2018 Annual Meeting

The 7^th Annual Meeting of the Global Research Council was held on the 14-16 May in Moscow, Russia. The meeting was jointly hosted by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR) and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF). Over 100 delegates attended the Annual Meeting, with over 60 Heads of Research Councils participating from around 52 countries, to share best practice and discuss research funding policy issues. The two topics for the Annual Meeting were ‘Science Diplomacy’ and a revisit of ‘Peer/Merit Review‘.

The GRC participants endorsed the “Statement of Principles on Peer/Merit Review” and a "Background Paper on the revision of the analogous SoP adopted in 2012". The second document “Discussion Paper on Science Diplomacy: the Role of Research Councils and the GRC” was acknowledged and viewed as a starting point to potential longer term discussions on the topic.

To ensure a globally consultative process and to gather input from funding agencies and interested stakeholders from across the world, regional meetings were held in Africa, the Americas, the Asia-Pacific region, Europe, and the Middle East/North Africa between October 2017 and January 2018. The output of those meetings was instrumental in developing the documents which the GRC 2018 Annual Meeting endorsed and acknowledged. The five regional meetings also served as an opportunity to develop new and enhance existing relationships between organisations and across the international research funding community.