EU-funded Projects: Transparency and Beyond

Talking about transparency, I noticed that for many Eu-funded research projects is considered a  “nice to have”, a sort of secondary requirement, at best. Having been speaking with researchers and commissioners around this topic, I came up with an idea for a different way to look at transparency in future calls.

Why Transparency matters.

A first and obvious reason for demanding more transparency is that everyone could look at how public funds are spent, and eventually take a chance to give feedback, to propose issues or even to join research activities. Being informed about what is going on, and what are future steps is a must in order to allow third-parties’ participation.

A less obvious but definitive not less important reason to want more transparency is to create a more level playing field in upcoming calls for proposals, so that more companies and organizations can learn about how to write good proposals.

The Description of Work template – while unfortunately is not and ODF document – is an excellent starting point, but real and living DoWs are much better to learn the art of writing good research proposals.

Why not to share them?