NRP 76: 22 projects approved
The Swiss National Science Foundation has approved 22 projects for the National Research Programme "Welfare and coercion" (NRP 76).
The decisions are based on a two-stage evaluation procedure. In autumn 2017, the Steering Committee and an international panel of experts evaluated the 77 submitted pre-proposals and selected 30 for the second stage. 29 accepted the invitation to submit a full proposal. Four reviews were obtained for each proposal, two by experts from abroad and two by members of the Steering Committee. The latter evaluated both the proposals' scientific quality and how they fit into the scope of the programme according to the implementation plan.
The researchers have at their disposal an overall budget of around 12 million Swiss francs.
It is clear that the topics welfare and coercion require a particularly careful research approach in terms of ethical standards and privacy matters. Researchers of NRP 76 have to confirm that they will respect the ethical guidelines as listed in the factsheet on ethical requirements for NRP 76 projects (available in German and French only).
The research teams of the 22 approved research projects are currently working on a project description for the website. These summaries will be available in three languages by the end of October 2018.
Not all topics that are discussed in the implementation plan are currently covered. For this reason, the Steering Committee has decided to launch a second call in the second half of 2018.