FP7 Success Rates

Each of the EC’s Cooperation areas has a National Contact Point (NCP), and I went along to a talk given by the UK’s NCP on Socioeconomic Sciences and Humanities (SSH) on Friday. The NCP passed on some interesting success rate stats.
First, the success rates for all areas and all 'pillars':

• Overall success rate: 16%. The overall success rate for the UK is slightly higher, at 23%.
• Co-operation: 18%
• Ideas: 4% (skewed by first starting grant call)
• People: 29%
• Capacities: 18%
  

Secondly, the success rates for each area within Cooperation:

• Health: 18.2%
• Food, Agriculture, Fisheries and Biotechnology: 16.9%
• Information & Communication Technology: 15.45%
• Nanotechnology: 36.1%
• Energy: 15.7%
• Environment: 13.9%
• Transport: 22.8%
• SSH: 10.9%
• Space: 27.7%
• Security: 13.3%
  

10.9% for SSH; not a great start. Drill down further, and you can see which topic areas are the likeliest to yield funding within SSH:

• Activity 1: Growth, employment and competitiveness in a knowledge society: 6.35%
  
• Activity 2: Combining economic, social and environmental objectives in a European context: 5.26%
• Activity 3: Major trends in society and their implications: 4.51%
• Activity 4: Europe in the world: 7.27%
• Activity 5: The citizen in the European Union: 6.17%
• Activity 6: Socio-economic and scientific indicators: 15.38%
• Activity 7: Strategic activities: 11.76%
• Activity 8: Foresight activities: 21.43%

So it’s the eighth of these which is pulling the overall average up. However, the eighth is the area which is only open to NCPs and other overarching organisations to bring together policy across Europe, not for research itself. Which leaves quite a gloomy picture, I’m afraid. The message to take away is that you have to be sure that your research fits squarely within the individual topic of the call, is timely, makes sense, and has an appropriate mix of partners to be in with any chance of funding. Otherwise, don't even think about it...