In 2013, the Ministry of Education and Science of Armenia՛s State Committee of Science set up the “Contractual Funding for Scientific and Technical Activities” biennial research grant competition.

Applications were submitted by some members of the Council of Experts and a number of beneficiaries were also on the list. The committee did not consider this a violation, claiming that the Council of Experts reviewed every application and out of a maximum of 100 only 15 were considered.

In order to be convinced, it’s necessary to know who the other 85 competing expert applicants were.

The Ministry of Education and Science and the State Committee of Science refuse to publish their names without substantiating what law defines their secrecy status.

The State Committee of Science announced the competition for this science grant in 2013 and received 500 applications for the research project, of which 158 were determined winners.

The winners will receive financing until June 2015. They will have to publish their findings according to the rules of the contest.

Commissions of Professionals and Experts were formed per an order by the Ministry to review the applications.But the Committee confirmed that 85 percent of the applications were processed by two independent expert evaluations made by those not affiliated with the board. 

Who are the independent experts and why aren’t their names being published?

Committee’s Chief of Staff Levon Mardoyan replied that a conflict of interest would arise.

“Can you imagine what could happen in Armenia?” Mardoyan asked. “If I made an assessment of your work, or you made one of mine, we wouldn’t get along so well, there could be a stabbing or we could kill each other. You don’t know. And the same thing is done all over the world. You could know the expert’s opinion but not the identity of the person who made the assessment. You don’t see such a thing anywhere in the world in grant aid where you know the name of the expert. We’re not reinventing the wheel here—whatever’s done around the world, we do.”

He stated that every application was reviewed by two independent experts, one of which works abroad as a volunteer, without pay. Only local experts are paid due to a limited budget.

The distribution of millions of drams of a government grant has been entrusted to them.

Who will stab whom once the expert’s names are published is still unclear since Hetq asked Mardoyan not about specific experts but rather the entire list of experts.

The contest really has no need for moral regulation. It’s regulated by actual acts of law, and the names of the expert reviewers that uphold them are not secret information.

To obtain the list of experts Hetq submitted a request to the Ministry of Education and Science. Minister Armen Ashotyan, referring to the committee, replied that the secrecy of the experts is protected under “compliance with international criteria.”

Since the list of 85 experts has not been published, we have no guarantees that the independent “experts” reviewing the applications are not members of the Council of Experts. And since ministry orders 137A/K and 172A/ՔK were drafted by members of the Council of Experts, they include the same stakeholders. Four out of seven members of the “Natural Sciences” council of professionals and experts are included in the list of beneficiaries.

The Ministry of Education and Science Violated a Governmental Decision

The grant competition did not conform to Armenian criteria.  The biennial research grant competition has to conform to decision 1122-N, “Contracts for financing of scientific and technical activities (thematic)” dated November 17, 2001. According to point 3 in the decision, applications are to be reviewed by the Council of Experts.

The decision does not contain anything about independent and “secret” experts. Jurisdiction of the evaluation of applications by unknown experts was given to the State Committee of Science by Ashotyan.One of the points in ministry decree N 51-A/K stipulates that besides members of the Council of Experts, “experts included in the database of the Council of Experts” can also be a part of the evaluation process.

Professional ‘Appraisals’ of Unknown Experts

Hetq obtained the work documents for one of the experts that took part in the competition. He was not included in the list of beneficiaries. The first expert reviewed about 68.5 out of 85 applications and the second reviewed 84. The last reviewed application, an average of these two evaluations, did not make the cut. The scientist then complained. The work of the committee per the consent of the competition’s regulations was transferred to a third expert. Not only did he not raise the grade, he lowered it so much that he put into question the qualifications of the previous two experts.

Apart from making assessments, the experts also commented on the work. In the first round, one of the experts made a comment regarding the feasibility of the project, stating that “the project is clearly presented, but I consider the contents of the old results to be unnecessary.”The third expert made a comment that threw the candidate’s chances for winning out the window, stating that the “realization of the scientific project has not been presented.”

Just how the scientific project wasn’t “realized” and whether it was “clearly presented” before the appeal can only be explained by the “secret” experts.

 It is on this basis of professional appraisals that the “Investigations of the Scientific and Technical Contract” 2013 and 2014 budgets of 1,106,507,000 drams and 1,515,690,000 drams, respectfully, were allocated.

The 2015 budget will amount to 1,333,100,000 drams.