Bulgarian finance agency accused of bad practice

Former Director claimed his efforts to reform National Science Foundation science have affected was.Emil Horozov has finished as the head of the Bulgarian home financing agency.M. YANCHEV

Science in Bulgaria, a cash deficiency already hobbled and reforms of the Communist-era institutions, is a new setback stalled faced. Its main source of cash, the Bulgarian National Science Fund (NSF), has accused the mismanagement has been - by his own former Director Emil Horozov. An investigation on behalf of Horozov found widespread irregularities in the NSF processing of funding requests in 2008 and 2009, including by non-qualified evaluators and selectively ignore reviewer comments specific projects to promote.

As a summary of the study was published online in March, four months after the report of the country's Ministry of education, youth and science, was delivered angrily Bulgarian scientists accused the Minister, Sergei Ignatov, suppressed the results.

Ignatov, who became Minister in 2009, says that he had the report not suppressed, and it passed to a Committee of the Ministry of finance in December 2010 had to verify the claims of Fund mismanagement. "Such serious accusations need to professional analysis," he says. "I expect a response in the very near future get."

Horozov, a recognized mathematician at the University of Sofia, the study commissioned a few weeks after becoming Director of the NSF in January 2010. He found that many of the NSF funding decisions seemed to be made in a mysterious way. So he appointed a working group of the eight independent scientists to examine, as a referee and selection of nearly 2,000 proposals competing for a share of 250 million leva (US$ 181,000) in the past two years. The Committee has a detailed report in October 2010 that was passed to the Ministry of the following month.

The report claimed that no science had many of the 230 reviewers were selected to evaluate the proposals degree or academic position. "A Professor of English reviewed a paper in biochemistry," says Horozov. Each was allowed to choose the team grant proposals, he or she the whole list would check, a practice which is unheard in funding agencies. When team for each check that produced them have been paid, Horozov believes that this system by some critics, their fees used boost may have been. "More than one arbitrator, including those without any form of scientific qualification, could stand position applications only two months."

In 2009, approximately 200 projects for funding have been selected. In 82 cases, the investigation, but found that an or drawn more from the reviews into consideration; You were, would all except three projects have been the funding limit. Although not illegal, says this is certainly bad practice, Horozov. About 50 reviews relating to unfunded projects were found have been denied. All of them, higher values than the projects was averages - had she included 12 of the projects would be thrown were the funding threshold. "If the allocation is made of money at random, the results would fairer, have", says Horozov, added that "Bulgaria is a poor country." If you had has the very small research grants have been issued, it had much of the good. "

The investigation also showed that some of the referee reviewed competitors apps, violating conflict of-interest rules. In addition were some bundled together thematically unrelated, low-rated proposals, a higher total factor, give, which was then used for each project type justify full funding. The report also claims that the NSF a company heavily inflated the price of 186,000 leva for an online grant proposal template system without putting a tender, paid as required by the law.

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After waiting for more than three months, a response from the Ministry of science, took Horozov as NSF Director on 23 February, say that the Ignatov had hindered his efforts to prevent further corruption in the Agency. Horozov says that if he was Director, he understood, that he the power to the reform of the NSF, modeling its structure on that used by successful European research funding agencies. He put a proposal to the Minister in October 2010, but says that he received no reply. Ignatov says that he received no concrete proposal, but, that his Ministry always busy with many other reforms had been.

Two weeks ago Horozov published a summary of the study on its Web site (see go.nature.com/exqfy5) and its contents in the open lectures at the University of Sofia and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences described. On 24 March the civilian movement for the support of science and education in Bulgaria, a grassroots organization of academics, called for a declaration of support for Horozov and Ignatov to resign.

Pavel Kerchev, Bulgarian PhD student at the University of Leeds, UK, says that is the scandal as no surprise. "Bulgaria is a small company and scientists are known for a long time that the NSF did not properly work." "It was only a matter of time until someone had the courage to make it public."

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