IRIS (Korea)

IRIS is Korea's integrated system for national research and development. Ministries announce their calls in it, applicants submit through it, and awarded projects are administered in it. It replaced a scatter of separate ministry and agency systems, each with its own login, formats and rules.

The consolidation followed the National R&D Innovation Act, which unified the rules across ministries. IRIS is the operational half of that reform: one set of rules needed one system to apply them, and the two only make sense together.

Announcements are terse and heavily abbreviated, and the title usually names the SPECIALISED INSTITUTION running the call rather than describing the work, which is why a list of Korean calls looks repetitive to an outsider and highly informative to a Korean researcher. The institution tells you the rules, the format and the evaluators.

Almost everything is in Korean, and the documents that matter (the detailed announcement with eligibility, budget and cost-share rules) are attachments rather than page text. Bemzu carries these records in the original with the language recorded, because a machine-translated title that quietly loses the institution name is worse than an untranslated one.

Participation generally requires a Korean legal entity as the lead. Foreign organisations take part as partners on a Korean-led project rather than applying directly, and the lead institution carries the agreement and the money.