Consolidated version effective 01-01-2017
APPROVED
Resolution No. VIII-21 of 26 May 2014 of the
Research Council of Lithuania (amended by
Resolution No. VIII-13 of 4 July 2015, Resolution No. VIII-18 of 28 November 2016 of the Research Council of Lithuania)
GENERAL RULES ON THE APPOINTMENT AND ACTIVITIES OF EXPERTS OF THE RESEARCH COUNCIL OF LITHUANIA
CHAPTER I
GENERAL PROVISIONS
1.The present General Rules on the Appointment and Activities of Experts (hereinafter – the Rules) of the Research Council of Lithuania (hereinafter – Council) establish the requirements for candidate experts and experts of the Council, the principles for the formation of expert panels, the principles for expert activity and expert work, and the provisions on remuneration for expert work.
2.In order to perform the functions prescribed by the Regulations of the Research Council of Lithuania approved by Resolution No. XI-625 of 22 December 2009 of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania the Council engages expert panels and individual experts.
3.An expert panel is formed or an individual expert is appointed by the Committee of Humanities and Social Sciences or the Committee of Natural and Technical Sciences of the Council (hereinafter – the Council) from the candidate experts and the experts of the Council.
4.The composition of the expert panel set up by the Committee or an individual expert shall be approved by the Board of the Council.
5. An expert panel can also be set up or an individual expert may be appointed by the Chairman of the Council in the following exceptional cases:
5.1. when an evaluation must be completed, or the conclusions must be filed within 10 or fewer working days, and the Committee is not in a position to form an expert panel or appoint an individual expert for the following objective reasons:
5.1.1. when to convene a meeting of the Committees(s) at the Council, or using electronic means, is not possible because of the short time allocated for carrying out the evaluation;
5.1.2. because of the schedule of the meetings of the Committee(s) set up in advance;
5.2. when the carrying out of the evaluation and producing of conclusions require experts in the research areas assigned to the competence of both Committees, and/or experts- practitioners.
6.A task to the expert panel or the object to be evaluated shall be appointed by the Committee, or the Chairman of the Council in the case referred to in Item 5 of the Rules. An object to be evaluated can be:
6.1. an object in the competitive funding area of research and (social, cultural) development (ordinarily – a proposal or a project report, hereinafter – a competitive object);
6.2. an object of research and (social, cultural) development that is not assigned to the area of competitive funding (hereinafter – non-competitive object).
CHAPTER II
CANDIDATES TO EXPERTS AND EXPERTS OF THE COUNCIL
SECTION I
CANDIDATES TO EXPERTS OF THE COUNCIL
7. A person seeking to become an expert of the Council, or a person proposed by a foreign institution engaged in a competitive funding of research (social, cultural) development, as specified in Item 16 of the Rules, shall submit an application in the form set forth by the Chairman of the Council in the Expert Database (hereinafter – EDB), and grant consent to publish the data in the manner set forth in Item 40 of the Rules. The EDB accumulates personal and contact data of the candidates to experts and the experts of the Council, the data required to legalise employment relations, the data on the expert competences of the person, his employment places, additional data, also the data about the expert activities, additional data and the data on the expert activity at the Council, and a copy of the Undertaking of an Expert of the Research Council of Lithuania (Item 29 of the Rules).
8.A person may seek to be a research (art) expert, or an expert-practitioner.
9.An expert in the area of humanities and social sciences (candidates to research experts) shall be subject to the following minimum requirements:
9.1. following the granting of the doctoral degree the expert has published no less than 15 research articles in peer-reviewed scientific publications (periodic, continued or one-off), or has published a non-dissertation based monograph, or a study, and not less than 10 articles in peer-reviewed (periodic, continuous or one-off) research publications, or has produced a significant impact upon the development of a science branch.
9.2. the expert has in the course of the past five years published significant international publications;
9.3. the expert has in the course of the past five years acquired the experience in expert work, and/or the experience in leading research projects and/or international work.
10.An expert in the area of physical, agriculture, biomedical and technology sciences (candidates to research experts) shall be subject to the following minimum requirements:
10.1 the expert has published no less than 15 research articles in peer-reviewed publications with foreign periodic scientific journals with an impact factor (IF) in Journal Citation Report (JCR), or has produced a significant impact upon the development of a science branch.
10.2. the expert has in the course of the past five years published significant international publications;
10.3. the expert has in the course of the past five years acquired the experience in expert work, and/or the experience in leading research projects and/or international work.
11.An art expert (a candidate to art experts) shall be subject to a minimum requirement to be a recognised artist-creator, or an art performer who has created especially significant works of art and culture that have earned wide recognition of Lithuanian and/or foreign society, and were honoured with prestigious international or national prizes, and other high and honourable awards – and/or have trained distinguished artists.
12.An expert-practitioner (candidate to expert-practitioners) shall be a recognised expert in the respective area and shall meet at least one of the following minimum requirements:
12.1. have at least five years’ experience of working at a company or an institution engaged in research and/or (social, cultural) development and/or innovation activities;
12.2. have at least five years’ experience in managerial position at a research and studies institution;
12.3. have at least five years’ experience in public administration work in an area related to research and studies;
12.4. have at least five years’ experience in managerial position in the area of research organisation and international cooperation in the area of scientific cooperation.
13. The applications of the persons seeking to become candidates to experts of the Council are examined at the Committee according to their respective competence. The deliberation of the candidates at the Committee is confidential. The applicant shall be notified of the results of the deliberation at the Committee by e-mail; in the case of a negative decision, the reasons for the decision shall be provided.
14.Where according to a decision of the Committee the person meets the requirements for a candidate to science (art) experts, or a candidate to expert-practitioners, the person is recognised to be a candidate expert. An application of a person who has repeatedly applied to be recognised as an expert of the Council, shall be deliberated at the Committee no earlier than within one year from the date of passing the previous decision of the Committee.
15.Every six years from the recognition of the status of a Council expert, the Committee shall review whether or not the candidate meets the minimum requirements. In case the Committee recognises that the person does not meet the minimum requirements applicable to experts of the Council (Items 9–12 of the Rules), the person concerned shall be notified by e-mail that he had been eliminated as a candidate to experts.
16. Foreign institutions engaged in competitive funding of research and (social, cultural) development may also be candidates to experts of the Council, as well as a person proposed and approved by the Committee.
17.Candidates to the experts of the Council may update the data held in the EDB at any time. Every two years from the approval or the revision of the status of a candidate expert, the candidates shall be proposed to update the data at the EDB, where they had not done that previously.
SECTION II
COUNCIL EXPERTS
18.An expert of the Council is considered to be a person who has been by the relevant decision of the Committee recognised a candidate to the experts of the Council, or has in the course of the past three years carried out at least one expert evaluation.
19.Every six years from the recognition of the status of a Council expert, the Committee shall review whether or not the expert of the Council meets the minimum requirements. In case the Committee recognises that the expert of the Council does not meet the minimum requirements for an expert (Items 9–12 of the Rules), the person concerned shall be notified by e-mail that he had been eliminated as an expert of the Council.
20.Experts of the Council may update the data held in the EDB at any time. Every two years from the approval or the revision of the status of the expert, the candidates shall be proposed to update the data at the EDB, where they had not done that previously.
CHAPTER III
PRINCIPLES FOR THE FORMING AN EXPERT GROUP
21.Candidates to a group of the experts shall be selected from the candidate experts of the Council, and the experts of the Council.
22.When forming a group of experts account is taken of the object to be evaluated, and the task set to evaluate the object; other matters considered include the expert competences required to ensure that the object is evaluated in a quality manner, and the expert abilities required to successfully complete the task. An expert group shall be made up of individual candidates to the expert group holding the required competences.
23.For the purpose of setting up an expert group account is taken of whether or not the candidate to the expert group has any related competences that are not associated with the object to be evaluated, or the task set for the purpose of its evaluation, but may be of use when carrying out the expert work.
24.When setting up on expert group the aim is to ensure that the expert work of the candidates to the expert group excludes any conflict of interests.
CHAPTER IV
PRINCIPLES OF EXPERT ACTIVITIES
25.When carrying out the work assigned to him the expert is guided by the following principles:
25.1. professionalism – an expert is required to assess the objects in his research field and in the related directions, behaving very responsibly and taking into account the most recent achievements in the fields concerned; the expert shall assess the competence and the experience, and estimate the value of the object to be evaluated in an objective manner.
25.2. impartiality – when expressing his opinion or proposing a solution, an expert shall be guided by objective criteria rather than personal considerations, and shall not follow any advance opinion (whether positive or negative) about the object being evaluation or the applicants;
25.3. confidentiality – all the material related to the expert evaluation may be used only for the purpose of the evaluation and its improvement; it shall be prohibited to disclose the opinions of members of the group expressed in adopting the decisions of the expert evaluation, or part or all of the evaluation results;
25.4. integrity – an expert shall act in good faith, when evaluating the object shall act with the sense of responsibility for the task assigned, and be guided by the ideals of pursuit of truth; and shall treat the other members of the group, and the other colleagues with respect and dignity;
25.5. transparency – for the purpose of the evaluation the expert shall follow the relevant published effective legal acts, and carry out the evaluation following clearly defined procedures; the expert shall seek to ensure that the evaluation he has carried is trusted; all applicants must receive clear and reasonable conclusions regarding the object of the evaluation; the applicants must have a possibility to provide explanations regarding the evaluation, if that is necessary;
25.6. equality – the expert evaluation may not be affected by the gender, race, nationality, language, origin, social condition, religion, belief or approaches, age, sexual orientation, disability, ethnicity, religion, if that is known to the experts.
26.An expert may not represent the interests of research and studies institutions or business, overestimate or underestimate the achievements and the importance of any field or branch of science, shall be guided exclusively by their own competence and carry out the work in an appropriate and timely manner. An expert shall remain anonymous and shall ensure the anonymity of the other members of the panel, unless other legal acts provide differently, and shall respect and protect the copyrights of the object being evaluated, and the related intellectual property.
27.Following the principles set out above each member of the group shall build the relations within the expert panel on the basis of good faith, respect, collegiality and tolerance to the opinion of the others.
28.The leader of the expert panel shall ensure compliance of the expert panel with the principles set out above. Any individual expert shall comply with the principles set out above to the extent such principles apply to the individual concerned.
29.Prior to starting to work as an expert of the Council each member of the expert panel or an individual expert shall have signed the Undertaking of an Expert of the Research Council of Lithuania as presented in the Annex to the Rules.
CHAPTER V
KEY PRINCIPLES OF THE EXPERT WORK
30. Depending on the object concerned the evaluation is organised in accordance with the relevant legal acts governing the expert evaluation procedure and approved by the Council.
31.The work of an expert panel consists of the individual or group evaluation of the object to be evaluated. In the cases when an object is being evaluated by an individual expert, only an individual evaluation is performed.
32.Ordinarily, both for an individual evaluation and a group evaluation the object is evaluated according to the approved evaluation criteria using the same evaluation form. No evaluation form is required when evaluating a non-competitive object.
33. The work of the expert panel is organised in accordance with the legal acts governing the procedure for the expert evaluation approved by the Council.
CHAPTER VI
REMUNERATION FOR EXPERT WORK
34.In the cases referred to in Items 4 and 5 of the Rules, upon the approval (forming) of an expert panel, upon the approval (appointment) of an individual expert, a copyright agreement shall be concluded with the expert panel or an individual expert.
35.The royalty due to the expert panel that evaluated the competitive object, as well as the part of the royalty allocated to the expert-in-charge shall be ordinarily established in accordance with the Description of the Procedure for the Computation of the Remuneration of Experts for the Evaluation of Proposals and Reports approved by the Board of the Council. In other cases the amount of the royalty for an expert evaluation, and the share of the royalty allocated to the expert-in-charge shall be set by the Board of the Council, or the Chairman having assessed the competence of the experts required for performing the work assigned and the scope of the work performed by them.
36.Normally the amount of the royalty of each member of the expert panel evaluating proposals and project reports is fixed in accordance with the Description referred to in Item 35 of the Rules. In other cases, the amount of the royalty of each member of the expert panel shall be set by the expert-in-charge, having assessed the quality and the scope of the work performed by the expert concerned.
CHAPTER VII
FINAL PROVISIONS
37.With a view to improving the quality of expert work the performance of the experts is subject to evaluation. The performance of the experts is evaluated in accordance with a form approved by the Chairman of the Council, and all the evaluation results are accumulated in the EDB.
38.The expert work of each member of the expert panel shall be evaluated by the expert-in-charge.
39.Having received any request from other institutions to propose experts, the Council shall propose the candidate experts from the candidate experts and experts of the Council.
40. In the first quarter of the odd-numbered years, the Council in its website shall provide the list of experts who performed expert tasks during the last two immediately preceding calendar years, i.e. who completed expert tasks no earlier than on the first day of the penultimate odd-numbered year and no later than on the last day of the even-numbered year. The surnames of the experts shall be arranged in alphabetical order, indicating the first letter(s) of the expert's first name(s). The Council may additionally publish a list of experts under conditions other than specified in the present paragraph, when it is provided for by other legislation.
41. An expert of the Council who has violated the principles underlying the activity of the expert, or has failed to notify a conflict of interests, and thus have breached the Undertaking of an expert of the Research Council of Lithuania (Item 29 of the Rules), shall be at a relevant decision removed from the list of the experts, and shall not be allowed to seek becoming an expert of the Council for three years from the Council decision date.
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