Answers to common questions

IdeaScore is a programme-evaluation platform for universities, research parks, incubators and accelerators. It runs a call for applications end to end: configurable multi-stage forms, submission review, evaluator assignment, rubric-based scoring in rounds, IdeaScore AI, live pitch days, committee-ready reports and a portfolio module for the teams you fund. See the product overview at /product.

Three groups use it directly: programme administrators who configure and run a call, evaluators and jury members who score applications, and applicants who submit and track their status. A fourth role, the platform operator, manages organisations and plans across every tenant.

Your programme administrator sends an invite once your organisation is set up. Administrators and evaluators sign in at app.ideascore.online/login; applicants use the applicant portal at app.ideascore.online/applicant/login with a magic link, no password required.

Yes. The Starter plan is free and covers one programme with up to 50 submissions, one evaluator and one administrator, enough to configure a form and run a trial round before committing to a paid plan. See /pricing.

The stage builder lets you add as many stages as your call needs, choosing from 11 field types per field. Fields can carry conditions, such as showing a question only when an earlier answer requires it, and each stage can have resources such as guidance documents attached. See /product/applications.

Yes. Drafts are saved server-side, so an applicant can leave mid-form and resume later on any device using their magic-link sign-in, without losing progress.

Yes. Each programme has an open and close date, and administrators can set a capacity limit so the form closes automatically once it is reached, independent of the deadline.

Form changes are versioned. You can preview a new version before publishing it, and restore an earlier version if needed. Existing drafts and submissions keep the version they were created against.

Yes. The form supports direct file uploads, including pitch decks in PDF or slide format, alongside the standard field types.

Submissions appear in a table with case numbers, filters and flags, including automatic flags for likely resubmissions or duplicates. Reviewers can approve, reject, undo or reopen a submission, each with a recorded reason, and every action is captured in an audit log.

Yes. The dossier view for each submission supports notes, tags and @mentions, so reviewers can flag something for a colleague without leaving the application.

Yes, bulk actions let you approve, reject or tag a filtered set of submissions in one step, and the full submissions table can be exported to Excel for offline committee work.

The platform compares new submissions against prior ones from the same applicant or team and flags likely resubmissions or duplicates for a reviewer to confirm, rather than silently merging or rejecting them.

Administrators invite evaluators and can auto-assign submissions by declared expertise, balancing workload across the panel. Evaluators declare conflicts of interest, which the system excludes from their assignment automatically.

Each round has a rubric of weighted criteria with descriptors, so a score of, say, 46.5 out of 50 is explainable line by line. Evaluators can save a score as a draft and submit it when ready, and blind review can hide applicant identity while scoring.

Some evaluators score harder than others. Calibration applies z-score normalisation across a panel's scores so a lenient and a strict evaluator's ratings become comparable before they are combined into a ranking, which is what makes a leaderboard defensible to a committee.

Yes. Multi-round pipelines let you run, for example, a screening round and a finalist round, each with its own rubric, and promote a shortlist from one round into the next.

The leaderboard can show human scores, IdeaScore AI's scores, or a blended view, and reorders live as scores come in during pitch day or committee review.

For each application, IdeaScore AI performs live web research covering market size, competitors, IP, mentor credibility and policy alignment, and shows its sources beside the human scores rather than a single unexplained number. See /product/ideascore-ai.

No. It is a co-evaluator: its research and score sit alongside human scores on the leaderboard, and administrators choose whether the ranking shows human, AI or a blended view.

Yes, it extracts structured information from uploaded pitch decks as part of its evaluation, and it can flag applications as stale if new information should prompt a re-check.

Yes. Rule-based and AI pre-screening checks for completeness and duplicates before an application reaches a human reviewer's queue, and produces reviewer summaries and cohort benchmarking to speed up the first pass.

Yes, each plan includes a daily AI evaluation quota, and a request log shows usage. Higher quotas are available on the Professional and Enterprise plans; see /pricing.

A live session control lets an administrator start, pause and advance the schedule with a timer, while a projector board shows live standings to the room as scores are submitted. See /product/pitch-day.

Built-in reports cover the applicant funnel, sector or TRL mix, evaluator throughput and AI coverage. A committee report can be exported as .xlsx or .html, scheduled by email, and a public results page can be shared once decisions are final. See /product/reports.

Yes, reports can be scheduled by email to a distribution list, so a committee or sponsor receives an updated funnel or throughput report without anyone exporting it manually.

Applicants sign in with a magic link sent to their email, no password to remember. From the portal they can see a status timeline for their application.

Yes, up until the programme's deadline. After that, editing is closed, matching the version the review committee sees. An applicant can also withdraw a submission from the portal at any time before a decision is recorded.

Starter is free for a first programme. Programme pass covers a single call for 12 months. Professional suits an ongoing innovation office running several programmes a year. Enterprise covers institutions and networks with self-hosting, higher AI quotas and a custom agreement. See /pricing for current limits and prices.

Yes. IdeaScore runs on the platform's own cloud at app.ideascore.online, or on an institution's own server via Docker or Apache and PM2. Several institutions run it self-hosted on their own servers today.

A subscription moves through trial, active, a grace period, and then read-only, so a programme's existing data stays visible and exportable even if renewal is delayed, rather than disappearing.

Billing is invoiced directly by the IdeaScore team; there is no self-service card checkout yet. Contact us from /pricing or /contact and we will set up your organisation and send an invoice.

Access is role-based across platform admin, organisation owner, programme admin, evaluator and applicant roles. Sessions lock out after inactivity, and sensitive edits require re-authentication. Every review and decision action is written to an audit log. See /security.

Either on IdeaScore's own cloud, or on your institution's own server if you choose self-hosting, which keeps data residency entirely within your infrastructure. Regular backups run in either case.

No certifications are claimed today. Our practices are role-based access, session lockout, re-authentication for sensitive edits, an audit trail and backups, and self-hosting for institutions that need direct control of their data. See /security and /trust.

Not yet. API access, including read access to programmes, submissions and scores and webhooks for status changes, is on the roadmap. See /api for what it will cover.