Under the Call for proposals for Cooperability Program of the „Unity through Knowledge Fund“ which was announced within the
Preparation Advance of Proposed Second Science and Technology Project (STP II) and opened from October 30, 2012 until February 1, 2013 at midnight, a total of 93 project proposals were submitted (37 projects are in the research area of natural sciences, 23 of bio-medical sciences, 16 of technical sciences, 7 of social sciences, 6 of bio-technical sciences and 4 are in research area of humanities).
On the Steering Committee meeting held on February 18, 2013 the UKF Secretariat gave the Steering Committee members an insight into all project proposals submitted to the Call. The analysis of the formal compliance and incompliance of the project proposals to the Call’s propositions was presented. Without getting into the content and quality of each project proposal, the Steering Committee agreed with the analysis of formal eligibility and concluded that the project proposals which did not meet some of the formal criteria of the Call would not be entered into the evaluation process. However, the formal eligibility check has been continued during the evaluation process. UKF Secretariat, in accordance with the “Guidelines and Procedures - Preparation Advance of Proposed Second Science” and Technology Project (STP II) 2012 may bring decision to exclude a proposal for failing one or more eligibility criteria at any appropriate moment before, during or after the evaluation sessions, when ineligibility has been proven. This decision is final and cannot be subject to further complaints.
72 project proposals (29 from the field of natural sciences, 18 from bio-medical sciences, 12 from the field of technical sciences, 6 from bio-technical sciences, 4 from the field of humanities and 3 from the field of social sciences) were evaluated according to the Call criteria in the peer –review evaluation procedure which included three evaluators (more than 250 evaluators in total), internationally recognized authorities in the relevant specialist area, in accordance with the Call criteria and the procedure set in the Guidelines and Procedures - Preparation Advance of Proposed Second Science and Technology Project (STP II) 2012 and the Evaluation Guidelines of “Unity Through Knowledge Fund 2012. Apart from evaluators’ marks, another mark is given by Steering Committee to each proposal assessing the contribution of the project to the Fund’s goals. In accordance with the evaluators' mark and the mark given by Steering Committee, the final mark was generated.
This evaluation procedure is in accordance with the above mentioned documents which are published on
www.ukf.hr.
Due to the large number of high-quality project proposals and limited financial resources of the Fund, the threshold for the final mark is set at a high 4.2. Therefore, in the end, only 17 proposals (1 from the field of humanities, 3 from bio-medical sciences, 2 from the field of technical sciences and 11 projects from the field of natural sciences) which have received very high marks from both the evaluators and the Steering Committee were conditionally recommended for financing. UKF Secretariat sent the decisions with explanations and evaluation reports to all project proposers on July 4 and 5, 2013.
The UKF Secretariat with assistance and under guidance of Steering Committee performed negotiations with proposers whose project proposals were conditionally recommended.
After finishing negotiations and revisions of the involved proposals, the proposers whose projects proposals were approved for financing will be invited to sign the Grant Agreement, which is expected to be on October 15, 2013.
More details about the financed projects will be available after the signing of the Grant agreements, on the website of the Fund "Unity Through Knowledge" (
www.ukf.hr).
