Evaluation of proposals for these calls is undertaken by separate expert panels composed of internationally-renowned scientists. These experts (reviewers) are chosen for their expertise in the field of the topic of the call, their thematic orientation, their overall expertise in brain research and neurodegenerative diseases and their complementary expertise with regard to these fields. Reviewers are appointed based on their scientific expertise and their selection is not restricted to countries participating in JPND. Insofar as possible, JPND will strive to ensure a balance of gender and country representation of the review panel members. The reviewers will not adopt national considerations nor will they represent any of the JPND joint call partner organisations.

For these calls, there will be two steps of decision-making: A pre-proposal and a full proposal decision.

Firstly, the submitted pre-proposals are evaluated based on international scientific peer review, and a decision is made on which proposals to invite for the full proposal stage. Coordinators who submitted a pre-proposal will be informed by the JPND Joint Call Secretariat about the outcome of the pre-proposal evaluation.

Secondly, coordinators of successful pre-proposals will be offered to submit a full proposal within a time-frame of four to six weeks. All information on the full proposal stage will automatically be sent by the JPND Joint Call Secretariat. Full proposals are evaluated by international scientific peer review. Following the peer review process, the JPND funding organisations finally decide on which proposals will receive funding. Again, coordinators who submitted a full proposal will be informed by the JPND Joint Call Secretariat on the final funding decision.

The final decision on which proposals receive funding is taken by the JPND funding organisations. However, this decision does, of course, depend on the results of the scientific evaluation, which is done by an independent peer review panel. This panel of experts decides whether a proposal receives a funding recommendation or not. Proposals with no funding recommendation cannot be funded. Proposals that are recommended for funding will be ranked by the peer review panel according to their quality, based on the evaluation criteria described in the call text. Funding will be given to the very best proposals of this ranking list, taking into account the available national budgets.

The decision on all submitted pre-proposals will be communicated approximately three months after the original submission deadline. Coordinators of successful pre-proposals will then be offered to submit a full proposal within a time-frame of four to six weeks. The separate decision on full proposals will be communicated approximately four months after the full proposal submission deadline.

Please note that the indicated time points of decision communication are based on former experience and may vary. However, in all cases, coordinators of all submitted pre- and full proposals will automatically be contacted by the JPND Joint Call Secretariat as soon as a decision can be communicated.

It should be noted that research groups are not funded by JPND directly but by the participating national/regional funding organisations of their country. Each country has its own individual budget allocation for the call. It can happen that a consortium recommended for funding contains one or more research groups from a country that has already spent its budget completely (for example, because the country budget had already been allocated to research groups from other consortia which were ranked higher). In this scenario, the JPND funding organisations will attempt to find a solution to secure funding of that consortium (for example, a country whose budget allocation is running low may be able to increase it). However, in the case where no solution can be found, the proposal will be rejected and the entire consortium will not be funded.

In principle, proposals of similar scope are welcome. However, when it comes to a funding decision, the final ranking may take into account the optimal portfolio spread that will provide most benefit (i.e., where there are two or more proposals of similar scope and of similar high scientific quality, funding may be restricted to the best application only).

No. The inclusion of a rebuttal phase would result in a strong prolongation of the decision making. Therefore, the funding organisations participating in these JPND calls for proposals have decided to exclude the possibility of rebuttal.