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The latest results of #ERCStG -call were announced yesterday erc.europa.eu/news/StG-recip… (congrats @kbkarlson @aresherman) After my own ERC in 2013 I have commented a bunch of applications, some getting funded each year. Here’s some shared characteristics of the ERC SSH successes:
1) The application needs to have a genuinely good idea as well as something truly new & ambitious, but also a strong storyline where all sub-studies are seamlessly connected. Often achieving this has required heavy editing of the original draft.
2) The applicants tend to have a clear vision where the current state of the art is in the case of the research topic in question. They are also able to pinpoint very clearly the weak spots or missing areas of the existing top-level research.
3) The applicants themselves have strong and independent research profiles, tend to be well-published but clearly prioritising quality. They tend to contribute mainly to the their main field of science.
4) Each of them tend to have their call-related homework done properly: they have a good idea what kind of people will be reading the plans and doing the reviews.
5) Every one of them is also a bit lucky with their reviewers. In almost every round also excellent applications I have commented are rejected, some of them succeeding during following years…
In addition, few things that are perhaps more related to my own research area and academic circles, but that may matter in all SSH-fields:
6) All successes tend to have a huge societal question in the background, something that is well-acknowledged also in the neighbouring SSH-fields, independently of the chosen research methods. This is advantageous because SSH-panels tend to cover a broad spectrum of fields.
7) The applicants tend to be somehow linked with the state of the art -groups already conducting research on the topic — scientific success often requires also succeeding in the social game involved!
