Process NORDIC Call
The CIRCLE Nordic Call was open for proposals until 10th of December 2007. The call received eight consortium applications, all including partners from Sweden, Finland and Norway. Afterwards the Nordic Call Steering Committee (CSC) held a meeting in Oslo in mid December for getting an insight of what expertise was needed for the evaluation. Now the CIRCLE Nordic call has advanced till the stage of evaluations and decision making.
The applications with a broad field of topics were evaluated by a panel of three international evaluators during February and another evaluator made a complementary evaluation of some of them. The panel had its meeting at the Academy of Finland at the end of February and it consisted of three scientific experts all from outside of the participating countries. They all presented a different field of expertise relevant for the applications. The experience showed clearly how useful it was for the panel members to meet and gather around the same table. That way they got an opportunity to discuss the CIRCLE Nordic call evaluation criteria together and to reach a common understanding of them before the evaluation. A small panel such as this one was compact enough to work efficiently and still able to present broad expertise and have fruitful conversations.
The process will continue still quite intensively as the Nordic Call Steering Committee consisting of all the three participating countries will have a meeting in Stockholm at the beginning of April. The CSC will give a recommendation for funding to the national funding organizations after which the countries are expected to make the final decisions about the funded projects in their own organizations. How many projects will be funded and which ones they are, are naturally still totally open questions. We expect to see the results of the discussions at the beginning of May in the form of final decisions and financed research.