How to reboot the grant system of science funding in Ukraine?

In the third year of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation, Ukrainian society has finally realized that Ukraine cannot survive in this war of attrition without its own innovative industry and powerful scientific base. However, in order for the long-range drone "Lyutyy" to take off, the Ministry of Digital Transformation had to work a lot on deregulation of the current legislation in this field. Without it, all the work of the engineers was systematically shattered by bureaucratic indifference. Now, the same moment of truth has finally arrived for the scientific sphere, which in recent years has actually been suffocated by the super-bureaucratic "hugs" of the National Research Foundation of Ukraine (NRFU), the country's main grant agency with an annual budget of UAH 587 million.

The very first scheduled inspection of the State Audit Service of Ukraine (SASU) caused a frenzy of hysteria on the part of the Foundation and its affiliated persons, who accused the auditors of all mortal sins. In fact, it is the Foundation that is the main stone around the neck of Ukrainian science by spending considerable amount of funds from the state budget on projects of dubious quality and killing any potential breakthrough research in Ukraine. Are you still in disbelief? Then below are the facts, the facts and nothing but the facts.

Point one — discriminatory requirements for scientists who want to take part in the Foundation's competitions. As the auditors rightly point out, the questionnaire of the project manager is drawn up in such a way that only selected people fall under its requirements, and the rest are automatically "swept out" (https://nrfu.org.ua/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/audytorskyj-zvit_01.04.24_compressed.pdf,  p. 44). How terribly dissonant it is with best scientific practices of European grant foundations! There, potential grant applicant has to publish several papers in top-ranked scientific journals, work in a scientific institution, and... that's all!

The second point is the constant inventing of new restrictions and legal acts by the Foundation’s management, which have retroactive effect, contrary to Article 58 of the Constitution of Ukraine. The last "hit of the season" is the ban on participation in the Foundation’s contests of all scientists who had co-authors with the affiliation of the Russian Federation long before the full-scale invasion. All academic relations between Ukraine and the Russian Federation were officially terminated by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine resolution of March 24, 2022. However, that fact did not prevented head of the Foundation, Professor Vilchynskyi, to publish as many as two articles in cooperation with Russian scientists already after the tragedy in Bucha – in March 16, 2022 and May 26, 2022.

However, that's not all! The developer of the Regulation on Compliance with the Principles of Scientific Ethics, who personally prescribed the requirements regarding the inadmissibility of cooperation with scientists from the Russian Federation, is herself a co-author of an article with the Russians in November 2023, already after the publication of the specified requirements! How can this be understood?! Well, if the number of Russians in the article is less than 1/20, then it is not considered collaboration, according to decision of "independent" Scientific Council of the Foundation.

Gentlemen, we are not in the Jerusalem bazaar, but in the center of the bloodiest war in the last 80 years, and collaboration cannot be “partial”! It is either present due to the fact of joint publication, or it is not there, so don't take us for fools! However, when such brutal violation of current legislation of Ukraine by the top management of the Foundation is pitifully covered up by the indulgence of the "pocket" Scientific Council of the Foundation, it makes the situation even more disgusting. "For our friends, everything; for our enemies, the law!" - this is the slogan of the Jesuit bureaucracy of the Foundation. The only problem is that it is clearly incompatible with the moral principles of a warring country.

The third point is a monstrous grant application overloaded with redundant and completely unnecessary forms, the task of which is to confuse scientists as much as possible. Moreover, everywhere there is a downright maniacal desire of the Foundation's representatives to stick their noses in wherever they can, even where their opinion is not asked at all. The latest example is the joint competition of the Swiss Science Foundation and NRFU in 2023. Reviewing and further funding of grants is completely carried out by the Swiss side, and the role of NRFU in this situation is purely decorative, like a wedding general. But especially in order to complicate the life of the Ukrainian co-executors of the competition, bureaucrats from the Foundation forced them to rewrite their part of the project (which is already in the perfect Swiss application!) in separate forms and submit them in Ukrainian (sic!) and English. I have only one question: what is all this for?

The fourth point is the extremely low qualification of the reviewers. Up to 50% of them in individual sections do not even meet the Fund's own requirements at all! So get ready for the fact that your grant application will be evaluated not by professionals, but by some illiterate "volleyball players from soccer", which the auditors directly mention (https://nrfu.org.ua/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/audytorskyj-zvit_01.04.24_compressed.pdf, p. 46), fully confirming the words of the author of the 2020 article. Project rating of 85, 90 and 45 points for the Fund is a completely typical, I would even say, everyday phenomenon, and no matter where you turn, the answer will be the same: that's what the experts decided.

However, I must add that the NRFU, like Putin's Russian Federation, learns perfectly from its own mistakes and makes the most of the weak normative acts that regulate its activities and were specially developed by the Scientific Committee back in 2019. Previously, in 2020, strong teams of competitors were "knocked down" by selecting the "right" reviewers. Now this process plays a secondary role, as the mass rejection of applications on formal grounds, which cannot be appealed, came to the fore. In 2023 and 2024, it acquired the characteristics of a real epidemic — up to 40% of all grant applications were rejected precisely on formal grounds! Every European grant agency gives project manager the opportunity to correct these little things, but this is not the case for NRFU! There was no appeal procedure at NFDU, and there still is none, and most importantly, it is not even planned, because it is so convenient to manipulate projects manually, hiding behind collective irresponsibility.

Even the SASU could not stand it and clearly stated: "...the reasons for rejection of projects on formal grounds in individual cases were so insignificant that in the final case, failure to submit the project leads to the loss of important scientific research results for the State." This contradicts the basic principles of the Fund's activity, provided for in Clause 9 of Regulation No. 528, namely maximum openness and transparency, compliance with the principles of fair competition. What is this but wartime vandalism from the top management of Foundation?

Point five – the original grant application is the "bible", as the former head of the Scientific Committee Olexiy Kolezhuk said at the parliamentary hearings on NRFU on June 24, 2021, therefore it is prohibited to make any changes to it when signing the contract and extending it for the following years. However, such draconian requirements of the Foundation for the application are strangely combined with the bureaucrats' favorite pastime of voluntary-forced reduction of research funding with the wording "if you can't do it, refuse, either you have to do 100% of the tasks from the original application." How can we talk about high-quality implementation of the grant in such conditions? There is only one answer: no way.

Some adepts of Foundation try to tell us fables about the same terrible grant bureaucracy in the West, but this is simply lie. As an executor of an Austrian Science Foundation (FWF) grant in 2022-2023, I saw firsthand the striking gap between these organizations and their approaches to working with scientists. Changing the project estimate on the fly, shifting funds from salaries to materials, postponing final grant report by four months because the group wanted to spend money on reagents as rationally as possible – these are absolutely normal things in the EU. How this is in stark contrast with the Foundation's demonstrative disregard of all appeals from scientists and cynical withdrawals in the style of "you’re a fool himself"! Finally, when the nerves of unfortunate people give out, the entire Scientific Council of the Foundation gathers out and generally forbids them to apply for all further contests of the NRFU (as here https://nrfu.org.ua/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/protokol-1-vid-11-16.01.2024.pdf, p. 4). This is indeed the bureaucracy we deserved! Moreover, the pretended independence of numerous governing bodies of the Foundation is a complete fiction, because 99.9% of the decisions of the Scientific Council in favor of the executive directorate of the Foundation are approved by an absolute majority of votes. Such a phenomenal "approval" would be envied even in the Russian Federation!

But is everything really so hopeless for Ukrainian science? No, it's not, because the progressive scientific community has a worthy answer to the anti-scientific bureaucracy of NRFU — STCU! The Science and Technology Center in Ukraine is an international intergovernmental organization established in 1993 to prevent the spread of knowledge and experience related to weapons of mass destruction. STCU is exempt from paying taxes in Ukraine, so the customs clearance of reagents and equipment from its grants is free. In addition, the salary is paid exactly in the same amount that was specified in the corresponding column of the project – without any extra charges and other taxes, which in the case of NRFU eat up to 50% of the grant amount. Moreover, all bureacratic procedures are limited to short quarterly reports and final reports at the end of the project. Ideally? Indeed, because only in such conditions scientists have time for creativity and breakthrough discoveries, instead of spending it on satisfying yet another bureaucratic whim.

Of course, the readers will immediately have a question: what was the point of messing around NRFU, if there was already established alternative? The fact is that the main source of funding for STCU was not the state of Ukraine, but foreign donors (USA and the EU), but since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, everything has changed dramatically. Before the war all non-military expenditures of the budget of Ukraine were paid by taxpayers, but now it is the prerogative of foreign donors. Yes, yes, all improvements in cities, doctors' salaries, and expenses for scientific research — all of them are funded from the budget of United States, European Union, Japan, and other donor countries. In fact, NRFU plays the role of a terribly ineffective mediator, which only complicates the work of scientists with its insanely bureaucratic procedures. Most importantly, it does not plan to change at all, as revealed by the hysterical reaction of the NRFU to the SASU audit.

Thus, it’s not surprising that funding of all international grant projects (EURIZON, Impress-U) in Ukraine goes through STCU, as Western donors after first meeting with NRFU management quickly understood who is who, and no longer want to have deal with this corrupt and overbureaucratized organization. So what is the point of the Foundation's existence at all, if STCU can perform its functions with much greater success during the war?

The only thing, which is needed for this is the good will of Ukrainian government and foreign donors to allocate 25 million USD of financial aid to Ukraine directly to STCU in 2025. This gesture will allow STCU transparently and effectively distribute these funds on a competitive basis for projects, based solely on their quality.

All the prerequisites for this are present – 30 years of STCU experience in this field, a base of more than 500 international experts from all fields and specialties, which was created in just one year by the titanic efforts of a small EURIZON secretariat of three. For reference, the executive directorate of NRFU consisting of 60 people failed to gather qualified experts over the last 4 years (https://nrfu.org.ua/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/protokol-10-14.11.2023.pdf,  p. 10). But the most important thing is duty-free import of devices and reagents and zero bureaucratic obstacles for scientists.

What is 25 million dollars for the state? This is the cost of four Leopard 2A6 tanks, whose lifetime on the battlefield is measured in hours. On the other hand, there are 250 projects worth $100,000 per year for the top teams of scientists (NRFU in its best times provided funding for up to 70 projects per call with an average budget of UAH 3 million/year), which is enough for both a decent salary and medium-level equipment for their work. All these steps will allow to achieve real, and not declarative, successes in fulfilling the tasks of the winning projects and will directly affect the efficiency of our economy in the coming years. This is exactly what Ukraine needs today! While NRFU must bear responsibility for its unprofessionalism and collaboration with Russia in accordance with current legislation of Ukraine.