02 October 2007 | General, President
A new success for COST: the overwhelming response of the European scientific community
“The almost 500 preliminary proposals submitted for the third collection date 30 September 2007 of the COST Open Call, from which some 25 new COST Actions will be selected, is a new overwhelming response of the European scientific community” said Professor Francesco Fedi, President of the COST Committee of Senior Officials (CSO). “Even if it was the first form of cooperation in Science and Technology launched in Europe some 40 years ago, COST demonstrates all its vitality. This result clearly shows that the European scientific community continues to look at COST as a flexible, fast, effective and efficient tool to network and coordinate nationally funded research activities at project level, bringing good scientists together under light strategic guidance and letting them work out their ideas, thus contributing to reduce fragmentation in research investments in Europe and to open the European Research Area to the cooperation on a world basis.”
The introduction of a continuous COST Open Call for proposals for new Actions, together with a strengthened and consistent use of external peer reviews, is a major reform introduced by the CSO. It is based on a two-stage process, reconciling the advantages of the COST tradition and the need for a highly transparent process of presenting proposals for new Actions, at the same time raising visibility within the research community. The call is continuous, i.e. the scientific community can present a proposal for a new Action at any time and on any subject, following the successful tradition of COST. The call is open, i.e. the selection process follows the `bottom-up` tradition of COST. Preliminary proposals of maximum three pages length are submitted for an initial pre-selection. Only those deemed to be of sufficient interest, potential intrinsic quality, and European added value - in accordance with the criteria established by the CSO - are invited to submit a full proposal. This reduces the disadvantages Calls generally have to face, such as the problem of oversubscription (i.e. a large number of new full proposals, frequently not of sufficient quality), a huge workload in processing proposals and the disillusion which may arise within the research community due to the rejection of a large number of full proposals.
