The European Research Council (ERC) has unveiled the results of the interim impact assessment of the projects it has supported. This review of ERC-funded projects and their contribution to scientific progress and innovation, as well as to policy and societal debates, is an exercise carried out every year since 2015 by independent experts and external peer-reviewers.
The ERC is announcing that in 2024 it will publish a full report analysing the impact of the research it funded in its first years under the EU’s 7th Framework Programme, from 2007 to 2013.
According to the ERC, the preliminary results for 2023 show that 20% of projects led to groundbreaking scientific results and 58% contributed to major advances. Furthermore, with regard to interdisciplinary research, the interim results indicate that over 70% of the projects produced cross-disciplinary results, encouraging collaboration between once separate research fields.
In addition, institutions with few ERC grants are making a significant contribution to excellent scientific results, according to the European Research Council. For the ERC, this highlights the importance of initiatives such as the ERC Visiting Fellowship Programme and the Mentoring initiative in encouraging applications from under-represented regions.
Link to the interim report: https://aeur.eu/f/beh (Original version in French by Émilie Vanderhulst)