Inclusive excellence at the ERC: demographic data on external reviewers and impact of eligibility extensions

The European Research Council (ERC), Europe’s premier funding agency for frontier research, views equality of opportunities as an essential priority and a vital mission to ensure fairness in the review process. The ERC monitors various demographic data yearly on every call and has taken actions to tackle imbalances and potential implicit and explicit biases.

Demographic gender and geographical distribution data on external reviewers is presented. External reviewers are experts who support ERC evaluation panels by externally reviewing proposals in their fields of specialization. The analysis focuses on the rates of nomination and invitation of these experts, as well as rates of acceptance and completion of the reviews. The data is presented by call, scientific domain and panels. In the current framework programme (Horizon Europe, 2021-2027), 24.2% of nominated external reviewers were women, 75.6% were men and less than 1% were non-binary. Acceptance and completion rates are only marginally higher for women in respect to men. When it comes to geographical distribution, the first 15 most invited countries take up 89% of the whole invitations, and 88% of the finished reviews.

 

Furthermore, data on requests by applicants for extensions to the PhD eligibility window are included. The ERC allows applicants to the Starting and Consolidator Grant schemes who comply with certain conditions (e.g. parental leave, motherhood, long term illness, clinical training and civil disturbance), to submit proposal beyond the end date of the normal PhD eligibility window. These circumstances and conditions constantly evolve. In this way, to comprehend better and monitor these requests, the ERC recently started an in-depth analysis of such data, gathered between 2021 and 2025. The data are disaggregated by year, gender, and by grant type. The analysis shows that there is a clear disparity between women researchers and men researchers when requesting extensions, both in terms of numbers and circumstances.

The ERC is aware that working to ensure inclusive excellence and equality of opportunities is a never-ending task. This presentation analyses the institutional efforts, procedures and critically discusses the results so far.