EXTERNAL REVIEW OF THE QUALITY OF THE SCIENTIFIC OUTPUTS OF THE EUROPEAN FOOD SAFETY AUTHORITY

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) instituted a two stage review of the quality of scientific outputs in areas covered by EFSA’s Scientific Directorates, and its Scientific Committee and Advisory Forum Unit. Following the Self-review, the External Review Working Group (ERWG) comprised of 23 experts, met in Parma (Oct. ’11) to agree on, and fine tune, operating procedures and timelines for the review of the areas of activity. A total of 49 scientific outputs, which were randomly selected by EFSA, generated by 16 Science Units were reviewed. These outputs were allocated by Prof Naughton, as Chairman, for review by the ERWG with each output being reviewed independently by two reviewers. Each output was reviewed using the pre-determined template prior to a collation of reports by the coordinator allocated to each Unit to generate the Unit report of discrepancies in scores for each of the 16 areas. During the second meeting of the ERWG in Parma (Nov. ’11) in depth discussions were held. Discordant reviews were discussed, notably this activity was valued by the ERWG and in line with normal peer review processes and the finalized scores were prepared. The assembled ERWG jointly prepared the final key sections of the review report including the recommendations and discussion. The major outcome of the review was that a high proportion of the outputs were well constructed, transparent and easily understood, and this best practice should be promulgated in line with EFSA Transparency Guidance. An additional major finding was that a number of the recommendations from ERWG 2009 did not appear to have been promulgated. Notwithstanding this result, the ERWG provided a series of recommendations to EFSA. In synopsis, these relate to the following key aspects of the outputs: i) a more in depth consideration of uncertainties and limitations, ii) outputs should be subject to more rigorous proofreading, iii) adequate support should be provided to the panels to avoid recurring issues, and iv) that patterns in low scores should be analysed and highlighted in order to circumvent future repetition of these issues. In summary, the majority of outputs reviewed were of high quality with the remainder failing to fully demonstrate adherence with the EFSA Transparency Guidance.