FCT launches ERC Portugal Pre-Assessment Program

On Monday, June 19, FCT launched a new axis of the ERC-Portugal program, called ERC Portugal Pre-Assessment. This is a peer review service that FCT will make available to researchers in the national scientific community who are preparing applications for European Research Council (ERC) Calls .

ERC Portugal Pre-Assessment will follow international best practices in peer review, with the pre-assessment model mirroring ERC evaluation criteria and evaluator profiles. This new program aims to be an important tool for improving the quality of national proposals and their preparation processes. Its ultimate goal will be to increase the number of national applications to Calls and to make the submission of proposals to this leading European research funding agency more natural.

Proposals will be evaluated according to the ERC's evaluation criteria for Call respective Call, with evaluations carried out by international experts with extensive experience in evaluation processes, preferably as panel members in Calls .

This program will support submissions for the next Call Starting Grants Call , for which the application deadline is October 24, 2023. To this end, the first cycle of pre-assessment of proposals for ERC Portugal Pre-Assessment will run until July 20, 2023 (Thursday). The pre-assessment reports of the proposals will be sent to researchers by September 25, 2023, approximately one month before the deadline for submitting proposals to Call Starting Grants Call , in order to constitute an effective contribution to the completion of the application preparation process to be submitted to Call .