposal, find partners and then cross your fingers. If everything goes ok, the amount of paper (not scientific of course) to be written is unbelievable. 12 Mar 11:10 Italy SELEX Galileo Roberto Bojeri - time to contract became longer, there is a strong need to reduce it - management reporting is still quite demanding - options of lump sums, flat rates or scales of unit costs could be extended to other cost categories (eg. lump sums for travel costs); average personnel costs should be accepted - multiplicity of links between policy objectives and intervention mechanisms/funding schemes/instruments could be reduced - the tendency of introducing ever more special conditions for special circumstances could be reverted trying to find the right compromise between One-size-fits-all and tailor-made approaches - shift the control focus from financial side to the scientific-technical side in favour of a more result-based funding - general simplification needed in the phases of proposal preparation, negotiation and implementation 19 Mar 15:22 Italy Sincrotrone Trieste Werner Jark I have nothing to add to other comments about excessive paper work. However, I would like to address in particular the last point in the declaration - the risk taking, on which only few colleagues commented thoughtfully. Research is the systematic study of the unexplored/unstudied! Who is really able to schedule the milestones with this boundary condition AND to predict the reaction to unexpected results? Are we sure that the weird guy, who cannot explain his ideas clearly and thus does not find a powerful collaboration, will really do nothing good? I do not feel well answering with a convinced “YES”! Based on this I would like to reword the last point to “taking chances” and to make a related proposal. Why not give everybody, i.e. also colleagues with less experience, little time/talent for lobbying and difficulties to clearly express ideas/strategies, equal chances by assigning part of the available budget, something of the order of 5%, in a lottery, in which ALL submitted proposals will participate, even those full of formal errors. After all researchers want to do research! 21 Feb 21:24 Italy Suor Orsola Benincasa Lucilla Gatt Please, do it! 22 Feb 14:26 Italy T&B e associati Srl. Adriano Savoini Even if it seems against our business (we are consultants for universities and other research centers for FP project design and management !) we feel that complexity level of accounting and budgeting in the European programmes supporting RTD is indeed excessive. It should be reduced considerably and, at the same time, strong action must be taken against who is infringing the (few) basic rules of good and fair partnership and accountability. Thanks ! 4 Mar 18:43 Italy Univ. of Naples Federico II Lucia Civetta I wish less administrative rules 19 Feb 13:17 Italy Università Ca Foscari Venezia Stefano Polizzi I want to have time to make the research and not the burocracy. 9 Apr 13:15 Italy Università degli Studi Carlo Bo Nicola Panichi I agree 26 Feb 10:17 Italy università degli studi di Milano Martin Kater I think it is important to simplify the procedures since the time and effort that has to be invested in the administration of EU research projects is really too much. 25 Feb 08:24 Italy Universitá degli Studi di Salerno Sergio Pagano Research involves peoples ability to go beyond current knowledge and practice. Therefore cannot be managed in the same way a repetitive and predictable production process is. A proper knowledge of the specific characteristics of the research process is needed in order to unleash all the potential of human mind toward the results looked for. 15 Mar 10:45 Italy Università degli Studi di Salerno Fabrizio Illuminati I am the coordinator of a FP7 Strep Project. Simplification of bureaucracy would greatly simplify my work, and would allow to concentrate much more on research with great benefit for the final output. 4 Mar 16:24 Italy Università di firenze Marco Mascini very good initiative! 23 Mar 16:11 Italy Università di Firenze Ugo Bardi Useful initiative. The regulations as they are a way of stifling innovation 3 Mar 15:38 Italy UNIVERSITA di FIRENZE -Research Centre for Renewable Energy Francesco MARTELLI I believe that the main rules to support research in Europe and to be competitive with other international institutions, should be focused on the fulfilment of the research target once the budget has been preliminary approved more then on the detailed investigation on the expenditure procedures. In our case ,(University) they have to match the Public Institution requirement and if some problem arise is not on the scientific side but on the conflict among different budget management procedure. In my experience, some efforts dedicated to the project expenditure demonstration reduce the time dedicated to the research and to the achievement of the scientific targets.. 23 Mar 09:44 Italy Università di Milano Paolo Plevani I totally agree to semplify the procedures 7 Mar 20:36 Italy Università di Milano Bicocca Susanna Terracini Please, less bureaucracy! We need to devote more time to active research! 6 May 11:45 Italy Università di Napoli Federico II Annamaria Lima Too much bureaucracy subtracts time and energy to the research. 4 Mar 22:24 Italy Università di Padova Maurizio Guido Paoletti I agree about simplification of beaurocracy but mor ex post evaluation 3 Mar 11:32 Italy università di palermo paolo inglese less burocracy more clearness 4 Mar 17:00 Italy Universita di Pavia Silvano Donati in a FET program, I am spending 70% of my time in writing reports, making accounting, checking financial issues, reporting with ConfCalls, attending meetings etc. Little tyime to think and to develop ideas ! Definitely I will not participate in the 2nd round of my MEGAFRAME project FP6-2006-IST-029217-2 20 Feb 00:37 Italy Universita di Roma Tor Vergata Rodolfo Del Sole I completely agree with the declaration 22 Jun 11:26 Italy Università di Roma Tor Vergata Laura Micheli No time for research only for trying to present a proposal, find partners and then pray. 23 Mar 18:50 Italy Università di Sassari Paolo S. DAquila I pledge that along with the paperwork it will be abandoned also the absurd pretence of european burocrats & politcians to control scientific research, which, as any form of free expression of the human creativity, cannot thrive withouth freedom of mind. What would anybody say if a political body decided that in the next four years filmakers should gang up in order to concentrate, say, on love dramas? Simply ludicrous. 30 Apr 19:14 Italy Università di Trento Marco Ronchetti As a coordinator of an Asia-Link project and as a researcher, I could experience how much bureaucratic hurdles can make life almost impossible. While agreeing on the need of providing sound reporting and verification, I think it could be done in a simpler, more effective and less time consuming way. 25 Mar 13:37 Italy Università Roma Tre Leopoldo Nuti I once submitted an application to the FP7 as main leader of a 5 country-network. In spite of the excellent support from the specialized office in my university, it was a harrowing experience which took almost 3 full months. And we did not get it - we passed the first screening but not the second one. I believe the system to be too cumbersome and too much oriented towards a kind of practical research which makes it hard for those working in the humanities to come up with a suitable research project 19 Feb 23:33 Italy Universita` degli Studi di Milano Nicola Manini Very good idea! I fully agree and support simplification. 30 Apr 18:10 Italy University Federico II, Napoli Giorgio Franceschetti Lets get rid of the bureocrauts, and be free scientists! 5 Mar 18:02 Italy University of Basilicata Giuseppe Montanaro lets simplify.... 8 Mar 09:52 Italy University of Basilicata - DITEC Department Pietro Picuno A scientific project, perfect as for the administrative aspects, but that does not lead to results constituting the free expression of intelligence and creativity of researchers participating in it, is an offence to scientific research and a theft - in real terms - of economic resources. 26 Feb 19:38 Italy University of Bologna Stefano Ghirlanda EU should also mandate certain and equal rules for project administration in all participating countries. In a recently concluded FP6 project, the Italian unit struggled with bureaucracy that was not required of unit from other countries, but which was apparently standard practice in Italy (like needless signatures, needless justifications of expenses, etc.). 3 Mar 10:04 Italy University of Bologna Marco Bittelli I believe the burden given by the financial and technical reporting demanded by the EU during and at the end of the research projects, is heavy and often useless. The time dedicated to fill in reports and formats could be spent in way more productive activities, including the research itself. I certainly agree with the need for rules and verification of the research performed, however the level of details and request of often useless information, is wasting precious time. There must be a certain degree of trust between the institutions and the researchers. The easy and simplest way to verify the quality and the achievements of the research is through the publication, by the researchers, of peer reviewed papers. This should be the largest and most important part of the reporting activities. 26 Feb 12:41 Italy University of Cagliari Giulio Angioni I have never applied for EU funds because of its heavy burocracy. 3 Mar 15:13 Italy University of Firenze Toufic El Asmar I agree that administrative burden and the financial regulation of European research funding should be simplified 29 Apr 21:59 Italy UNIVERSITY OF FLORENCE - DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY PIERO BAGLIONI I completely agree. Also the reviewing process should be reformed. 18 Mar 08:26 Italy University of Genoa Alessio Nencioni I definitely agree on the need for simplification of EU-funded research. I also suggests that, when it comes to ERC grants, in addition to the current grants that are either addressed to very young scientists or to very established ones, other forms of funding are conceived in order to support scientists who are somewhere in between these two figures for the key contribution that their established research skills could give to European research. 23 Mar 07:25 Italy University of LAquila Anna Tozzi We are expert on programmes and are used to write projects within many programmes. Recently burocracy is increasing penalising the ideas and supporting only formal facts. Most is due to the managing authorities which are using agencies whose staff does not know anything about preparing a project and takes care only of estetical facts. An example is the recent change of rules in TEMPUS. But the list is becoming long. 3 May 00:09 Italy University of LAquila - DIMEG Pierluigi Beomonte Zobel ... 14 May 17:27 Italy University of Milano Monica DiLuca I fully agree with this declaration 27 Feb 11:49 Italy University of Milano Bicocca, Dept. of Materials Science Leo Miglio In 2009, at the final check of a European Strep Project funded some millions Euro, after the audit for each unit, Bruxelles asked us to amend a discrepancy with the C form of 0.07 Euro. No comment is needed. 16 Mar 09:01 Italy University of Modena and Reggio Emilia Patrick John Coppock I believe that it is very important to facilitate researcher and other staff mobility within Europe and elsewhere in order to increase the quality and breadth of research carried out by European research institutions and consortia. At the moment, there is a lot that still needs to be done to facilitate this. Apart from basic cultural, institutional and other barriers to mobility, the basic procedures for proposing, evaluating and selecting projects for funding is still far too ponderous and bureaucratic, and even the documentation of these procedures, and the instructions for carrying them out are far too complicated, and need to be radically simplified. A two-tiered system, with an initial presentation of short drafts of project proposals with a roughly sketched budget, followed by an primary selection process that thins out the field to a limited number of prospective candidates that are asked to go forward to a second stage of preparing a fully detailed project, which will then be selected for funding in competition with other merit-worthy second-stage projects, is probably the most effective and motivating system. Nobody wants to spend weeks and months preparing a very detailed proposal for a first Call, if they can see quite clearly that the field of competition is huge, and their chances of selection tiny. Also, more attention should be paid to the timing of Calls for proposals, in relation to broader institutional and cultural rhythms. Nobody, for example, wants to work through the Christmas, Easter of Summer holiday periods preparing materials for submission. Offering longer deadlines is one way to help in this connection. 9 May 18:52 Italy University of Napoli Federico II Benedetto De Vivo There is too much bureaucracy compared to the evaluation of the scientific content of proposals. 3 Mar 11:51 Italy University of Padova Davide Pettenella I fully support the petition. DP 4 Mar 18:26 Italy University of Padua cesare montecucco The bureaucracy of the entire EU is overwhelming, so much so that sceintists actively involved in research are prevented from applying. Once my project was judged to be scientifically OK, but lacking European added value, another because in the entire project I once wrote the name Padova to indicate Partner 1 and this was enough to break anonimity rule etc etc. 23 Mar 16:17 Italy University of Roma Tor Vergata Daniele Guido European bureaucracy about research projects is too heavy, some rules (e.g that about VAT reimbursement) are simply crazy, the preference for pre-doc grants as opposed to post-doc grants have negative effects, at least in some disciplines. 4 Mar 11:13 Italy University of Rome Tor Vergata Valeria Conte A sign to dedicate more time to research instead of burocracy 4 Mar 21:34 Italy University of Salerno Ruggero Ruggieri I 15 Mar 11:13 Italy University of Torino - IRCC Luca Tamagnone I think we all have had a hard experience with EU bureaucracy, either in grant writing, managing, or reviewing. This is not in the interest of quality of science. Several other funding agencies have well extablished experience on how an efficient grant reviewing process should be organized. 12 Mar 18:32 Italy University of Torino School of Medicine, IRCC -Institute for Cancer Research and Treatment Alberto Bardelli I strongly believe that the procedures for funding research within the EU should be streamlined. The current burden of administrative details (documents/forms/etc) is overwhelming and subtracts critical time and resources from research. The revised and streamlined procedure should apply both at the stage of grant proposal submission and during the administration of awarded grants 3 Mar 22:10 Italy University of Trento Raffaele Mauro A very good idea! 21 Feb 17:13 Italy University of Trieste Sabina Passamonti The Program for Transborder Cooperation Italy-Slovenia 2007-2013 (http://www.ita- slo.eu/programme/basic_information/) is severely late (it has not yet started). While the attention of the Joint Technical Secretariat for formal and administrative compliance of the project proposals is obsessive (I suspect that it is a pretext to discard some good projects), the evaluation procedure is far from being clear. I have written a letter to the Managing Authority and to the DG Regio, in which I ask for explanations about the evaluation procedure. 3 May 18:15 Italy University of Trieste Sergio Paoletti I totally agree with the Declaration 4 May 11:49 Italy University of Trieste Valter Sergo I have been evaluators for potential projects and reviewer of funded projects. I have found both evaluation and reviewing procedures impeccable and very simple. Conversely, the administrative and bureaucratic burden for researchers who receive funding is barely tollerable, to the point that project coordinators end up working full time on coordination, rather than on research. 4 Mar 21:15 Italy University of Turin Luca Cocolin Rules are OK, but they should not kill the will to do research!!! We are scientists and not bureaucrats!!! 9 Apr 12:19 Italy University of Urbino Mauro De Donatis Do you want to spend money for us as accountant or researcher? 13 Apr 09:35 Italy University of Urbino Carlo Bo Luciano Stefanini Administrative simplification is important in many project financing (objective-focused) activities; it is fundamental in research financing. Excess burocracy reduces open participation to call for projects, increases latent privileges for insiders, increases costs without improving benefits. 22 Mar 10:03 Italy university ol laquila aldo lepidi Thank you for promoting such an administrative semplification. We need it. Let me suggest another problem of european concern. The EU researchers are submitted to different employment contracts according to the various countries and to the public or private nature of the employer. There is already a statement of the Commission favorable to an unique european job contract for researchers which is largely ignored. I suggest you to promote the awareness of reseachers about this situation and about the advantages of having the same job legal order for research in every european country. Thank again Aldo Lepidi 28 Feb 22:46 Italy University Sapienza of Rome Mirilia Bonnes I strongly support this initiative . 25 Mar 18:37 Italy Univertiata di Roma Tor Vergata Carlangelo Liverani As a recipient of an Advanced ERC Grant (call 2009) I can testify that in the first months, due the administrative burden, I had actually less, NOT more, time for doing research and the future does not look very promising. This cannot be considered a reasonable state of affairs. Research should be judged by its output, not by checking if expenditures are formally consistent with a complex set of rules often devised for the public administration at large and hence ill suited for research related activities. Back | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||