Efficient and independent scientific evaluation of project proposals that enables the assessment of scientific quality and priorities of project proposals is the basis of all the Foundation’s activities. The evaluation procedure carried out by the Foundation is competitive and includes the comparison of submitted project proposals while taking into account the terms and conditions of the Call and scientific quality of the proposals.
The evaluation procedure of project proposals submitted to the calls “Research Projects” and “Installation Research Projects” is described in the video below.
The Board may adopt a decision that two-stage evaluation procedure described above would not be implemented for individual calls. In case such a decision is adopted, the Board shall be obliged to prescribe an alternative evaluation procedure and publish it before or on the day the Call is published.
Evaluation panels for project proposals submitted to the Croatian Science Foundation’s calls were established in 2016 following a public call aimed at public scientific institutions. The panels’ basic tasks include assessing project proposals for referral to the next stages of the evaluation procedure, nominating peer reviewers and ensuring that the evaluation procedure is conducted in accordance with the Foundation’s general acts. The panels analyse all received reviews and adopt recommendations for funding/rejecting project proposals. Panels are also involved in the evaluation of candidates for mentors of doctoral students, ranking of proposals and giving recommendations to the Board on funding doctoral students.
Panels are established according to scientific areas: natural sciences, technical sciences, biotechnical sciences, biomedicine and health, social sciences and humanities. Depending on the nature of project proposals submitted to individual calls, a panel responsible for interdisciplinary projects may be established.
For the IP-2019-04 and UIP-2019-04 calls, the Board adopted the decision on the consolidation of panels, whereby Social Sciences were joined with the Humanities, Natural Sciences were joined with Technical Sciences, while Biomedicine, Biotechnical Sciences and Biology were conjoined into Life Sciences.
This optimises the operation of the panels since all panels are now interdisciplinary and all panel members evaluate roughly the same number of project proposals.
The evaluation panel members are appointed to a three-year term, renewable once. During their terms, evaluation panel members may submit project proposals to the Foundation’s calls or participate as team members in proposed projects; however, in that case they shall be excluded from the evaluation procedure of the call concerned.
