Our Excellence Programs

What Does Excellence Mean?

Excellence is not defined by publication performance alone, it also encompasses innovation, responsibility, diversity, and impact beyond disciplinary boundaries. In assessing excellence and providing guidance on how to present your achievements, we emphasize both dimensions.

TRADITIONAL EVALUATION CRITERIA

ADDITIONAL EVALUATION CRITERIA

  • H-Index, Journal Impact Factor
  • External Funding
  • Career Stages, Mobility
  • Academic Awards
  • Supervision / Teaching
  • Quality of Content
  • Additional Research Results and Data
  • Additional Contributions to Science
  • Science Communication
  • Consideration of Personal Circumstances
  • Equal Opportunities & Diversity-Sensitive Factors

Our Commitment

A transparent and high-quality approach to evaluating scientific performance and individual potential, taking both pillars into account.

How We Foster Excellence

Within our Excellence Programs, we offer:

  • Individual counseling and support
  • Interdisciplinary perspectives
  • An assessment of scientific performance in line with the principles of DORA
  • A DEI-sensitive approach

Scientific Recognition as Part of Our Excellence Strategy

We honor outstanding achievements through prizes, awards, and specially tailored programs designed to make excellence visible, strengthen talent, and sharpen the research profile of Forschungszentrum Jülich. We provide targeted support to early-career researchers in shaping their work at the highest level. Our formats enable outstanding scientific development – at every stage of the career path.

Jülich Excellence Prize

Since 2009, the Jülich Excellence Award has honoured outstanding young scientists for exceptional achievements during their doctorate and early postdoc phase.

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Young Excellent Scientist Program

Das Young Excellent Scientist Program (YESP) fördert ausgewählte exzellente Jülicher Postdocs, die eine Führungsposition in der Wissenschaft anstreben. Wir machen Ihnen als Postdoc besondere Angebote auf ihrem Karriereweg.

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Young Investigator Groups

One of the FZJ's declared goals is to expands its expertise by giving outstanding scientists the opportunity to acquire leadership skills while at the same time sharpening their scientific profile. We established the Young Investigators Programme to promote this.

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Since 2009, the Jülich Excellence Award has honoured outstanding young scientists for exceptional achievements during their doctorate and early postdoc phase.

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DORA & DEI – Our Foundational Values

Forschungszentrum Jülich supports the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA). Our goal is to ensure that research is evaluated fairly, transparently, and in all its diversity, independent of the Journal Impact Factor.

For Early-Career Scientists
  • Scientific quality is assessed not by the place of publication, but by the content and originality of the work.
  • A broad range of research outputs (e.g. datasets, software, methods, open science contributions, community engagement) are taken into account.
  • Qualitative criteria such as creativity, teamwork, or interdisciplinary approaches are also part of the assessment.
For Supervisors

For us, excellence means quality, responsibility, and diversity. We foster excellence not only through our programs – we also provide guidance:

  • when you apply for funding opportunities
  • on how to present and highlight key excellence criteria
  • in preparing applications and finding the right language
Last Modified: 15.09.2025