ESF Member Organisation Forum on Evaluation of Publicly Funded Research

About

Background

The ESF Member Organisation Forum on Evaluation of Funding Schemes and Research Programmes was successful in exchanging practices and facilitating the networking of sciences officers engaged in evaluation, and the feedback on this MO Forum was very positive. During the course of its work, new questions arose which were deemed to be worthwhile to explore in this new ESF Member Organisation Forum on Evaluation of Publicly Funded Research.

There is a need for the continuous exchange of information on evaluation practices and practical approaches. The ESF Member Organisation Forum on Evaluation of Publicly Funded Research is the sole dedicated platform for European research organisations that provides a continuous forum to exchange information and work together on common projects. The EUROHORCs and ESF Road Map acknowledges the work of the prior Forum. The ESF Member Organisation Forum on Evaluation of Publicly Funded Research can help to implement activities within Action 6 of the Road Map (Develop common approaches to ex post evaluation of funding schemes and research programmes).

Aims

  • To improve evaluation studies on funding schemes

  • To learn about best practices of impact assessment of research and research funding

  • To identify the challenges in conducting transnational comparative evaluation

Objectives

  • To facilitate networking

  • To exchange and share information on evaluation studies of funding schemes and practices

  • To produce an inventory of current and past impact evaluation practices/methodologies across Member Organisations, identifying gaps and lessons learned

  • To develop an analysis of research portfolios and research output

Strategic Alignment

Actions

1. Evaluation Guidelines

  • Draw up guidelines for ex-post evaluation of funding schemes

  • Do a survey among the forum members on evaluation organisation and practices

  • Develop a website repository containing evaluation reports and evaluation guidelines

2. Impact assessment on Science and Society

  • Inform about existing impact studies

  • Produce a template for categorising the impact studies

  • Conduct an in-depth analysis of impact assessment practices (methodology, criteria, best practice)

3. Comparative Research Portfolios

  • Examine feasibility pilot of the Health Research Classification System (HRCS) coding of portfolios

  • Produce a short paper summarising approaches for the analysis of output data


For more information please contact mo-fora[at]esf.org