The Scientific Council’s intention is to make two significant changes in the upcoming Work Programme: to restructure selected evaluation panels and add one additional panel, and to introduce lump sum funding in Advanced Grants. Publishing this information ahead of the formal adoption of the 2024 ERC Work Programme will allow the scientific communities to familiarise themselves with the changes ahead of the publication of the individual calls.

Panel structure
 

The Scientific Council constantly monitors and revises the ERC evaluation panels to ensure a world-class peer review system based on fully transparent, fair and impartial treatment of all proposals and a whole science approach covering all fields of research.
The purpose is to ensure the balance between panels in terms of the number of proposals assessed in each call, the disciplinary coherence within and across panels, and the place of interdisciplinary research in the panel structure.

In this context, in the Life Sciences domain, the Scientific Council aims to make changes in the LS3 panel title and the LS5 subtitle and descriptors in order to make disciplinary coverage more explicit and to encourage applicants.
In the Social Sciences and Humanities domain, a new panel (SH8) is set to be added to restore balance between social sciences and humanities coverage, and to limit the number of proposals submitted to the SH3, SH4, SH5 panels.

• Panel structure in ERC calls for proposals 2024
• Revision of ERC panel structure – rationale and main changes
   

Lump sums
 

At the plenary meeting in February 2023, the Scientific Council agreed to the use of lump sum funding for Advanced Grants awarded following the 2024 call.

See the previous ERC announcement on lump sums.