It would be useful for scientists from Ukraine to share their experience of participating in the noble competition of the Austrian Academy of Sciences JESH Ukraine, aimed to supporting them at this difficult time. Such a discussion will allow us to understand how the system of competitions at the Academy works and, thanks to this, to increase the effectiveness of our research.
So, my personal experience:
My application "Next generation structural materials for extreme applications ‒ materials with maximum fracture resistance and weight efficiency" with letters of support worthy of a monument in the center of Vienna was accepted for consideration, but its result turned out to be negative with the wording - "due to the high number of applications". Very elegant humour. Bravo. It's like telling an athlete that he didn't get a medal because there were too many participants in the competition :-)
It is well known that evaluation criteria in science are much more complicated than in sports.
After that, having studied in detail the conditions of the competition, I did not find the criteria for evaluating applications. It turns out that this contest is just a "game without rules".
I turned to the Academy with a request to inform at least where the names of the winning applications will be published, even without explaining the parameters by which they were chosen. They answered me: "names of applications approved by JESH Ukraine will not be published for privacy reasons".
Without knowing the criteria for evaluating applications and the names of the winning applications, it is impossible to understand the scientific or other priorities of the Academy in supporting certain applications and assess the feasibility of participating in its "competitions". It turns out that today we know more about the structure of Black Holes than about the principles of the JESH Ukraine contest except that information/light cannot leave them.
Self-publishing of application titles that were supported or not supported, will allow us to understand the priorities and possible criteria of the Academy ourselves and not waste time and effort on preparing applications that are obviously not passable, as well as exempt the Academy from considering applications in scientific areas that Academy does not develop or support.
10 days have passed since the opening of the discussion on this topic.
None of the ResearchGate participants shared their experience of participating in this competition. Am I the only one really on ResearchGate who participated in it?
Maybe there was no such competition at all, and this is the reason for its lack of transparency? Its non-transparency seem strange even to my colleagues from Austria.
I fully agree with your vision, it is not transparent system, it is related not only for Ukrainian participants, but also for all others, since Austria is a small country and almost all scientist and officials know each other through the one handshake, therefore making decisions is preformed through hidden connections and personal sympathies. In order to increase you chances, you should have support at least one of the austrian scientists or officials.
I had two very good letters of support from two well-known scientists from two leading universities in Austria. That's not the problem.
The problem is the non-transparency of the competition.
The strangeness of this situation is that a competition has been held and funding has been distributed, but the scientific community does not know its results.
A non-transparency increases the risks of unfair competition and corruption, and inevitably leads to image losses for the organizer and sponsors of the competition.
More than a month has passed since the start of this discussion. Apparently, it's time to transform this discussion into an exchange of jokes on this topic. Let me start with my anecdote:
"Spectators saw that only one athlete participated in the open competition. But he never received a medal. Question to the Armenian Radio: who won all the medals?"
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