Introduction to Proposal Evaluation

Table of Contents:

Overview

The European Commission's Evaluation Service (referred to here as the 'Evaluation Tool') is designed to help Proposal Evaluators (Experts) with the online process for remote evaluations organised by the European Commission in the scope of specific Calls for Proposals ('Calls').

As a registered Expert with the European Commission's Research and Innovation Funding & Tenders Portal and therefore a potential Proposal Evaluator, you can use these pages to get an overview of the Evaluation Tool functions.

Scope & Structure

These pages describe in detail how a Proposal Evaluator (an Expert) can benefit from the use of the Evaluation Tool. They also provide reference information about the available screens and forms, additional actions available to Call Coordinators, and more. Consult the table of contents above:

Evaluation of Proposals: Process Overview

Once a Proposal Coordinator has submitted a proposal, the Commission checks if it is:

• admissible (complete and properly put together) and
• eligible

and then asks independent experts to evaluate it.

In the evaluation process, proposals are given scores for excellence, impact, and quality and efficiency of implementation – based on the  Standard Evaluation Criteria .
 Note: Please also check the additional documentation usually received by Call Coordinators for each call.
A panel then checks that the evaluation criteria have been consistently applied to all proposals for the same call.
Proposal coordinators are informed of how their proposal did in the evaluation. A positive result does not constitute a confirmed offer of a grant.
Following the evaluation round, grant negotiations are opened for the highest-scoring proposals.

The Evaluation Tool: Main Principles

The Evaluation Tool is designed to enable proposal evaluators to provide an electronic Individual Evaluation Report (IER) for a Proposal. Later on, one of the evaluating experts will become a Rapporteur. As a Rapporteur, you will be assigned a task to produce the Consensus Report (CR) - a synthesis/consensus of your own evaluation and the evaluations of other assigned experts.
Throughout this document, "Evaluation Report" refers to an Individual Evaluation Report (IER) and/or a Consensus Report (CR).
The process of completing and submitting an Individual Evaluation Report for a proposal involves the following steps:

1. A task "Create IER" is assigned to you as a proposal evaluator (expert). Check whether you can evaluate the proposal (i.e., ensure that there is no conflict of interest of any nature).
2. Accept the "Write IER" task and fill in your evaluation report using an electronic Web-based form.
3. Submit your evaluation report electronically by using an electronic Web-based form.

The process of completing and submitting a Consensus Report for a proposal involves the following steps:

1. One of the experts, who have submitted IERs for the proposal, takes the role of the Rapporteur. A task "Write CR" is assigned to the Rapporteur, who will receive a notification email by the Evaluation Tool as soon as all of the IER experts have submitted their IERs for that proposal.
2. The Rapporteur starts working on the "Write CR" task to write a draft CR remotely, prior to the actual consensus meeting takes place. The Rapporteur fills in the report using an electronic Web-based form.
3. The Rapporteur submits the draft CR using an electronic Web-based form.
4. A task "Review CR" is assigned to the Quality Controller (QC), who will receive a notification email by the Evaluation Tool once the Rapporteur submits their CR (and the "Write CR" task is Finished). The QC role can be taken by another Experts.
5. The QC reviews the CR and approves or disapproves of its content. If the QC approves the CR, he/she submits the CR for approval by the experts who wrote the IERs. If the QC disapproves the CR, he/she returns the CR draft back to the Rapporteur who starts the procedure over from step 2 onwards.
6. When the QC submits the approved CR, a task "Approve CR" is created and assigned to the IER Experts.
7. The Experts are assigned "Approve CR" tasks. Accept the "Write IER" task and fill in your evaluation report using an electronic Web-based form.
8. Once all the Experts approve the CR and submit it as final, the CR stage is complete.

Main Screens and Tasks

As an expert proposal evaluator, you will be using three user interaction screens of the Evaluation Tool:

• The Main Screen, which is organized in 4 tabs:
  1. "Dashboard" tab (containing all your assigned tasks),
  2. "Proposals" tab (containing all the proposals assigned to you for being evaluated),
  3. "Active Tasks" tab (containing all the tasks that you have to carry out), and
  4. "All tasks" tab (containing all tasks that you finalized or have the right to see).

Under those tabs you will find a task for each report, links to the proposals and buttons for specific actions.

• Proposal Details. In this screen you can find additional information of the proposal: the abstract, the composition of the consortium, and Part A and Part B of the proposal (and the other attachments, if applicable). You can also provide comments from this screen. (Part A is the administrative form and Part B are the annex documents submitted by the applicant based on the templates provided by the call.)
• Evaluation Report Form. In this screen you can also access Part A and Part B of the proposal, as well as other documents such as the ESR of proposal when available, write and submit the forms for the actual evaluation reports, and you can provide task comments in case a specific action is required.

These screens enable you to easily access the list of tasks, the content of the proposals, and the actual Report Forms. 
Tasks have a simple life cycle, but the actions you can perform within a task will vary depending on the status of a task. See the diagram below for a description of the general life cycle of a task:

Overview

The European Commission's Evaluation Service (referred to here as the 'Evaluation Tool') is designed to help Proposal Evaluators (Experts) with the online process for remote evaluations organised by the European Commission in the scope of specific Calls for Proposals ('Calls').

As a registered Expert with the European Commission's Research and Innovation Participant Portal and therefore a potential Proposal Evaluator, you can use these pages to get an overview of the Evaluation Tool functions.

Scope & Structure

These pages describe in detail how a Proposal Evaluator (an Expert) can benefit from the use of the Evaluation Tool. They also provide reference information about the available screens and forms, additional actions available to Call Coordinators, and more. Consult the table of contents above:

Download the whole Proposal Evaluator's Guide as an Adobe PDF file.