This week: research integrity, space skills, advanced materials and more

R&I funding

More than 100 European associations representing organisations that carry out research and innovation have called on the EU to “significantly increase” the budget of its next R&I funding programme. At the same time, the EU member states themselves should, “at a minimum”, finally meet their long-missed target to spend 3 per cent of their GDP on R&I, the groups, including the European Association of Research and Technology Organisations, said. EU investment in R&I “significantly lags behind [that of] its global competitors”, said signatories including Business Europe and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations.

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EU budget

The European University Association has expressed concern about the likely budget for the EU’s next research and innovation programme, saying it is a bad sign that a formal opinion from national representatives did not recommend a specific figure. “In the current climate, where future R&I investments are under significant pressure, it is disappointing that the European Research and Innovation Area Committee did not take a stance on the overall budget for FP10,” the EUA said. “The fact that R&I ministries do not advocate for a larger budget does not bode well for the negotiations.”

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Framework programme 10

The EU’s next research and innovation programme needs to devote “more efforts” to supporting interdisciplinary R&I, according to the association of major research funding and performing organisations, Science Europe. In a position paper, the association said there was a need for “truly interdisciplinary” funding calls in Framework Programme 10, which is due to start in 2028. These FP10 funding calls should “include perspectives from the arts, social sciences and humanities from the outset”, Science Europe said. Furthermore, ASSH disciplines should in general be “better integrated” in the programme, including in the development of the work programmes that set out funding calls, as well as on proposal evaluation panels.

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Horizon Europe

Potential beneficiaries of the EU’s research and innovation programme lack awareness of its funding opportunities and the steps taken to simplify it, according to a new European Parliament study. Based on surveys, the study reported that “approximately half of the consulted stakeholders [were] unaware of the modifications introduced under the Common Model Grant Agreement or the strategic plan”. These were introduced to Horizon Europe to simplify its grant agreements and set out its priorities, respectively. The study concluded that better communication is needed to ensure stakeholders are well informed. It suggested that National Contact Points could play a part.

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Research security

The research sector may not be ready for the challenges it faces around security, the president of the European Research Council has warned. Maria Leptin issued the warning in a keynote speech she was invited to give at a meeting of research ministers from the G7 group of leading global economies. Geopolitical trends mean that researchers are set to have to “protect” some of their findings against being “compromised”, she said, reflecting movements already underway. But she added: “I am not sure we and our institutions are sufficiently prepared and equipped for that, or that the task of assessing security risks should be imposed on researchers or institutions.”

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G7 collaboration

Science ministers from the G7 group of leading global economies have agreed on the need for stronger collaboration among themselves and, more broadly, on matters including research infrastructures and advanced technologies. Ministers from the member nations of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US met in Italy on 9-11 July with the aim of increasing collaboration. “To face our current challenges, we need to foster stronger collaboration among like-minded countries. This meeting reaffirmed our shared commitment to promote progress in research and innovation, aligned with the principles of openness, security, freedom and integrity,” said EU R&I commissioner Iliana Ivanova, who also attended the event.

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Gene editing

The European Commission’s plan for the EU to reduce its regulatory oversight of some gene-edited crops “is scientifically justified”, the European Food Safety Authority has confirmed. The plan, which is being considered by EU politicians, is intended to make the EU’s decades-old rules on genetically modified foods better reflect more than 20 years of scientific progress and enable the bloc to produce crops with better traits, such as increased resistance to drought. Efsa was asked by the European Parliament to review concerns expressed by the French food regulator, and it found that the concerns were baseless, except for a call for greater clarity.

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Picture of the week

Image: European Space Agency

On 9 July a collaboration of the European space sector successfully flew the new Ariane 6 launcher for the first time. The inaugural flight was much anticipated not only because it had been delayed for several years but also because, in the meantime, Europe had been reliant on US launchers to loft satellites and other craft into space.

Singapore ties

The European Commission has asked EU governments to allow formal negotiations on Singapore becoming associated to the EU’s research and innovation funding programme, Horizon Europe. Commission executive vice-president Margrethe Vestager announced the move via social media during a visit to the country in which she met with its deputy prime minister Heng Swee Keat. Vestager said they discussed “our mutual interest in this partnership and bringing [European] and [Singaporean] scientific excellence together”. Singapore has been holding informal talks on association to the programme’s second pillar, which is focused on societal challenges and industrial competitiveness.

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R&I missions

The EU’s research and innovation-based ‘missions’ on cancer, cities, climate change, soil and water should be moved outside the bloc’s R&I funding programme due to their reliance on other funding sources and delivery needs, the Young European Research Universities Network has recommended. Yerun said the EU should make missions a “separate, horizontal and more ambitious programme outside of the [R&I] programme…to allow the use of other synergistic funding mechanisms and the development of related policy initiatives through additional instruments”. The missions have been criticised for trying to achieve too much with too little resource.

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University alliances

The cross-border alliances of higher education institutions being funded by the EU should be allowed to “undertake an iterative experimental cycle” in which they explore ideas and drop ones that do not work out, the Cesaer group of European science and technology universities has recommended. The EU is now funding 64 international alliances involving more than 560 higher education institutions under its European Universities Initiative scheme, which is intended to help institutions collaborate on projects such as joint campuses, courses and posts. “Alliances should not be confined to a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach,” Cesaer said.

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Industry research

The EU’s next research and innovation programme should have a specific governing body dedicated to steering its industry-related funding, the representative body Business Europe has urged. Framework programme 10 as a whole “should have a significant focus on industrial R&I, be more business and competitiveness-oriented, and offer more attractive conditions for industry participation”, the association argued. It said the public-private partnerships funded by the programme, in areas such as medicines development, “should be the focal point…as they enable important risk-sharing, long-term impact and collaboration between stakeholders”.

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Research integrity

Science Europe, the group of major research funding and performing organisations, has adopted a “renewed focus” on research integrity, describing it as a “cornerstone” of research. Such a renewal is “right” at this time due to the “challenges and strains” research systems are facing at present, it said. The group encouraged the exchange of best practices on research integrity between organisations, and suggested they should document their investigations into misconduct and publish these documents in an anonymised form, when possible. “The data published should include types of cases investigated, outcome of the procedures, and measures taken,” it said.

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Space skills

The EU is considering which scientific skills it will need to support to boost the competitiveness of its space sector. Draft conclusions developed for the Council of the EU member state governments to adopt invite the European Commission to suggest which skills are needed. The conclusions highlight the importance of space to the EU’s economy, security and social objectives, and add that, to build an agile and innovative space sector, the EU “needs a robust strategy for upskilling, reskilling, attracting and retaining talent”. Technical, strategic, regulatory and diplomatic skills are all needed, according to the draft conclusions, as is investment in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

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Bioeconomy partnership

The EU has drawn up outline plans for its proposed central and eastern European research and innovation partnership on the circular bioeconomy—the sustainable use and reuse of biological materials for economic activities. Draft conclusions intended for adoption by the Council of the EU member state governments say there is a need to boost R&I cooperation among the CEE countries and that circular bioeconomy initiatives could help the EU meet its environmental targets while boosting its competitiveness. The conclusions say that an existing EU-funded R&I initiative called Bioeast, focused on agriculture, aquaculture and forestry in the CEE countries, could form the basis of the partnership.

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Horizon evaluations

The EU should change how it evaluates proposals to its next research and innovation funding programme, according to the European Association of Innovation Consultants. The EAIC said the scores that evaluators give to project proposals, which determine which projects are funded, should be weighted “based on the relevance of [the evaluators’] expertise with regards to different evaluation sub-criteria”. It also said the three main evaluation criteria—excellence, impact and quality of implementation—may need to be redefined to reduce “confusion among evaluators” and to help deliver more consistent scoring.

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Advanced materials

The European Commission has launched a call for applications to join a new EU advice group on advanced materials. It said the “group will coordinate efforts to meet future needs for advanced materials in Europe and is key to building a single advanced materials ecosystem”. EU R&I commissioner Iliana Ivanova said: “The Technology Council for Advanced Materials is part of our strategy to work together with the member states, research organisations and industries to identify and address common needs.” The group is expected to consist of representatives from ministries, academia, research and technology organisations, industry and the Commission. Applications are due by 9 September.

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Experts recommend long-term investment in education, infrastructure and skills to narrow divide

Improving the innovation performance of lagging European countries will require long-term investment in higher education, research infrastructures and knowledge transfer skills, experts have told Research Professional News.

On 8 July, the 2024 European Innovation Scoreboard from the European Commission showed that the EU as a whole is gradually improving its innovation performance but that there is a persistent divide between its leaders and laggards. This roughly follows geographical lines, the Commission flagged, with northern and western Europe leading the way and the east and south trailing.

Denmark and Sweden, which again ranked first and second in terms of EU innovation performance, are improving in a “fast and steady” way, the Commission said, while Romania, Bulgaria and Latvia at the rear are “progressing at a slower rate than the EU average”. Hence, at the poles, “disparities have become wider”.

Experts said many factors affect innovation, and that driving improvement will not be easy.

Need for skills and competences

Toril Nagelhus Hernes, pro-rector for innovation at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, said that the scoreboard and similar rankings use metrics in a way that paints a simplified picture, but that they can be helpful for highlighting the factors at play.

She said the education level of a country and its investments in research are “very important” determinants of innovation performance but that the “ability to utilise the new knowledge from research, digitalisation and new technologies is essential”. Therefore, “skills, competence and capacity” are also needed.

Research and higher education institutions are fundamental for “bridging people, companies, the public sector and countries”, and so countries should “invest more in their own universities, but also stimulate collaboration with other countries that are at the frontiers in education, science and technologies” to improve their innovation performance.

Such collaboration could be boosted through funding schemes and mobility, she suggested.

Persistent investment required

Erkko Autio, chair in technology transfer and entrepreneurship at Imperial College London, said the scoreboard results are consistent with similar rankings. He warned that “there is no miracle cure to turning innovation performance around overnight”.

“Becoming a strong innovation performer requires a persistent, long-term commitment and policy effort that focuses on two elements in particular: developing human capital and infrastructure,” he said.

The former requires long-term investment in higher education institutions, particularly scientific ones, and the latter requires investment in R&D institutions but also innovation support infrastructures “such as new venture accelerators and entrepreneurial ecosystems”.

Investment in digital technologies and infrastructures is particularly important, he said, because these “are a key enabler of scale-ups and business model innovation, which is a very important form of innovation today”.

Countries are innovation leaders because they have “well-rounded” systems, he said, with strengths across higher education and infrastructure as well as high public and private investment in R&D. “Once all the necessary ingredients are in place, they tend to reinforce one another.”

Autio said Estonia, which improved its performance on the scoreboard the most since 2017, was a “great example” of how “decades of hard work and investment in promoting entrepreneurship and digital technologies and infrastructures in particular” can pay off.

Understanding, institutional strength and digitisation

“Without world-class research and educational institutions and universities, it is not possible to develop a strong innovation ecosystem,” agreed Martin Vechev, a professor of computer science at ETH Zurich and the founder of a major computing research centre in Bulgaria. This is because such institutions attract talented innovators, he said, adding that the “general issue in Eastern Europe, Bulgaria being an example, is that it lacks strong focus on world-class research”.

“I do not think it is a question of the R&I sector, it is a question of national priorities. In general, there is a lack of understanding in Eastern Europe of how world-class innovation works,” he said. “To complete globally, a country must develop strong research and education first at the university or institute level; everything else follows.”

The Bulgarian government has tried to address this issue by helping to found Insait, the computer science and AI institution Vechev leads. He said the centre is attracting talent to Sofia, establishing partnerships with major tech companies and creating start-ups. “It really is the only way to properly bootstrap a high-tech ecosystem.” 

The emphasis on digitisation was supported by Lina Jacobsen, an associate professor of management at Aarhus University in Denmark and co-founder of the Danish Innovation Index. Commenting on Denmark’s leading performance, she said the index showed a “clear trend” that “Danish companies and those operating in Denmark are at the forefront of digital innovation”. 

Fellow index co-founder Darius-Aurel Frank, also an associate professor of management at Aarhus University, said that Danish companies are eager to adopt new technologies such as artificial intelligence. He said the challenge for companies “lies in translating the use of these technologies into tangible value for consumers”.

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Back page gossip from the 18 July issue of Research Europe

Ten years ago, the EU was waiting to see which portfolios would be handed to the new crop of European Commission political leaders due to take office in November, much as the bloc is today following the European Parliament election that took place in June.

Back in July 2014, research and innovation sector representatives were concerned that responsibility for R&I could be placed in separate commissioner portfolios.

“The separation between innovation and research would be bad news, because having them together has forced people to put themselves in a different state of mind,” Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, at the time president of the European Research Council, told Research Europe.

Peter Tindemans, then secretary-general of the researcher association EuroScience, said: “It’s a real threat, because it seems to be being seriously considered, and if it happens it will really backtrack on positive developments.”

The move was thought to be under consideration due to the need to find enough portfolios for what was at that time a recently expanded crew of 28 commissioners.

Today, of course, there are only 27 commissioners as a result of Brexit. But in the previous political cycle, R&I were combined, with responsibility not only for education but also for culture, youth and sport in the portfolios of first Mariya Gabriel and then Iliana Ivanova.

Now the fear among sector leaders is that R&I and education might be separated. Were culture, youth and sport to be carved off, the sector would probably not protest very heavily.

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Gains in collaboration come with warnings for the future

Science ministers from the G7 group of the world’s richest democracies shared warm words in Italy this month, reaffirming, as EU research and innovation commissioner Iliana Ivanova put it afterwards, a “shared commitment to promote progress in R&I, aligned with the principles of openness, security, freedom and integrity”. With Ivanova—who also attended the event—stressing the need to “foster stronger collaboration among like-minded countries”, it has been encouraging to see two positive moves on this in relation to the EU’s R&I framework programme.

The first, the Commission asking EU governments to allow the start of formal talks on Singapore joining the current programme, Horizon Europe, marks the latest step towards the programme’s greater internationalisation. Singapore, like recent recruits Canada and New Zealand, and almost-there South Korea, is eyeing the programme’s second pillar, focused on societal challenges and industrial competitiveness. The move is even more welcome after the news that talks with Australia have—for now at least—ended without association.

Swiss movement

Closer to home, the European Commission has decided to allow Switzerland-based researchers to apply for more of the European Research Council’s major grant types for 2025, with calls opening this month. This offers a hopeful sign that the country is nearing a return to the R&I programme, of which the ERC is part, after wider disagreement between the Swiss government and the EU led the country to be frozen out of Horizon Europe.

While Switzerland-based researchers will not be able to claim any grants won until association to Horizon Europe has been agreed, allowing them to apply in anticipation suggests there is growing political confidence in a resolution. This is particularly the case since all involved will be mindful of the debacle surrounding the UK’s re-association, when researchers who applied in the hope of a swift deal were forced into relocating or giving up their grants when the anticipated agreement took much longer than expected.

But as the Framework Programme’s significance grows, as a means of achieving the kind of cooperation being espoused at the G7 meeting in Italy, so too is the need growing to address fundamental questions over its scale and role. 

This month has seen yet more calls for a “significant increase” to the budget of Horizon Europe’s successor, FP10, with more than 100 European associations representing organisations that carry out R&I signing a joint statement calling on the EU to act. 

But it’s striking that after months of such pressure, including numerous influential groups calling for a doubling of the programme’s budget from €93.5 billion to around €200bn, national representatives—in the guise of the European Research and Innovation Area Committee—held back from recommending any figure in a formal opinion on FP10 set out in June. The European University Association has been quick to signal that this “does not bode well”.

Wasted potential

Frustratingly, this week has also seen member state governments pitch a €400 million cut to the Commission’s proposed 2025 budget for Horizon Europe. The €12.7bn suggested by the Commission would already be down from around €12.9bn in 2024 after a redirection of priorities, including support for Ukraine. While the European Parliament, as is tradition, will likely ask for an increase on the Commission’s proposal, with the result ending up somewhere in the middle, the proposed chipping away at the current programme’s budget will not instil confidence in those hoping for a significant boost to the next.

The wasted potential resulting from Horizon Europe’s underfunding continues to be painfully visible in the low success rates of flagship schemes such as the ERC grants and the European Innovation Council, which has revealed a 7 per cent success rate for its latest round of Accelerator grants for technology-based startup companies. Speaking to Research Europe, the EU’s top R&I official, Marc Lemaître, acknowledged that the EIC’s inability to invest in more projects and companies was “a sad situation of untapped innovation potential”.

FP10 discussions

Meanwhile, beyond the numbers, debate is heating up over what the next R&I programme should and should not do: the Young European Research Universities Network has proposed taking the ambitious ‘missions’ on grand challenges, including cancer and climate change, outside of the scheme due to their reliance on other funding sources.

At a time when the EU and its members are stressing the value of scientific cooperation as a counterweight to wider political instability, the opportunity for the R&I programme’s development is huge. But as our comment editor John Whitfield warns this week, there is also a risk that FP10 ends up “half-baked, underfunded and misaligned, disappointing policymakers and researchers equally”.

That would be the biggest wasted opportunity of them all.

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Marc Lemaître says European Commission will take seriously sector’s demands to reform “extremely complex landscape”

The European Commission’s top research and innovation official has told Research Europe that there is a need for a “very significant simplification” of the EU’s R&I funding landscape.

Marc Lemaître, who has led the Commission’s R&I department since February 2023, said in an interview that his institution had “heard loud and clear stakeholders calling for simplification, and so we will be taking that call very seriously”.

He said there had been a “legitimate complaint” from the sector that the EU has “an extremely complex landscape of funding instruments”.

This complexity is “difficult to navigate”, making it “difficult to find where the opportunities are”, he said. Such feedback “shows that there is a need for a very significant simplification of the landscape of instruments”, he added.

Funding scheme efficiency

When asked what funding schemes should perhaps be scrapped, Lemaître pointed out—while wanting to remain “quite general”—that the EU has schemes for funding reforms to R&I ecosystems under both its dedicated R&I programme and its regional cohesion funds.

His “tentative” feeling is that such funding should be retained in some form, but “ideally through one instrument rather than two”.

Lemaître also said the “certainly long” time the Commission spent finalising its Annotated Grant Agreement for the EU’s 2021-27 R&I programme, Horizon Europe, was justified by the need to help applicants with the complexity.

He acknowledged that the time the Commission took over the AGA caused “frustration” in the sector——published only this year, the delay left applicants and beneficiaries relying on informal guidance—but Lemaître said it was “time well spent [and] a good investment”.

The difficulties navigating the funding landscape “will be helped by the fact that we did this investment now to have a largely harmonised set of rules through the model grant agreement across the different instruments that are directly managed by the Commission”.

‘This is a learning process’

The Commission has already achieved “significant clarity and significant simplification compared to the past” through the rewriting of the AGA and other initiatives, according to Lemaître.

He said the broader use in Horizon Europe of lump-sum funding, in which applicants are asked for more detailed project plans upfront in exchange for a reduced financial reporting burden later on, and the possibility to use unit costs for personnel expenses, should “produce important daily simplification for beneficiaries”.

“This is a learning process, [but] I trust that we will be on very solid and familiar ground,” when the successor to Horizon Europe starts in 2028, he said.

But he added that “there is scope for some further, more marginal, improvement” with the AGA, and “we will have to see how far we go” with the broader use of lump-sum funding and of simplified personnel costs.

‘Difficult trade-offs’

The Commission will also have to “screen all the rules we have [for Horizon Europe] today, to see whether we got the balance right between regulatory or reporting burden and what is being achieved”, Lemaître added.

He was referring in particular to the “tricky area” of non-financial obligations, citing the example of research institutions needing to have gender equality plans in place to be eligible for Horizon Europe funding.

“This clearly is a burden” for applicants, he said, “but it is also a potent policy tool for us to spread good practice”.

For such rules, “the choice is not easy between going either for a softer approach of best efforts or having an approach which really obliges, legally, beneficiaries to comply”.

This is another area of potential simplification for the Horizon Europe successor, he said, “but with difficult trade-offs”.

Lemaître also stressed that there is “a cost to change, and we need to think carefully before we make significant changes” to the programme rules.

This is because “it always takes a lot of time to get acquainted with rules, to explain new ones, to have everyone feel at ease with them”.

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The EU’s top research and innovation official on competition, defence and the framework programme

When Research Europe sat down for an interview with the European Commission’s top research and innovation official, Marc Lemaître, he acknowledged that the EU’s economic competitiveness is “the talk in town” at the moment, as he put it.

The Hungarian presidency of the Council of the EU member state governments (which began this month and runs until December) has just announced that competitiveness will be a top priority during its term at the helm. And the second of two reports on competitiveness, requested from former prime ministers of Italy, is eagerly awaited in EU policy circles.

That report, by Mario Draghi, is expected next month, while the first, by Enrico Letta, called for R&I and education to be made the “fifth freedom” of the EU’s single market, meaning that knowledge and related products, services and people should be allowed to move freely within the EU.

Letta’s report provided “a good stimulus” for the EU to “take an honest stock” of what has been achieved in the European Research Area since it was created over 20 years ago, according to Lemaître, who became director-general of the R&I directorate general in February 2023, having previously led the regional policy DG.

Pitching for harmony

The ERA is the EU’s initiative for raising R&I standards and harmonising related national procedures. While the proposed fifth freedom “goes beyond the ERA” because it includes education, on R&I, one could “very much equate” them, Lemaître says. And on the ERA, “we cannot really declare that the job is done—far from it”.

“There is a lot of integration, coordination, harmonisation potential” remaining, he explains, adding that this requires the EU to consider “whether we shouldn’t think of a more determined approach to making progress” on the ERA than the “informal, soft, coordinating” approach taken so far. This could include proposing “legislative action”, he says—a move that would certainly be more determined than the voluntary approach taken to date.

The political focus on competitiveness also affected the Commission’s recommendations to EU countries last month on how they could improve their economies as part of the European Semester process, says Lemaître. He previously led the teams of budget commissioner Janusz Lewandowski and regional policy commissioners Danuta Hübner and Paweł Samecki after joining the Commission in 2007, having worked in the Luxembourg representation in the EU before that.

“We identified R&I as one key area to focus on to really make an impact on Europe’s competitiveness and productivity,” he says of the recommendations.

Exploiting research

An area that requires “a lot of attention” around the R&I contribution to competitiveness is the valorisation or exploitation of research results, according to Lemaître. The Letta report underscored that “we really have a problem” in Europe with providing funding for companies to grow, and “need to do a much, much better job” of that, he adds.

In this area, Lemaître describes himself as a “great enthusiast” of the European Innovation Council, the funder launched under the EU’s 2021-27 R&I programme, Horizon Europe, to support research into breakthrough technologies and their commercialisation by growing companies. The EIC equity fund had a “slow start”, he acknowledges of the period before he took charge, which left dozens of companies waiting for a year or more to receive promised investments.

But the fund is “a real trailblazing instrument” and the Commission “had to make sure we got it right”, he says. The fund has by now made more than 120 investment decisions, and Lemaître describes its four-to-one leveraging of private investment as “a very good result”.

The demand for funding has resulted in the EIC having the lowest success rate in Horizon Europe, at about 5 per cent. One positive way to look at this is that it means the Commission can be choosy about which projects and companies to invest in, Lemaître points out, but he admits it is also “a sad situation of untapped innovation potential”.

Step backward

Another win-lose situation he flags up is that the Commission won politicians’ backing to increase the upper limit on the EU’s investments in companies from an initial €15 million cap on the EIC fund, but this came at about the same time that politicians cut €2 billion from the remainder of Horizon Europe’s then €95.5bn budget.

This somewhat undermined the Commission’s hopes for another funding scheme the EU created to support its competitiveness, the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform, which has been left pulling together comparatively meagre funding from existing programmes, including Horizon Europe. But the Commission “has not abandoned the political ambition of Step”, Lemaître says—it still hopes to mobilise some funding to support company growth on a larger scale, “before we make proposals for the next [R&I] framework programme”.

Asked whether Horizon Europe’s successor, Framework Programme 10, might also suffer from the same delays that hampered parts of Horizon Europe in its early years, Lemaître says a “precondition for having programmes up and running from day one is that decisions are made in a timely fashion” by politicians, and the last three seven-year EU budgets that underpinned programmes have been agreed “later and later”. He says: “I really hope that we will draw lessons from this.”

Economic security

Another hot topic in political circles at present, prompted by the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, is defence. For Lemaître, defence and competitiveness go hand in hand. “Competitiveness is a relative notion, and it’s of course in comparison with the rest of the world, so what certainly will be very much part of the reflection is our economic security,” he explains.

EU initiatives so far on research security—balancing the benefits of international cooperation on R&I with the need to prevent research being coopted or compromised by hostile powers—should be “the starting point for further reflections”, Lemaître says. This should include thinking about whether some of the recommendations that have been made to research institutions on security should be made “compulsory if they want to participate in the framework programme in the future”, he adds.

In response to a Commission consultation on how ‘dual use’ technologies with both civil and military potential should be funded by the EU, Lemaître says research institutions’ preference “clearly goes in the direction of keeping broadly the status quo” of limiting the main R&I programme to funding only civil applications, with a separate programme for defence R&I. But, from businesses, there is “more openness” to opening up some parts of the main programme to military applications.

On research security in general, the Commission has “a lot of thinking ahead of us”, Lemaître says.

Summing up the situation more generally, he says that, “yes, competitiveness has quite some influence on the ongoing work and the work ahead”. Given the range of potential impacts for research covered in just this interview—from the ERA to innovation, to security—that could well prove to be an understatement.

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European Research Council seeks to allay fears as Advanced Grants deadline nears

The EU’s rollout of a lump-sum funding model across more of its Horizon Europe research and innovation programme reached an important milestone with the opening of the European Research Council’s 2024 Advanced Grants competition.

This year’s competition—the deadline for which is 29 August—will use the lump-sum model instead of the ERC’s traditional actual-costs model. This has understandably provoked some trepidation among applicants and their institutions, which the ERC sought to allay during a recent webinar presented by Josefina Enfedaque, chair of the European Research Council Executive Agency (Ercea) taskforce on lump sums. Here are the main points that, considering the ongoing rollout of the new model, potential applicants to other Horizon Europe instruments may also be minded to consider.

1. Most elements of Advanced Grant applications are unchanged

The ERC has done much to publicise its adoption of the lump-sum model to help prepare applicants for its implementation. However, this has arguably had the effect of leading some researchers and support staff to expect wide-reaching ramifications on how proposals should be prepared and submitted, and how they will be assessed. The webinar was peppered with reassurances that such fears were unfounded.

For example, Angela Wittelsberger, head of sector in the life sciences unit at the Ercea Scientific Department, said that, while the new system does indeed bundle up all the financial aspects of an Advanced Grant proposal into one lump sum—very much like one work package—this does not mean that proposals should now be structured that way.

Wittelsberger said: “Applicants should not change the way they think about or develop their proposals, and they should not change the way they think about structuring their project. They can structure it how they see fit, with or without scientific work packages.”

Similarly, when the question of assessment and evaluation was addressed, she stressed: “The focus of the evaluation remains on the scientific merits of the proposal; it is scientific excellence only—there’s no change there.”

And although most ERC grants have only a single beneficiary, the principal investigator—which Mila Bas, head of the grant management department at Ercea, acknowledged—that is not always so. In such cases the ERC will award a lump sum per beneficiary.

Furthermore, while the use of the term lump sum may lead some applicants to expect the designation of an unalterable fixed amount once a proposal has been approved, Wittelsberger assured attendees that the ERC’s principles of “serendipity and flexibility” would not change for this competition.

She said: “We know that frontier research does not always go exactly as planned, and we will continue to be as flexible as we were in the past with deviations to the original work plan. The principle of portability—the right of the principal investigator to transfer their grant to a different host institution—also remains valid.”

2. For applicants, changes mostly concern the budget forms

With the lump-sum model, instead of grant-winners tracking their costs and claiming them back after carrying out their research, applicants submit extra detail on budget in their grant proposal and receive payment when they reach agreed milestones. In the case of Advanced Grants, this will happen in two instalments: at the beginning and at the end of the project.

The changes to application requirements, therefore, mostly hinge on providing that extra detail. In particular there are changes to how both personnel and equipment costs are submitted.

For personnel costs, the budget table now has an additional column to be filled in with the number of person-months—a measurement taking into account the number of people working on the project and the amount of time each person spends on it—per staff category. (There is a further additional column in which the average monthly cost is automatically calculated.)

For equipment, an extra table—the ‘equipment depreciation table’—has been added to the list of mandatory documents, which also requires some input from applicants, with some columns calculated automatically. Bas stressed that, for the 2024 round, even applicants with projects that do not include any equipment costs must complete this table.

3. Assessment panels will pay closer attention to the budget

The lump-sum model sets the overall amount that beneficiaries are entitled to receive during the evaluation of proposals (although this can be adjusted as the project advances—see below). Logically then, there is greater scrutiny of proposal budgets than under the actual-costs model.

This is particularly true regarding assessment of personnel costs, Wittelsberger said, as the panel will not only assess whether the number of personnel is appropriate for the project but also consider the related costs. Both panellists and applicants have access to historical ERC personnel cost data via a dashboard on the ERC website to guide them, Wittelsberger continued. The data provided is granular, with costs broken down by staff category and country.

The ERC provided this purely for benchmarking, she said: “The idea is not that you have to align with the historical data when you plan for your personnel costs [but that] you should plan and request what you think you will incur…If you find you are not aligned, that [should encourage] you to provide an explanation of why this is.”

Bas agreed, adding that while applicants do not have to follow the historical data, they should make sure they align with their institutions’ accounting practices and personnel costs grid.

One attendee mentioned that postdocs in their institution are typically paid 80 per cent more than the rates for their country in the Advanced Grants dashboard. They asked what kind of justification the ERC would expect beyond “those are our actual current salary rates”.

Bas replied: “In most cases, that’s a very good justification [if] you have that salary grid in your institution.” She reminded applicants in similar situations to put such a justification “very clearly in the proposal”.

Another attendee asked what the outcome would be if the panel concludes that the proposal fulfils the scientific excellence criterion but its budget is not well-dimensioned. Bas replied that even if the budget would receive closer attention with the lump-sum system, scientific excellence remains of paramount importance. Such a bid “will be in the same place in the ranking list” as it would have been in the actual-cost model, she said.

Wittelsberger added: “The first thing [the panel] would do is ask a question about it in the interview. And based on the explanations and justifications provided, they might, or might not, consider a cut in a particular cost, as they do now.”

Wittelsberger advised applicants not to worry that the assessment panels would be overbearing. “Our panels will not start to micromanage the budget or the personnel costs just because we have moved to a lump-sum model,” she said. “Mostly, the details of the budget will be looked at by experts once the rank list has been established, but our panels do this already. Under the lump-sum model, this step of the assessment has an increased importance because, remember, there’s no additional checks on costs anymore during the lifetime of the project.”

4. Post-award grant management should be easier

Ease of post-award management is one of the major drivers of the EU’s move towards the lump-sum model. No timesheets are required to be submitted, and there will be “no financial audits, no certificate of financial payments”, according to Bas, who then laid out how financing will proceed.

The ERC will pay 80 per cent of the budget as pre-financing, she said, a maximum of 30 days after the grant agreement is signed. As with the existing model, there will be a scientific mid-term report to assess project progress and whether any deviations from the project plan have taken place, requiring amendments to the budget, but the mid-term report “will not be associated with a payment”, Bas specified. 

Payment of the remaining 20 per cent, or the appropriate amount in the case of modifications, will be made following a final report and a scientific assessment. As Wittelsberger stressed at the start, payment is dependent entirely on the work having been completed, not on the outcome or results.

This is an extract from an article in Research Professional’s Funding Insight service. To subscribe contact sales@researchresearch.com

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Study of Norwegian funder shows screening two-page proposals benefits both applicants and reviewers, says Marco Seeber

Writing and evaluating research proposals is very time-consuming and can generate considerable costs, both direct and indirect.

For example, a 2021 study estimated that putting together a proposal for the European Research Council takes between three and six months of one person’s effort. Factoring in a 10 per cent success rate, this means that each funded proposal amounts to between 2.5 and five years of work—roughly the length of a postdoc contract. And this leaves out proposals that aren’t submitted, as well as institutional and national investments to promote and support applications.

Some scientists have estimated that searching for funding takes up to 60 per cent of their time. For funders, the costs of evaluating proposals—administration and evaluation managers, reviewers and editors—have been estimated at around 20-35 per cent of the allocated budget.

Wasted time

Not surprisingly, funding agencies are experimenting with ways to reduce this effort. One solution adopted by some agencies worldwide is to replace the traditional, single-stage evaluation of a full proposal with a two-stage process, in which applicants would submit a short proposal for initial review, with a full application required only if this first stage is passed.

In many, perhaps most, research calls, distinguishing between bad and good proposals is relatively simple, while separating good from excellent ones is much more challenging. By speeding up the process of sorting proposals that are ‘possibly’ from those that are ‘definitely not’, two-stage evaluation allows effort to be focused on separating the ‘good’ from the ‘excellent’.

Introducing stage two

Norway’s largest funder of health research, the Dam Foundation, introduced two-stage evaluation in 2020. Prior to this, all its calls required a single 10-page proposal. This was replaced with an initial two-page proposal, with a 10-page follow-up from applicants that passed this stage.

To gauge the effect of the change, my colleagues and I compared the evaluations of 593 long proposals in the one-stage process with 668 short and 184 long proposals in the two-stage process. We also used results from a survey of applicants and reviewers on the amount of effort they put into each.

Applicants in the one-stage process estimated that writing a long proposal took an average of 37 person-days. In the two-stage process, writing short proposals consumed an average of 16.75 person-days and 36 person-days for long proposals. Since nearly three-quarters of proposals were rejected in the first stage, the two-stage process saved on average 38 per cent of applicants’ time.

These are huge savings. To put them into perspective: a decade ago, a study of the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council estimated that researchers spent 550 working years in preparing 3,727 proposals—equivalent to AU$66 million (£35m) in salary costs. In a similar setting, a two-stage process would save roughly 209 working years and AU$25 million.

According to the reviewers’ estimates, the two-stage procedure also reduced the time they spent evaluating proposals by an average of 28 per cent. A study of a switch to two-stage evaluation at the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Research found a very similar result.

Applicants welcomed the new procedure, with only 2 to 4 per cent of those surveyed reporting dissatisfaction. The number of applications did not change.

Two-stage evaluation was also more consistent: on average, reviewers disagreed less in their assessments of short proposals than of long proposals. This might be because evaluators assessing short proposals avoid extreme scores, or that reviewing long proposals leads to cognitive fatigue and more erratic judgment.

Recognising trade-offs

The greater reliability may also be a result of cutting the number of evaluation criteria from nine to four: it’s been suggested that having many evaluation criteria also reduces accuracy. Funders need to understand these trade-offs between detail, effort and accuracy in peer review.

Two-stage evaluation might bring other changes that are harder to detect. For example, some types of proposal and applicant may be comparatively better off in a short rather than in a long version, or vice versa. Our analysis provided some hints in this regard: we found that the scores of short proposals that passed the first stage remained high, but also that their rank changed.

Our findings add to evidence that a two-stage process can make evaluation of research proposals more efficient and ease the burden on the research community. Experiences like that of the Dam Foundation provide a template of how it can be implemented.

Marco Seeber is a professor in the Department of Political Science and Management at the University of Agder, Norway

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Ambition to inject R&I into every decision is noble but fraught, says John Whitfield

Whatever else might be in short supply in EU research and innovation policy, it’s not ambition.

In April, a report from former Italian prime minister Enrico Letta called for research, innovation and education to become the EU’s “fifth freedom”, alongside the free movement of people, goods, services and capital.  

In June, the European Research Area and Innovation Committee argued that “R&I should play a greater role in EU strategic priorities”. Meanwhile, the Expert Group on the Economic and Societal Impact of Research and Innovation, an independent body advising the Commission, called for a “systemic R&I policy”, with the approach to issues such as climate change interweaving science and technology with considerations of economic competitiveness, social justice and environmental sustainability.

Also in June, another former Italian prime minister, Mario Draghi, whose report on boosting the EU’s competitiveness is expected any day, called for Europe to make R&I a “collective priority”, with an emphasis on support for academic excellence, disruptive innovation and startups.

Along with efforts to better link the work of the Commission’s directorate general for R&D with other areas of its policymaking, it’s possible to see this as a process by which research and innovation policy becomes just policy. The aim is to make sure that science and technology is factored into every discussion and decision in the way that economics already is.

Such ideas are not confined to Brussels. An OECD report published in April argued that the world’s multiple interconnecting crises require “transformative” R&I policies that go “beyond their traditional main focus on national competitiveness and economic growth”.

It’s not hard to spot obstacles to this approach. On the demand side, member states—particularly those with right-wing populist governments—seem unlikely to have much enthusiasm for a more science-based approach to policymaking. Leading on green hydrogen is probably not what Hungary’s government had in mind when it chose Make Europe Great Again as the slogan for its presidency.

Given everything else on Europe’s plate, even nations sympathetic to such a change will not have much spare capacity to drive it forward. EU-wide R&D spending as a percentage of GDP fell between 2021 and 2022.

On the supply side, it’s too often overlooked that issues such as commercialising research and driving the green transition are as much questions of social science as they are of technological progress. The ideas Europe needs are as likely to come out of business schools as they are from semiconductor research labs, but these disciplines still struggle for attention in EU research funding.

That’s not a reason to give up: this is difficult and, arguably, no government worldwide has achieved such a shift. It is also why it’s vital to draw a line, albeit a dotted one, between the debate over transformational change and the one currently happening around the shape of the next Framework Programme, FP10.

EU R&D programmes have already proved both easy to load with new jobs and expectations and easy to cut when money gets tight or new priorities appear. If anything, the message coming from bodies representing university research is that FP10 should do less, but better.

The League of European Research Universities has called for a cull of underperforming elements of the programme. The Young European Research Universities Network has called for the five R&D missions introduced in Horizon Europe to be kept but moved out of FP10.

Partly, this is lobby groups calling for more of what they like and less of what they don’t. Others have their own priorities: earlier this month, 110 bodies representing industry and industrial R&D called for FP10 to focus on industry participation.

But it also reflects the Framework Programme’s past performance. The Commission’s latest evaluation of FP8, better known as Horizon 2020, declared that its funding programmes for excellent research were “very satisfactory”, but that support for work on societal challenges had made only “moderate progress”, falling far short of targets for publications and patenting.  

The Commission blamed this shortfall partly on having chosen the wrong targets. Maybe, but it also contains information—including a reminder that the gap between means and ends is much narrower for basic research than for addressing societal challenges. Getting a paper in a high-impact journal isn’t easy, but it’s easier than rebuilding the foundations of the economy.  

The aim to make EU R&I policy systemic, strategic, transformative and so on is a good one. But R&D funding needs to sit within that wider goal, not be expected to drive it. Otherwise, the risk is that FP10 ends up half-baked, underfunded and misaligned, disappointing policymakers and researchers equally.

John Whitfield is the opinion editor at Research Professional News

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Advice for the UK’s new government from across the research and innovation world

To mark the election of a Labour government in the UK, Research Professional News asked writers from across research, innovation and higher education policy to set out their priorities for the incoming administration. Here we present a selection of those for European readers.

Jan Palmowski: Build links within Europe

In relation to the EU, the new UK government must focus on three linked priorities.

First, it must commit to association with Framework Programme 10, the successor to the current Horizon Europe R&D programme. Domestically, making higher education funding sustainable will be a top priority, but this cannot crowd out efforts to strengthen European and global links in research and innovation. We need our best minds to address our common challenges. For this, researchers and their institutions need long-term stability.

Second, rejoining Erasmus+ would be a perfect way to reset the relationship with the EU. At its core, Erasmus+ is about young people’s personal growth and fulfilment. The UK’s insistence on a financial rate of return from the programme always baffled Brussels. As well as benefiting students immeasurably, British participation in Erasmus+ would show that the UK sees itself again as part of the European family of nations.

These two actions would build trust and influence critical for a third domain—research security and intellectual property. One focus of the next framework programme will be shoring up Europe’s competitiveness and security in critical technologies. Questions about IP sharing, research security and protocols for international collaboration will become even more important.

Finding agreement and trust in these areas will take time. The sooner the UK and the EU start developing a common understanding and robust common protocols, the more transformative their collaboration in research and innovation—and higher education—can be.

Jan Palmowski is professor of modern history at the University of Warwick, UK. He will resume his role as secretary-general of the Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities on 1 August.

Andrew Morris: Lead on investment, make visas cheaper, boost NHS research

Britain is a world leader in innovation and health research. Labour must show the scientific community that it is committed to placing research and innovation at the heart of its mission-driven government to drive growth and improve lives. That should include a goal to lead the G7 in R&D investment. As it stands, UK R&D investment is not internationally competitive.

Success in research and innovation also means attracting skilled people from around the world, but at present international talent faces extortionate visa costs. A family of four coming to the UK to take up a PhD-level role on a five-year skilled worker visa faces up to £24,000 in upfront fees—far higher than in competitor nations.

This negates any claim to be open to international scientific talent; researchers, patients and the economy are paying the price. The new government should make turning the page on this damaging policy an urgent priority. 

The UK’s National Health Service is an unparalleled hub for medical research, delivering breakthroughs such as a Covid-19 vaccine. However, we’re not fully harnessing its power. Labour must commit to cultivating a new generation of leaders, including reversing the decline in clinical academics—the doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals who bridge universities and the NHS. By ringfencing staff time for research and reinvesting the income generated, we’ll keep the NHS at the forefront of medical innovation, improving patient care and powering economic growth.

Andrew Morris is president of the Academy of Medical Sciences.

Melanie Smallman: Embracing technology must not create inequality

Keir Starmer’s Labour government showed its commitment to science and innovation in its first few hours, appointing former chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance as science minister and expanding the remit of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Dsit) to include “transforming public service and fuelling economic growth”. Science should be all set, then.

The long-term funding commitments promised will bring much-needed stability. But given the real-terms cuts to science funding over past decades, there will be pressure to increase the pot. Maintaining access to Horizon Europe, as well as developing partnerships and joint funding vehicles, will be key to leveraging UK public money. And somehow, stability needs to be extended to higher education, wobbling with the current funding model.

Dsit’s trickiest task will be in its role as the centre of digital expertise and delivery. Digital innovation is a key driver of inequality in the UK, bringing growth to hub cities while leaving regional and non-university towns to make do with the low-paid, insecure platform jobs that their neighbours have created.

As machines replace people, tax returns fall, making public services even harder to fund. All this means that any rollout of artificial intelligence and digital technologies across government is likely to bring Dsit into conflict with other departments’ missions, particularly areas around the country.

Evaluating and monitoring the equality implications of new technologies will be vital. Starmer’s Council of Regions and Nations needs to be on the case; replicating the Blair and Brown governments’ focus on regional innovation and growth strategies might help.

Melanie Smallman is professor of science and technology studies at University College London and a former scientific adviser at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Jim McDonald: Go big on industrial strategy

I am pleased that chancellor Rachel Reeves has declared economic growth the UK’s “national mission”. The engineering profession wants to see the new government take a holistic, long-term approach to complex challenges such as climate change and slow growth, creating strong policies on which to build sustainable economic growth, helping to improve lives. 

The nation needs an ambitious vision that draws on our strengths in engineering, innovation, research and manufacturing, underpinned by sustained policies that align actions across regulation, procurement, planning, funding, infrastructure, technology adoption and a national strategy for the engineering and technology workforce.

The UK already has a foothold in areas such as artificial intelligence, quantum and biotechnology. Adopting a long-term industrial strategy will help to leverage our impressive engineering and technology capabilities in these and other areas.

The National Engineering Policy Centre says the UK should aim to lead the G7 in R&D intensity, supporting and capitalising on its exceptional research base and leveraging private investment. We should also boost support for close-to-market R&D and demonstrator projects, as these are key stepping stones to commercialisation.

The UK should be a place where high-tech, innovative startups get access to the finance, facilities, infrastructure and talent they need to grow. Such companies are catalysts for change, helping to drive prosperity that can be shared across all regions, communities and groups in society.

Laying the foundations of productivity, economic growth and societal benefit requires policies that will work well beyond the next parliament. A strong and consistent industrial strategy is critical to the future success of this country; the engineering community stands ready to help.  

Jim McDonald is president of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

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Irish Universities Association pressures government to deliver on its €307 million commitment

Ireland’s universities have urged the country’s government to work faster to close the higher education funding gap by providing more cash to cover public sector pay awards, as student-staff ratios worsen.

In a pre-budget submission, called Bridging the Funding Gap and Building for the Future, the Irish Universities Association says a failure to provide sufficient funds for national pay awards agreed by government has exacerbated the €307 million funding shortfall identified by the government in May 2022.

The paper says almost all of the extra €100m provided by the government over the past two years under its higher education funding initiative, Funding the Future, has been eroded by under-funding of pay awards, leaving universities materially short of funds to pay existing staff.

Funds ‘absolutely critical’

The IUA is calling for a €92m supplementary budget in 2024 to cover the costs of existing staff, a further €171m in 2025 to cover existing staff costs and at least €120m additional Funding the Future allocation. However, this would still leave one third of the €307m funding gap after three successive budgets.

“Each university in the state is faced with a shortage of funds to pay for existing staff this year,” said Jim Miley, director-general of the IUA.

“Collectively, this amounts to €92m. That €92m is what is needed just to stand still, with a further €171m required in 2025 to break even. It is now absolutely critical that the government fully funds the pay awards negotiated by them as part of the national pay round.

“The funding of the existing pay award will only maintain the current level of student-staff ratio, which seriously lags the EU average. It is critical that the necessary investment is made to enable universities to pay for the staff required to maintain a quality higher education for their students and to deliver the necessary support services. Underpinning the quality and resilience of higher education is mission-critical to Ireland’s competitiveness.”

‘Government must take urgent action’

The IUA pre-budget submission also calls for action on use of the surplus in the National Training Fund, which has now ballooned to more than €1.5 billion. The IUA urged the government to act on the commitment made by public expenditure minister Paschal Donohoe in last year’s budget to address the burgeoning NTF surplus.

The paper says: “It is inconceivable that the NTF surplus would be allowed to continue to grow while provisions for national skills needs go unmet.”

It adds: “The government must take urgent action to address the unacceptable anomaly of unmet skills needs while a €1.5bn-plus skills fund lies idle.”

The IUA is calling on the recently appointed research minister Patrick O’Donovan to urgently address the funding needs in order to secure the pipeline of future talent that is fundamental to the needs of the economy.

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National grants programme run by Australian Research Council needs a full redesign, review told

The humanities should get a more “equitable” share of Australian research funding, the Australian Academy of the Humanities has said.

In its submission to the Australian Research Council’s review of its grants programme, the academy said “the ARC is the only source of government funding for basic research in the humanities and the primary source of industry-related collaborative funding”.

However, the “one-size-fits-all approach” taken in the council’s Discovery funding programme for fundamental research “has inflated the cost of humanities research while supporting a shrinking number of projects and individual researchers”.

The academy called for a total redesign of the council’s grants programme, saying it is “skewed” to favour “the sciences”.

It also said that “the expanded focus on the track record of the investigator is effectively shutting out early career researchers”.

Humanities, arts and social science researchers have a success rate of only 5 per cent in the ARC’s Laureate fellowships programme, the academy said, and the Centres of Excellence programme is weighted heavily against the humanities because of its “design, scale and assessment assumptions”.

Full range of research

Years of changes have created a set of funding schemes in need of a “first principles” review, the academy said. “The creation and dissemination of new knowledge has slipped off the policy agenda for research funding in recent years.”

Its submission criticised the focus on commercialisation of research, saying it would be more useful to focus on “the uses made” of new knowledge.

Any new scheme “must incorporate the necessary flexibility to include particular research practices across the full range of fields of research”.

“If the ARC wishes to support research in the humanities, it must do more to tailor its programmes in ways that acknowledge and facilitate excellent research in the humanities.”

A new scheme should work to reduce “unconscious bias” in assessment of grant applications, possibly by first assessing the projects “blind” before looking at the people and institutions involved, it said.

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Unesco would provide secretariat in effort to align scholarly publishing initiatives

A consultation process has been launched to plan the creation of a global alliance to shape the development of ‘diamond’ open-access scholarly publishing.

Under the diamond model, papers are made openly available at no cost to readers or authors, through platforms funded at an organisational level. 

The model is seen by many as the most equitable form of scholarly publishing because it does not disadvantage readers or authors who are unable to pay subscription or publication fees. It is also viewed as being more financially sustainable than other models because companies tend to be involved as service providers rather than initiators making large profits.

Diamond open access is well established in some parts of the world but, in general, not in the regions considered to be research powerhouses. In those territories, subscription-based publishing remains common and other models of open access predominate, namely the author-pays and institutional-repository models. But these regions are increasingly being convinced of the merits of the diamond model and the need for more support.

The idea for a global alliance emerged from the first Global Summit on Diamond Open Access, which took place in Mexico in 2023. At the meeting, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization expressed a willingness to provide a secretariat for an alliance, and it was Unesco that announced the launch of a consultation on the subject in a webinar on 10 July.

Aiming for a fair ecosystem

“Diamond open access has become a transformative force in scholarly publishing, challenging conventional methods to sharing knowledge,” Unesco’s director-general for communication and information, Tawfik Jelassi, said in the webinar. This is because charging authors to make papers openly available “hasn’t solved the issue” of inequality in scholarly publishing, he said, adding: “We must level the playing field.”

Jelassi said the aim of the planned alliance is to create a “sustainable, fair and open academic publishing ecosystem…by leveraging the support and expertise of different stakeholders [to] maintain the high standards of scholarly publishing without imposing fees on authors or readers”.

He said that the global alliance “will not only foster greater collaboration and innovation, but also strengthen the foundation of open, transparent and accountable research”. He called on “governments, researchers, publishers, librarians, policymakers and the public to join in”.

Bhanu Neupane, a programme manager for ICT and open access at Unesco, said the alliance “will be a bottom-up effort, by and for open-access communities”, and based on “existing best practices”.

“Today’s announcement marks the start of a collaborative and inclusive global dialogue. Together we will define the vision, mission, objectives and governance” of the alliance, he said, adding that Unesco hopes to “finalise” the dialogue at a second Global Summit on Diamond Open Access in Cape Town in December, with the alliance itself launching in 2025.

Funding and sovereignty

Other speakers included Arianna Becerril-García, executive-director of Redalyc, a diamond open-access journal network for Latin America. She pointed out that the diamond model is already “the default” in that region, but said there is a need for funds to support it “because it cannot survive only through commercial models”.

Neupane said that financial support for diamond open access is “not part of the alliance per se”, but that, nonetheless, those involved are looking at how funders could provide support, for example, to convert journals to the model.

Martine Garnier-Rizet, director of digital strategy and data at French national research agency ANR, said funders like hers could play a “key” role in supporting diamond open access. She pointed out that the ANR has promised €850,000 to support diamond initiatives, including €250,000 for the creation of a European capacity hub.

Lidia Borrell-Damián, secretary-general of the Science Europe group of major research funding and performing organisations, flagged up that among her group’s members, in addition to the commitments from the ANR, the German research foundation DFG is establishing a service centre to consolidate the national diamond open-access landscape, and a Nordic centre is also being created. 

In a question-and-answer session, Dimitrii Kochetkov, a researcher at Leiden University in the Netherlands who said he is also the managing editor of a diamond open-access journal, warned that there will be a need to ensure that funders of publishing infrastructure do not gain control over the “editorial sovereignty” of the platforms.

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This week: Cohesion funding errors, prize for women innovators, digitisation push, and more

Europe funding in depth

The European Research Council has significantly boosted the overall funding it plans to make available for some of its main grant types in 2025, while slightly reducing the budget for Advanced Grants.

Full story: ERC’s 2025 budget plan includes big boosts for some grants

Here is the rest of the funding news this fortnight…

Errors persist in EU cohesion funding

The delivery of EU cohesion funding, which is used to boost the socioeconomic development of the bloc’s regions through activities including R&D, remains error-prone, according to the European Court of Auditors. “European Commission and member state controls are still lacking at every level,” the court reported this month after an analysis of the funding stream, which received €409 billion over the period 2014 to 2020. “While member state authorities could detect and prevent more errors, the bloc’s executive not only underestimated the total level of irregular spending but also underutilised the tools available to encourage member states to improve their management and systems.”

Prize for women innovators opens

The EU has launched the 2025 iteration of its European Prize for Women Innovators, which is intended to encourage entrepreneurship. “Europe is home to inspiring women innovators and entrepreneurs leading successful and game-changing companies,” said EU research and innovation commissioner Iliana Ivanova. “The European Prize for Women Innovators highlights their skills and ingenuity, casting them as role models. This prize helps strengthen gender equality in business and tech, championing women innovation talent and women-led companies.” There are three categories, with three prizes for each of them, ranging from €20,000 to €100,000. The deadline for applications is 25 September.

Austrian basic research to receive €68m

The Austrian Science Fund (FWF) has announced it is providing about €68 million to 180 basic research projects. It said the awards include Austria’s “most highly endowed science prizes—the FWF Wittgenstein Prize and the FWF Start Prizes—as well as 40 international projects for which decisions by the partner organisations are still pending”. Just over €25m has been allocated to 57 individual projects selected from 184 applications. The Wittgenstein Prize of up to €1.7m was awarded to cell biologist Jiří Friml for his work of an “extraordinary pioneering nature [that] allows us to look deep into the evolutionary development of the plant world”.

Governors sought for Polish funder

Poland’s government is seeking researchers to join the governing council of the country’s National Science Centre (NCN), which funds basic research. Members of the NCN Council identify priority areas for basic research, set terms and conditions for grants, allocate funding and publish calls. They also select the experts who evaluate funding proposals. An identification team established by the science minister will evaluate applicants for the council, who would start a four-year term at the end of the year. Twelve new members are being sought, who will replace half of the current members. There are detailed eligibility criteria.

More than €100m offered for digitisation

Digital Europe, the EU’s funding programme for supporting digitisation, has launched calls offering €108 million to bolster capabilities, in particular around artificial intelligence. Of this, €55m is for digital skills in “key areas”, including quantum computing and robotics. Another €25m is for multi-country projects to build capacities that no single country could achieve alone, including around infrastructure and data sharing. A further €20m is for ‘digital twin’ simulations at a local level, to help cities and communities adopt data platforms and AI. Finally, €8m will support national and regional hubs to analyse digital media. The deadline is 21 November.

Spain boosts industry posts with €20m

The Spanish government has allocated €20 million to hire more than 200 researchers for posts in industry, which it said was 34 per cent more money than the last time the Torres Quevedo call ran, and includes a 10 per cent increase in the minimum salaries offered. The call is for PhD researchers to develop industrial research projects or feasibility studies in companies, technology centres, science parks and similar venues. Its aim is to promote researchers’ careers, bolster small technology companies and stimulate private sector R&D.

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Health, education and drug agencies asked how they intend to respond to controversial court ruling

The ranking Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee has written to seven federal agencies asking them how they intend to respond to last month’s controversial Supreme Court ruling overturning 40 years of science-related lawmaking in the United States.

In late June, the Supreme Court narrowly voted to scrap the Chevron deference, a four-decade precedent under which US courts deferred to federal agencies over interpretations of ambiguous congressional law regarding technical matters within the agencies’ remits.

The justices said they made their decision because courts are the proper place to resolve legal ambiguities. But many scientific organisations warned that the decision would result in litigants seeking to exploit the lack of scientific expertise among courts to escape stricter regulation on matters such as environmental sustainability.

Department heads questioned

Now, Senator Bill Cassidy (pictured) has written to federal bodies, including the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), seeking information on how they will comply with the ruling.

Cassidy told the bodies that he was “concerned” about how they would respond to the ruling given their “track record”.

He told education secretary Miguel Cardona that his department had “flagrantly and repeatedly violated the law”, citing examples including its refusal to reimpose student loan repayments and its redefining of “sex” to include “gender” under higher education legislation relating to sexual discrimination.

“The department’s attempts at transferring student loan debt to taxpayers are particularly brazen,” Cassidy wrote, adding that they “lack statutory basis”.

Cassidy told health secretary Xavier Becerra that his department had “cast aside clear congressional directives and key parts of the statute that Congress carefully negotiated” in relation to medical bills.

He said that both departments had “consistently failed to provide timely or satisfactory responses to oversight requests, hindering Congress’ ability to make informed policy decisions and hold your agency accountable”.

FDA told no need for alarm

FDA commissioner Robert Califf was told by Cassidy that the Supreme Court decision “should not be cause for alarm” because it “does not mean that courts will disregard FDA’s expertise”. Instead, he said, it would “give FDA’s know-how appropriate consideration, yet reclaim [courts’] constitutional role of interpreting law”.

His agency was also accused by Cassidy of having “ignored” court rulings, including around drugs for rare diseases. “FDA may not simply pick and choose the laws it would like to follow based on its conception of what will ‘best serve public health’,” Cassidy said.

“FDA…thumbs its nose at the constitution, every time it ignores the decisions that Congress makes through both laws it enacts and chooses not to enact. Congress’ decision to enact provisions into law to address legal, scientific or other developments, and not to enact provisions following others, must mean something,” he complained.

Cassidy asked the bodies how they intend to change their practices in light of the ruling; whether they would be reviewing their activities; how they intended to facilitate congressional involvement in their activities; and how they plan to be more responsive to congressional requests. He also requested information regarding his specific complaints about each body, and sought responses by 19 July.

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Association president says agreements have not shifted scholarly publishing to open access as planned

Italy should shift away from using so-called transformative agreements to pay for scholarly publishing, according to AISA, the Italian association for the promotion of open science.

These agreements are generally national-level contracts that academic institutions sign with commercial publishers to access the subscription-based content of their journals and cover the costs of publishing in their journals with open access.

They were intended to shift the scholarly publishing system away from subscriptions towards open access, but they are not doing so effectively, according to AISA.

The association has now made this complaint in a letter addressed to the Conference of Italian University Rectors (CRUI).

Slow progress

In recent years, CRUI has signed transformative agreements with several international publishers, on behalf of its member universities. These deals allow researchers to read subscription articles and include some pre-paid tokens they can use to cover publication costs charged by journals to make articles free for readers.

These tokens are used both in open-access journals that make all their papers freely available and in hybrid journals that grant free access to only a fraction of published articles while maintaining a subscription-based model on the rest.

“It is time for Italian institutions and researchers to take seriously the idea of not adhering to transformative contracts, refusing to continue paying commercial oligopolists for open access, or worse, for hybrid open access. These transformative contracts are not transforming anything,” Maria Chiara Pievatolo, president of AISA and a professor of political philosophy at the University of Pisa, told Research Professional News.

Call for transparency

Several months ago, AISA publicly asked CRUI for more transparency about the contracts signed with publishers: “They should publish a detailed report on these contracts, with all the details that are currently not available, like contracting agencies do in other countries, including the UK,” Pievatolo said.

She is convinced that national evaluation exercises have not improved the quality of scientific productions, and that problems with publication practices are still being caused by researchers being incentivised to publish as many articles as possible in “high-impact” journals.

“The system remained more or less the same, but the opportunities to play the system, including fraudulently, have grown,” Pievatolo said.

Public spending on scholarly publishing needs greater scrutiny, she added. “We want to have a transparent public discussion based on a cost-effectiveness analysis of the contracts in place, which is currently impossible,” Pievatolo concluded.

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Keir Starmer wants “closer ties” with bloc on research

The UK government’s science department is seeking better R&D and technology links with the EU, following the Labour Party’s general election victory.

Party leader Keir Starmer had told the media ahead of the election that he thought the UK “can get a better deal” with the bloc post-Brexit on issues such as trade, R&D and security.

Since becoming prime minister, Starmer has told the media: “We intend to improve our relationship with the EU, and that means closer trading ties with the EU; it means closer ties in relation to R&D, and closer ties in relation to defence and security. Obviously, there are many discussions to be had and negotiations to be had.”

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology confirmed it is already working to boost cooperation with the EU.

“We are working on improving our collaborations with European partners on R&D, including in key technology areas,” a Dsit spokesperson told Research Professional News.

They declined to give any specifics about what that involves at this stage.

Terms of the deal

The Brexit deal included association to some EU programmes, such as the €93.5 billion research and innovation programme, Horizon Europe, but not to others, including the Euratom nuclear research and training programme and the Erasmus+ academic exchange programme.

Earlier this year, Labour dismissed the European Commission’s renewed offer of Erasmus+ membership and ruled out any type of freedom of movement between the UK and EU. Recently, the party signalled that it wanted better student exchanges with the EU, without clarifying how it would achieve this.

A three-year hiatus in the UK’s membership of Horizon Europe under the previous Conservative government, which was put on hold amid wrangling with the EU over trade border issues in Northern Ireland, has widely been seen as hugely damaging to UK R&D.

Commenting recently on Starmer’s ambitions, sector leaders urged the UK to focus on getting the most out of its existing membership of Horizon Europe, and to prepare to join the EU’s next major R&I programme, which starts in 2028.

The UK’s association to Horizon Europe allows UK researchers to apply to most of its funding calls, with exceptions including the European Innovation Council’s equity fund for helping technology-based small companies to grow. UK access to this fund could potentially become part of a renegotiated R&D deal.

Vallance comments

The UK’s new science minister, Patrick Vallance, also suggested that closer ties with the EU are needed.

“Brexit was definitely a problem for science,” he told the BBC on 10 July. “We were part of a very successful European funding scheme [Horizon], with very large collaborations right the way across Europe, which took a setback when we had to leave that scheme, and getting back into it has been a big achievement. I’m really pleased we are back in it.”

Asked if this meant pushing for closer ties with the EU, he said: “You can’t do the type of science that everyone is trying to do and make progress in isolation. You need brains that come with other backgrounds, other thought processes, other training.”

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Letsie has prior experience of the brief but has never served as committee chair

African National Congress MP Tebogo Letsie has been chosen to chair South Africa’s parliamentary portfolio committee on higher education.

Letsie, who was elected to the role on 10 July, has no prior experience as a committee chair, but was an active member of the previous parliament’s oversight committee for higher education, science and innovation.

President Cyril Ramaphosa split the higher education and science portfolios in June to accommodate coalition partners after his party, the African National Congress (ANC), lost its absolute parliamentary majority in the country’s 29 May election.

Reflecting that split, there are now two committees, although the science and innovation committee had not yet elected a chairperson by the time this article was published.

Active member

Letsie is one of only six MPs who served on the higher education, science and innovation committee in the last parliament to retain their seats. Previous chair Nompendulo Mkhatshwa lost her seat.

According to parliamentary watchdog People’s Assembly, Letsie has attended 80 to 90 per cent of committee meetings since 2019. His participation is recorded in several reports, including questions around the ongoing National Student Financial Aid Scheme crisis.

NSFAS has been mired in payout problems and widespread reports of mismanagement and corruption that surfaced during higher education, science and innovation minister Blade Nzimande’s tenure in the last administration.

Other committees

Nzimande is now the minister of science, technology and innovation. The minister of higher education is Nobuhle Nkabane. Both are from the ANC.

ANC MPs have also been elected to chair committees overseeing the agriculture and health portfolios, to which the Agricultural Research Council and the South African Medical Research Council report. The two committees will be chaired by the ANC’s Sibongiseni Dhlomo and Dina Pule respectively.

Leon Basson of the Democratic Alliance, the second biggest party in parliament and a member of Ramaphosa’s coalition government, will chair the oversight committee on water and sanitation, which is tied to the Water Research Commission.

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Consortium successfully launches rocket after repeated delays, ending reliance on foreign powers

Europe has restored its independent access to space, sector leaders said after they successfully launched the continent’s new Ariane 6 rocket for the first time.

Ariane 6 was launched from Europe’s space port in French Guiana on 9 July following years of delays and with another European space vehicle, Vega-C, having been sidelined by technical faults.

These issues made Europe reliant on other global powers for launching satellites and other spacecraft, a situation worsened by the loss of access to Russian launchers following that country’s invasion of Ukraine.

“A completely new rocket is not launched often, and success is far from guaranteed,” said European Space Agency director-general Josef Aschbacher. “I am privileged to have witnessed this historic moment…effectively reinstating European access to space.”

Capability demonstration

The inaugural flight was a demonstration of Ariane 6’s capabilities that involved the release of several satellites and associated experiments from companies, universities and other organisations. Other parts of the demonstration included showing that Ariane 6’s upper stage could restart its Vinci engine to offload payloads into different orbits and de-orbit itself to not add to space debris.

The rocket’s first commercial flight is expected to take place this autumn.

A company called Ariane Group was the main contractor for the construction of Ariane 6, while a launch facility was custom-built for the rocket by France’s space agency, CNES. That agency’s chief executive, Philippe Baptiste, said: “With this first successful launch by Ariane 6, Europe has finally recovered its capacity to access space,” while Ariane Group’s chief executive, Martin Sion, proclaimed a “new era”.

Ariane 6 is a collaboration between 13 countries: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

The EU has been considering how best to boost its space sector, with the Council of the EU adopting conclusions on competitiveness in space in June, and set to discuss conclusions on space science skills.

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French research agency aims for greater integration of fundamental research and innovation

The CNRS, France’s multidisciplinary research agency, has suggested a raft of changes to the EU’s next research and innovation programme to strengthen the pipeline from fundamental research to societal impact.

Its recommendations include modifications to the three main pillars of the programme, which is due to start in 2028 and is currently referred to as Framework Programme 10. It will follow the current programme, Horizon Europe.

In its position paper, published on 8 July, the CNRS says that “the continuum linking fundamental research and innovation should underlie the design of FP10”, and it encourages a stronger focus on global challenges.

Among the measures it proposes, the CNRS urges the EU “to pull out all the stops to build critical European masses around highly strategic topics (artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, new materials…) by creating and supporting over the next decade dedicated distributed or single-sited centres”.

Nonetheless, the CNRS stresses that excellence should be kept as the main criterion for funding, both for individual and collaborative actions, across FP10.

Shifting pillars

If followed, the CNRS recommendations would see the focus of pillar 1 shift from ‘excellent science’ to ‘excellent and innovative scientific research’, with greater support for collaborative research at technology-readiness levels 0 to 4. Low TRLs on a scale from 0 to 9 indicate that a project focuses on basic research, whereas higher ones indicate increasing readiness for commercialisation.

Pillar 2, meanwhile, would shift focus from ‘global challenges and European industrial competitiveness’ to ‘global challenges and European transformation’, supporting research at TRLs 1 to 6. Pillar 2 should include more support for “target-driven basic research” at low TRLs, the CNRS says.

The agency also recommends that some calls from successive annual work programmes of each cluster of Pillar 2 could “make it possible to fund long-term projects over the entire duration of the programme in which the consortia could evolve [via] a go/no-go assessment process”.

Pillar 3, currently under the heading ‘innovative Europe’, should be “entirely dedicated to ‘innovation and industrial competitiveness’”, but nonetheless should have calls on TRLs between 0 to 8 “to ensure the continuum between basic research and market-oriented projects”, the CNRS says.

It suggests a budget breakdown between the three pillars of 40 per cent, 40 per cent and 20 per cent for pillars 1, 2 and 3 respectively.

Sustainability concerns

Acknowledging the growing existential threat of the climate and ecological crises, the CNRS “strongly encourages [FP10] to support projects developed within a sustainable approach minimising their environmental impact”.

It says that a “buy less and buy better” approach should be adopted for cost eligibility rules under FP10. This could work, the CNRS adds, “by establishing an eco-bonus which would promote maintenance and repair of purchased equipment and the use of second-hand equipment”.

Elsewhere in the recommendations, the CNRS proposes boosting support to collaborative projects between young researchers through the European Research Council, with up to eight partners allowed on projects, all “funded by a substantial budget”.

The CNRS reiterates its support of the call to more than double the funding for FP10 relative to Horizon Europe, by raising it to €200 billion. Horizon Europe has a budget of about €93.5bn for 2021-27.

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Joint report offers ideas on future-proofing the science system

Germany has been losing its innovative strength and competitiveness, and reversing the trend will require money, vision and the courage to restructure research institutions, science funders have said.

These views appear in a joint statement by the Volkswagen Foundation, a large private research funder, and the Stifterverband, the science funders’ association.

Their analysis, in a paper titled Dare to change: new actions for a university and science system of the future, is accompanied by recommendations for “future-proofing” the science system.  

The bodies cite international university and innovation rankings, such as those from the EU and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, as evidence of the country’s decline.

Investment in the higher education and science system remains high but it is questionable whether funding is used efficiently in the federal university system when there are so many non-university scientific institutions and alliances, the paper says.

It also identifies a “lack of international competitiveness” as a key weakness of the German academic system.

“The salary structure in the predominantly publicly funded part of the system is rarely internationally competitive,” the paper adds. 

“Career paths, especially in the early stages of the academic career, are uncertain, and the transfer of ideas and technologies from universities to business, public administration and other sectors is slow. The supervision ratio is poor and the bureaucratic burden is enormous.”

Accounting for unpredictability

“The universities and research institutions of the future must be able to adapt to the dynamics and unpredictability of change,” said Volkswagen Foundation secretary-general Georg Schütte. 

The German research system must respond accordingly, and this requires a national effort and joint action, as well as learning from European partners, he said.

“The prerequisite for a successful transformation process in the university and science system requires the involvement of all partners in science, politics and society at federal and state level,” added Stifterverband secretary-general Volker Meyer-Guckel.

Creating opportunities to try new approaches and introducing an ongoing critical review of the progress would ensure that “adjustments can be made flexibly in order to successfully realise the vision of a future-proof science system…It is time to break new ground,” he said.

Need for resilience

The paper is based on discussions with science policymakers from federal and state governments, as well as representatives from universities and science institutions. The discussions encompassed issues such as what a modern science system should look like and how the current system could be restructured, according to the statement.

“We need a resilient science system, one that is prepared for the unforeseen,” the paper says. 

“We need one that can react dynamically to new situations, that offers orientation in a time of continuous change…But that costs money, and it also requires vision and the courage to make a new start, to restructure and to refocus.”

The two organisations outlined the steps to achieve their “vision of a future-proof science system”. This involves strengthening strategic capability and giving universities more control; adapting funding to a system that aligns with national research and science policy goals; and creating a framework that enables various sectors of science, business and administration to collaborate without encountering bureaucratic hurdles.

Other challenges involve pooling the resources of outstanding research and innovation bodies, promoting agility and being more prepared to take risks. 

The paper also urges a new approach to politics that puts future-oriented and internationally competitive development goals for German science ahead of budget negotiations between federal and state governments.

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Libraries are confused about how to interact with technology companies, according to a report

Danish research libraries have yet to effectively integrate artificial intelligence into their systems, according to a pilot study, which identified a disconnect in collaboration between libraries and technology companies as one of the causes. 

The report—carried out on behalf of the Danish Research Library Association (DFFU) and the Association of European Research Libraries (Liber)—drew on interviews with representatives of Danish research libraries and technology companies such as Elsevier, ExLibris*, ChronosHub and Keenious. Liber published the study on 1 July.

The report says there are only a few examples of AI being properly used in managing research library systems. Chiefly, these are the use of image-to-text transcription when digitising materials and using AI for back-office tasks related to cataloguing. 

‘Tip of the iceberg’

Libraries are also interested in using AI to enrich metadata, according to AI companies. In short, libraries are woefully underusing AI at present. “We have only seen the tip of the iceberg,” said a university library worker quoted in the study.

There is a widespread mismatch between how Danish research libraries and technology companies think they should best work together. Libraries tend to view themselves as clients and thus seek a “traditional customer-supplier relationship”, says the report. 

Technology companies, on the other hand, are attempting to build more intricate relationships that create user communities, rather than purely selling their products. The report says this hampers collaborations and that “libraries have shown confusion regarding their recent partnerships with technology providers”.

Danish research libraries are looking to organisations such as DFFU and Liber to help guide them in applying AI to their operations in a responsible and beneficial manner, the study report says.

Identifying suppliers

“Organisations like Liber can collaborate with suppliers to qualify who the good suppliers in the market are,” said someone linked to a university library. DFFU and Liber can help distinguish between technology companies that wish to become engaged in the scientific environment and those who are indifferent to the scientific process, they added.

For now, discussions on AI in research libraries remain general in scope and do not yet focus on the specifics and practicalities of AI use, according to the report. 

“There is the challenge of new technologies such as chatbots, ChatGPT, and speech-to-text. All these new possibilities raise the question: How can we work with them? We not only experience the impact of the technology but also the ability to apply it in certain areas. These new technologies impose new demands on employee competencies,” said a Royal Danish Library associate quoted in the report.

AI advantage

Norwegian startup Keenious has noticed that libraries feel compelled to engage with AI because it is widely utilised by students and researchers. But Keenious said many potential partners are more interested in the subject of AI than in doing actual business.

The technology companies, for their part, say there is a growing recognition among libraries that they need to be less conservative and more willing to experiment with AI technologies to meet evolving user demands. “I think they are now coming to an understanding that AI will not replace them as librarians. Instead, librarians that use AI will be at an advantage,” an ExLibris associate said. 

*ExLibris is owned by Clarivate. Research Professional News is an editorially independent part of Clarivate

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Swiss institutions now eligible for applications to host 2025 Starting, Consolidator and Synergy Grants

Researchers at Swiss institutions are being allowed to apply for more of the European Research Council’s major grant types, while awaiting Swiss association to the EU’s research and innovation programme.

Figures from across the European research landscape have hailed the decision by the European Commission as showing strong progress towards a full restoration of the EU-Switzerland research partnership that has been torn apart in recent years.

The decision comes as the Commission is negotiating with the Swiss government over Switzerland’s association to Horizon Europe, which the ERC is part of.

Increased eligibility to apply

It was announced earlier this year that researchers at Swiss institutions would be allowed to apply for ERC Advanced Grants for senior researchers under the funder’s 2024 work programme. That call opened in May and closes on 29 August.

Now they are also being allowed to apply for the rest of the ERC’s core grants—namely, Starting Grants for early-career researchers, Consolidator Grants for mid-career researchers and Synergy Grants, through which multiple principal investigators collaborate—under the 2025 work programme. These calls open on 10 July, 26 September and 11 July, respectively.

For successful applicants to be able to have their grants hosted at Swiss institutions, Switzerland would need to be associated to Horizon Europe by the time the grants are ready to be signed. This is because ERC grants can only be hosted by EU member states or countries associated to Horizon Europe.

Switzerland has been associated to previous EU R&I programmes, but the EU initially prevented it from associating to Horizon Europe after the Swiss government walked away from talks on a broader political agreement. The Swiss government has been offering domestic alternatives to ERC grants while its institutions have been ineligible to host the EU versions.

Negotiations on Swiss association to Horizon Europe began in March this year, after political relations thawed. On the same day as the new announcement, Commission executive vice-president Maroš Šefčovič said on social media that he had had a “productive” call with Swiss foreign minister Ignazio Cassis on several topics, including “a transitional arrangement for 2025 Horizon Europe calls”.

Šefčovič has previously said that progress must be made across all areas of EU-Swiss talks for Horizon Europe association to be agreed. Switzerland is also seeking association to the EU’s Erasmus+ academic mobility programme, its digitisation programme, and its nuclear research programme Euratom. But it is other areas that are more likely to delay agreement. Šefčovič said it was “important to keep the momentum in the area of the free movement of persons”, for example.

The Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation reiterated that the government’s “overarching goal is to achieve association with the entire Horizon package as quickly as possible”.

‘Excellent news’

The ERC said on 4 July that the Commission decision was “a clear sign of goodwill in the negotiation process”. Its president Maria Leptin said on social media that the ERC “warmly welcomes back the Swiss research community!” She added: “We are ready to receive and evaluate your applications!”

Robert-Jan Smits, the former top R&I official at the Commission and now president of the board of Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, told Research Professional News that the development was “great news”.

“The EU and Switzerland are natural partners in [research] because they share the same values and have so much to offer to each other,” he said, urging the parties to “continue on this path” for the next EU R&I programme, starting in 2028, “and avoid that politics gets once again in the way of this unique partnership”.

Similarly, Yves Flückiger, president of the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences, hailed the “excellent news”, adding: “It proves that negotiations between Switzerland and the EU are making progress.”

Jan Palmowski from the Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities said the move was “great progress” not only for Switzerland but also “for the capacity of European science to transform what we know and what is possible”.

But he added: “Now we need full association.”

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Plans of newly installed government risk undermining Netherlands’ knowledge sector, board chairs say

University leaders have written to the Netherlands’ new education and science minister setting out concerns about the newly installed government’s plans to cut funding for the academic sector.

The Universities of the Netherlands (UNL) association of executive board chairs wrote to Eppo Bruins (pictured) on 2 July, saying they are “extremely concerned” about the intentions he endorsed in the government’s outline agreement for its term of office.

These include scrapping the next rounds of the National Growth Fund, which has supported research and innovation investment.

The “drastic cuts” planned for education and research have put their quality and accessibility in a “danger zone”, the chairs said.

“We are not only very concerned about the consequences of this for our students and employees, but also about the negative impact of these measures on the future of the Netherlands,” they said.

According to the chairs, the plans would bring about the loss of more than 5,000 jobs at a rapid pace, possibly resulting in forced redundancies and reorganisations. They said such losses will reduce the quality of education, could result in a reduced range of courses offered and, in the long term, threaten the competitiveness of the Dutch economy.

The Netherlands will also be able to achieve less in scientific research, the chairs warned, further harming its economy, undermining its ability to undertake major societal transitions and making it less attractive to international talent. Academics might also leave the profession due to increased workloads, resulting in a “lost generation”.

The university group also set out legal objections to the plans, suggesting they constitute improper governance given agreements made with the previous government in 2022.

Minister responds

Bruins, a former MP and physicist who has led two research institutes and was chair of the Dutch Advisory Council for Science, Technology and Innovation until his ministerial appointment, told Research Professional News: “I understand the concerns in science very well, partly because I worked in and around science for over 20 years.”

But he added: “At the same time, financial choices have to be made…In the coming period, in coordination with the parties in higher education, universities and science, I will look at how the sector plans fit in with the austerity tasks ahead of us.”

Labour agreements reached

Meanwhile, UNL has reached a labour agreement with employee organisations that includes a wage increase of 3.7 per cent from 1 September and a one-off payment of €300 on the same date. On 1 January 2025, wages will be increased by another one per cent. Agreements were also reached on work pressures.

Margot van der Starre, vice-president of Utrecht University and delegation leader on behalf of UNL, stressed the need for responsible wage increases in these financially uncertain times. “Due to the new cabinet’s announced cuts, universities are in financially uncertain times. That is why we and the unions opt for responsible wage increases,” van der Starre said.

Universities and unions together attach great importance to improving wellbeing at universities, UNL said, adding that achieving a socially safe working environment requires a cultural shift. The groups have agreed that universities will invest in awareness-raising, create a central hotline at each institution and evaluate the ombuds function in autumn 2024.

The groups also want to further tackle work pressure by linking the causes of work pressure with solutions in a more structured way at all levels of universities. They stressed the importance of taking leave to facilitate recuperation and said they will launch a campaign to reduce work pressures.

University leaders and staff hope the collective bargaining agreements show that, despite the financial uncertainties, there is still room for positive change within the sector. Universities remain committed to their staff and the quality of teaching and research, their leaders said, while preparing for the challenges posed by the announced cuts.

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International demonstration facility’s new construction and operations plan involves finding “shortcuts” in schedule, says leader

The international nuclear fusion research facility Iter has been delayed by several years in various elements of its operations, at an estimated extra cost of €5 billion.

The scale of the challenge facing the facility was laid bare in a ‘baseline’ schedule presented to the governing board in June and detailed to the media by Iter’s director general, Petro Barabaschi, on 3 July.

“There is no denying that there is a delay, but I believe we are doing the right thing in getting there with more attention to risks and minimising the overall delay to the long-term objective of the project,” Barabaschi said.

He said the new plan aims to “somehow take some shortcuts” and considers “the big picture on how to get as fast as possible to real research”.

New schedule

The project had been aiming to achieve ‘first plasma’ in 2025, ‘full magnetic energy’ in 2033 and the start of the ‘deuterium-tritium operation phase’ in 2035.

Now, no specific date is being given for the first of those milestones, the second has been delayed by three years and the third has been delayed by four years.

But information provided to the press downplayed the delay to first plasma, saying that it had been “designed as a brief, low-energy machine test”. Instead of focusing on that goal, “the new baseline has been redesigned to prioritise the start of research operations”. That is planned for 2034, using “a more complete machine”.

Iter had already suffered from delays and cost increases under previous schedules. The latest delays are being attributed to the Covid-19 pandemic and technical issues with components. The pandemic hindered construction and quality inspections, said Barabaschi, adding that the latter might indirectly “have been one of the causes of some quality issues that need to be fixed”.

The new baseline includes the use of materials that better reflect contemporary science. Iter is also reorganising as part of attempts “to moderate and control cost”, Barabaschi said.

Members still onboard

Nonetheless, those extra costs are expected to total €5bn, and the initiative’s members are yet to approve the new plan. Barabaschi said that “there is still very strong support from the members on this project”.

Iter has been under construction in France since 2010 and is intended to provide participating countries, and the wider world, with new knowledge to hasten the development of commercial nuclear fusion power.

It is a collaboration between the EU, China, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States. Barabaschi said Iter remains a “peace project which brings together parts of the world” and that geopolitics lies beyond its scope.

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This week: Horizon Europe, reform recommendations, regional innovation and more

Framework Programme 10

The EU’s next research and innovation programme should play a “stronger leading role” in promoting the bloc’s competitiveness, according to a group that advises the union on its R&I policy. This should involve the programme “offering solutions and responding to the challenges and emerging priorities of our times”, said the European Research Area and Innovation Committee, an advice body formed of representatives of the EU member states and the European Commission. Framework Programme 10, which is due to start in 2028, should “contribute to a better life for European citizens through science-informed policies and added societal value brought by R&I”. It should also “foster the creation of job opportunities and a stronger and more resilient EU economy”, Erac said in an opinion paper.

Full story

Horizon Europe

The EU’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme is in line for a year-on-year budget cut of €160 million under a European Commission proposal. It should have a budget of just over €12.7 billion in 2025, says the proposal, down from around €12.9bn in the current financial year. Iterations of EU R&I programmes normally ramp up their spending over their seven-year durations, but earlier this year politicians decided to cut €2bn over the remainder of Horizon Europe to help fund other priorities including support for Ukraine. Of that €2bn, €377m is being found in 2025, once the year’s share of a €100m return of unspent funding is factored in.

Full story

European Universities Initiative

The EU has announced funding for 14 more cross-border alliances as part of its European Universities Initiative, bringing the total to 64 alliances involving more than 560 institutions. The EUI uses EU funding to help higher education institutions in different countries collaborate on projects including joint campuses and courses. Each of the new alliances will receive €14.4 million over four years from Erasmus+, the EU’s academic exchange programme. “The EUI alliances bring together a new generation of Europeans and allow them to study and work in different European countries, in different languages and across sectors and academic disciplines,” the European Commission said.

Full story

Innovation network

The European Institute of Innovation and Technology has been given the go-ahead by the European Commission to establish a network for water, marine and maritime sectors and ecosystems. Created in 2008, the EIT bridges gaps between business, research and education by funding networks in thematic areas, called Knowledge and Innovation Communities, which are intended to eventually become self-sustaining. The water KIC will join nine others, covering climate, digital, energy, health, raw materials, food, manufacturing, urban mobility and culture and creativity. It is likely to be launched in 2026 in response to a call for proposals expected next year.

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EIT setup

The European Institute of Innovation and Technology should be “revitalised”, including by refocusing it on its core mission, the Cesaer group of European universities of science and technology has urged. In a position paper, Cesaer said that the EIT has a “commendable” aim to strengthen innovation ecosystems and foster entrepreneurial skills, but it complained that “in recent years the administrative burden and overregulation have grown, along with increased co-funding and backflow requirements, which detract from the EIT’s primary focus”. It said funding criteria “act as barriers for universities to participate in innovation projects”.

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R&I policy

The EU needs to adopt a “more systemic” approach to its research and innovation policy, considering not only traditional elements of competitiveness but also factors such as environmental and social sustainability, according to a group of independent experts. The Expert Group on the Economic and Societal Impact of Research and Innovation, which advises the European Commission and is chaired by oceanography professor Katherine Richardson, made the recommendation in a policy brief. Policies for R&I and competitiveness are becoming “increasingly intertwined” with policies around climate and welfare, it said, arguing for a “systemic perspective on competitiveness”.

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Reform recommendations

EU countries should increase their investments in research and innovation and implement reforms to improve their competitiveness, the European Commission has said. A lack of investment in R&I has contributed to slower productivity growth since the early 2000s, it said when presenting the European Semester Spring Package, a set of general and country-specific advice for boosting economic growth. Countries should “implement ambitious reforms to build integrated R&I ecosystems, focusing on governance, public research systems and infrastructures, science-business collaboration and knowledge transfers”, as well as attracting and retaining researchers, the Commission said.

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Picture of the week

Image: European Union

Ursula von der Leyen has been nominated by the leaders of the EU member states for a second term as European Commission president. She will need to win the backing of a majority of MEPs in the European Parliament in a vote expected later this month.

Transformative journals

Coalition S, a group of funders requiring immediate open access to papers reporting research they have supported, has confirmed that it will end its support for ‘transformative journals’ this year. The group coined the phrase for journals that agreed to participate in an initiative to shift their content away from subscription-based paywalls towards open access at a certain rate. In an update, head of strategy Robert Kiley said there had been “positive” developments, such as 78 journals becoming fully open access, but the “most striking” development was that most journals had failed to hit their targets.

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Diamond open access

A “good mix” of top-down and bottom-up policies at institutional and national levels is needed to support the ‘diamond’ model of open-access publishing, according to the EU-funded Diamas project, which is developing a set of related policy recommendations. The model, which makes up a fairly small part of the scholarly publishing landscape at present, involves research papers being made openly available to readers with no charge to them or to authors, through institutional support for the publishing platform. Diamas said that challenges include a lack of sustainable funding, incentives, rewards and professional staff.

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Intellectual property

EU governments have adopted a stance on compulsory licensing of intellectual property, which would allow the EU to override IP rights as a last resort in emergencies. The issue of IP rights hampering the response to emergencies came to prominence during the Covid-19 pandemic, when the ability to create and manufacture vaccines depended on patented information. The Council of the EU member state governments wants several changes to the proposal from the European Commission, “to protect the rights of the IP rights-holders and ensure that they are better informed”. For example, it wants the EU to be able to remunerate rights-holders beyond a cap proposed by the Commission of 4 per cent of their revenue. The Council will negotiate on the proposal with the European Parliament in the coming months.

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Medical research

The EU should have a database of health-related research and innovation needs, its member state governments have said. The Council of the EU said that current EU R&I “partially fail[s] to stimulate solutions for priority health-related needs”. This is due to “a lack of evidence” on what the highest unmet needs are or “a lack of commercial or public interest” in them. Structured scientific evidence on needs is therefore necessary to direct public and private investment in health R&I, it said, adding that the database should gather information related to diseases and healthcare systems from existing national and international sources and present it in a standardised format, based on a framework from independent researchers and with input from policymakers, patients and healthcare providers.

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Space agency

Slovenia is to join the European Space Agency, having signed an accession agreement that now just needs to be ratified by national politicians. “This signature is a key milestone, not only for Slovenia but also for Esa, which proves to still be attractive 50 years after its creation,” said the agency’s director-general Josef Aschbacher. Slovenia has been working with Esa since it signed a first cooperation agreement with the agency in 2008. But being an Esa member state will bring “advantages and new opportunities, as well as additional obligations in terms of funding and workforce management”, according to the agency. Benefits will include access to programmes on science and technology.

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Regional innovation

The European Commission has identified 151 potential Regional Innovation Valleys under a new scheme intended to link up innovation activities in different areas—and it has allocated €116 million to the first projects. The RIV scheme is intended to help regions with lower innovation performance build on their strengths by teaming them up with higher-performing ones. Some of the 151 regions are outside the EU, including the entire countries of Montenegro and North Macedonia; Innlandet and Vestlandet in Norway; the Ivano-Frankivsk and Kyiv provinces in Ukraine; and the West Midlands, the Highlands and Islands and all of mainland Scotland in the UK.

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University cooperation

A “substantial leap forward in supporting transnational university cooperation” is needed from European and national policymakers, according to the European University Association—not only for the cross-border alliances formed under the EU’s European Universities Initiative but more broadly. “The goal…until 2030 must be to create a strategic, transparent and smooth system of transnational university cooperation that benefits the entire university sector,” the EUA said. Such cooperation is crucial to promote high-quality research and education, it said, in turn enabling universities to help increase Europe’s sustainability and competitiveness.

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Science diplomacy

The EU should do more to support science diplomacy, according to the Cesaer group of European universities of science and technology. It made recommendations in three areas: the use of science in broader diplomacy; the use of science as a diplomatic bridge-builder; and international scientific cooperation in general. It said that existing means of incorporating scientific evidence into diplomacy “are not yet disseminated and used to their full potential, as they are not yet structurally incorporated into the academic sector nor yet aligned with the activities of embassies and foreign affairs offices”.

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Science advice

The Spanish government has announced an overhaul of how the country’s policymakers draw on scientific advice, involving the creation of what it described as a new science advice ecosystem. A National Office for Scientific Advice is being created to strengthen government decision-making, a new support unit is being set up at the National Research Council and each government ministry will have its own scientific adviser. Together, these measures will result in more than 50 scientific advisers being appointed as government officials, the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities said. Prime minister Pedro Sánchez described the move as “transformative”.

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Space debris

The European Space Agency has contracted three companies to develop technologies to prevent future satellites from adding to the debris surrounding the Earth, which is posing a growing threat to orbiting craft. Airbus Defence and Space, OHB and Thales Alenia Space will work on platforms for low-Earth orbit satellites “as a first step towards building zero-debris production lines”. Platforms are the parts of satellites that equipment such as scientific instruments can be attached to. Esa said that the companies had been its “long-time partners” in efforts to achieve zero space debris from new launches by 2030.

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Orbán government’s stance is causing concern, but R&I and education priorities are considered promising

Research and higher education groups are worried about the new Hungarian presidency of the Council of the EU due to the Orbán government’s generally fractious stance towards the bloc, but they see “reasons for optimism” in its priorities.

Council presidencies, which last six months, are expected to drive progress on EU legislation and policymaking by chairing meetings of the member state governments and finding compromises between their positions. They can also set some priorities, while taking cues from the European Commission and adjacent presidencies.

Hungary’s presidency started on 1 July and has made competitiveness its top priority. Its slogan is “Make Europe great again”, echoing Donald Trump’s campaign slogan in the US. The phrase is in keeping with the oppositional stance of prime minister Viktor Orbán to the general thrust of EU policymaking.

Reasons for concern

Kurt Deketelaere, secretary-general of the League of European Research Universities, said that he, “like many people”, has “a certain worry” about whether the presidency will “be used for political games” or be “the neutral dealmaker as it should”.

For Mattias Björnmalm, secretary-general of the Cesaer group of European science and technology universities, the presidency slogan “raises concerns” around “hindrances to international collaboration in research, education and innovation across Europe and beyond, due to an increasingly inward-looking stance”.

Similarly, Paweł Rowiński, president of the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities, said that the focus on competitiveness, as well as defence and migration, “bears the risk of furthering European protectionism and particularism and harming open research collaboration, which is more needed than ever to tackle the enormous global challenges through collective efforts, dialogue and understanding”.

For Louise Drogoul, innovation and sustainability adviser at Cesaer, the focus on competitiveness and industrial policy reflects a “significant shift in EU priorities” that “raises concerns about the potential sidelining of sustainability”.

Deketelaere said that the presidency is coming at “an important moment”, with a new political cycle starting after the European Parliament election last month, thoughts turning to the design of the EU’s next research and innovation funding programme and plans soon to be made for the next multi-year EU budget.

Drogoul said: “In this transitional period marked by the renewal of EU institutions, it is crucial to ensure that considerations around industrial growth are not decoupled from sustainable development, thus ensuring a holistic approach to future policy directions.”

Mixed views on priorities

There were mixed views on the specific R&I and higher education policy priorities of the presidency, with more positivity than might have been expected given the fears over its political leadership.

Both Deketelaere and Rowiński expressed concern about the absence of any mention in the presidency programme of academic freedom, on which a Commission response to a Parliament proposal is pending.

“In light of ongoing and increasing threats to these essential conditions for excellent science and research in Europe, we appeal to all member states and future Council presidencies to integrate these in their priorities and programmes,” said Rowiński, although he welcomed the focus on R&I more broadly.

Deketelaere said the presidency ticks some “obligatory boxes” on R&I and space but “does not show a great deal of enthusiasm to tackle the higher education package”. It will be important that ministers discuss issues such as joint European degrees “in detail”, he said, calling for “serious effort” to achieve progress from the presidency.

However, there are also “many reasons for optimism”, according to Björnmalm, including plans to build on the report of former Italy prime minister Enrico Letta on the EU’s single market, which called for R&I to be made a “fifth freedom”.

Björnmalm said that achieving the free movement of knowledge and researchers “requires a legally binding and mandatory approach”, and that the initial step should involve “intensifying efforts around the European Research Area”, which is the EU’s initiative to harmonise national R&I processes and policies that hamper freedoms.

“The Hungarian presidency can make a significant contribution here by promptly following up [on the Letta report] with the Commission. This includes preparing bold and ambitious conclusions regarding the future of the ERA, to ensure efforts are directed towards swiftly and fully realising the fifth freedom across all of the EU,” Björnmalm said, in sentiments also shared by Deketelaere.

Björnmalm added that the presidency can also play an important role in the response to a forthcoming report on competitiveness by Mario Draghi, another former prime minister of Italy. It should focus on connecting initiatives to strengthen R&I and providing the “necessary political guidance”, he said.

‘Wait and see’

Lidia Borrell-Damián, secretary-general of Science Europe, an association of research funding and performing organisations, declined to comment on the presidency itself but highlighted that her organisation is co-hosting a presidency event on the competitiveness of European R&I.

“We will focus on measures to reduce the R&I gap among EU member states and associated countries, having identified six key structural recommendations to boost the scientific, societal, environmental and economic impact of European R&I programmes,” she said.

Deketelaere seemed to sum up the views of many in concluding: “Let’s wait and see, and perhaps the Hungarian presidency will surprise us in a positive way.”

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Much remains to be decided despite initial agreement on top jobs and overarching priorities

The research, innovation and higher education sectors are eagerly awaiting important details of the EU’s new political cycle, following the European Parliament election.

Based on the outcome of that election, EU national leaders have nominated Ursula von der Leyen for a second term as president of the European Commission, which is arguably the most powerful policymaking role in the EU institutions.

“Given the overall political situation, which is different from five years ago, a second von der Leyen Commission might be a bit different from the first one, but we have to wait and see what strategic priorities she will put forward,” said Anna-Lena Claeys-Kulik, deputy director of policy coordination and foresight at the European University Association.

That political situation is one in which right-wing politicians made gains in the Parliament, building on their rise at national level in several EU countries including Italy, the Netherlands and France—where they have undermined president Emmanuel Macron’s power.

‘Rise of the right’

Some commentators have suggested that the rise of the right, underway before the European election, has already resulted in the EU as a whole taking more right-wing stances on migration and climate change. The July-to-December priorities of the Hungarian presidency of the Council of the EU member state governments also reflect the trend, it has been suggested.

Von der Leyen now needs to win a majority backing of the new MEPs in the Parliament to secure her second term. As Commission president, she would decide what portfolios to allocate to the new set of commissioners nominated by national governments.

“What will be important for universities is to have one strong Commissioner uniting research, innovation and education under one portfolio to ensure policy coherence and coordination,” said Claeys-Kulik. It was von der Leyen who decided to combine R&I and education in a single portfolio for the first time.

When national leaders picked von der Leyen for a second term, they also adopted a strategic agenda for the 2024-29 term. This was based on three pillars: democratic values, security and competitiveness.

R&I’s vital role

Silvia Gómez Recio, secretary-general of the Young European Research Universities Network, told Research Europe that Yerun was “pleased to see a clear acknowledgement of the role that R&I plays in the EU’s competitiveness, the importance given to ensuring Europe can attract and retain our talent, and the proposed investments in education, training and skills”.

But she questioned a focus on closing growth, productivity and innovation “gaps” with global partners and competitors, suggesting the focus should be on doing “better” rather than “more”. She said: “I will be proud of a Europe that focuses on quality, on authenticity, and that allows creativity to explore, create and reinvent itself.”

Gómez Recio added that “trust and autonomy for researchers is essential for fostering an innovative ecosystem where groundbreaking discoveries and solutions to pressing global issues can thrive”.

“We hope that this mindset goes beyond innovation and competitiveness, that we trust our talent, and that we work together at all levels in making Europe the best place to be,” she said.

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The Leo Foundation launches a Research Networking Grant scheme

The Leo Foundation launches a Research Networking Grant scheme

Top tips

• The international element is very important in this scheme.
• These grants should not be used for meetings to support ongoing research projects or potential research bids.
• Encourage participation across career stages at events.
• Meetings can be open beyond the research community where appropriate.

The Leo Foundation is the world’s largest private funder dedicated to skin and skin disease research. It granted 217 million Danish Kroner in 2023 and aims to award half a billion Danish Kroner a year by 2030. 

The Foundation’s best-known grants are its Research Grants, profiled in Funding Insight in February 2023. These open to applications three times a year, with the next deadline on 12 September.

This year, the foundation added two schemes to its portfolio, the Visiting Researchers programme, which supports international visits from Danish research institutions and vice versa, and the Research Networking Grants, which supports international knowledge-sharing within dermatology. Both schemes will open for their second round on 15 August and close on 2 October.

The Research Networking Grant can be worth up to 500,000 Danish Kroner (€67,000) and is open worldwide. It encourages participation from researchers at any career stage, including students, and money can be allocated for travel costs. 

Anne-Marie Engel, the chief scientific officer at the Leo Foundation, discusses what the foundation hopes for from its new schemes, focusing on the networking grant.

Why did the foundation launch its new calls in 2024? 

We are in the process of implementing our 2025 grant strategy, which directs our philanthropic activities into two main tracks: one supporting world-class skin research in different programmes, such as the long-standing Research Grants in Open Competition, and the Leo Foundation Dr Abildgaard Fellowships programme and Serendipity Grants, which were introduced last year. These programmes all support research projects.

The other track is to catalyse a strong and coherent global skin and skin disease research ecosystem.

Research Grants are of course an important instrument, but another important way of supporting the ecosystem is making sure people eager to meet and exchange ideas and challenge each other can do so. This is why we have introduced the networking grants.

We know from experience that new ideas come up when researchers meet in different settings, or when they visit people from another research tribe, so to speak. When researchers challenge each other in physical meetings, new and maybe important collaborations can emerge. 

What are the eligibility criteria for the networking grant? 

There are specific criteria for this instrument, and one is that it should be open to an international public. You cannot say that at this hospital we are having an internal educational session of some kind, and then apply for money. That will not work.

The call is also not open to researchers who would for instance like to get together to write an application for a large grant, for example to the Horizon Europe programme, together. 

The idea is for people who have a common interest in setting up a meeting or a network event of some kind to develop what they are already doing.

Should these groups also be open to the general public? 

Whether you invite people from the public will depend on those who make the agenda and what kind of meeting they would like to have. If it is relevant for a meeting to invite patients or representative organisations to discuss relevant topics, designing trials for example, that will be fine. We would not exclude anything like that.  

The meeting must have a starting point in a shared scientific question or topic, but who they invite to give input or inspiration is up to applicants.

What errors were made on bids to the first round? 

We had some applicants who saw the scheme as an opportunity to obtain funding for project meetings, for people to travel and meet to discuss a project funded elsewhere—and that was too narrow a mission. 

We also had a couple of applicants who saw this as a research project grant involving travel and meetings. They scoped a research project for us which we have other instruments for. The Research Networking Grants are specifically for meetings, for conferences, for symposia. It is important that applicants distinguish between our different programmes and their purposes. 

Does that point to a more general error that you might see on bids to other schemes?

Yes, a general pitfall is that people read the guidelines, but they read the guidelines through a lens to see what they would really like funding for. Quite a few applicants give us a call, or send us an email saying, “You’ve got this scheme, I’ve got this project, does it fit? What would it take to make it fit?”. We have a lot of good dialogue through which we can also learn about how people read the guidelines that we put out. This helps us to improve and adjust them.

Is this a pilot scheme or can it be considered as a permanent one now? 

When we introduce a new instrument, we introduce two deadlines that year. We like to run a few rounds just to gather experience. Even though we have done our best to design the instrument so it answers all the questions we can think of, we will not know them all. 

After a few rounds, we can stop and say “Okay, are there questions popping up or are people disregarding what we think is very clear guidance? Should we adjust anything? Do we get too many of some and too few of others? Should we try to invite some more people in with specific kinds of applications?”. But it is still too early to say about that for this year’s new instruments.

Were there many bids to the first round?

We didn’t get that many applications, but we did not announce it long ago. In our experience, it takes time to build up awareness in the scientific community, even though there is always a lack of money for good projects or good meetings. It takes maybe a year or so, depending on how frequent your application deadlines are, for the community to be aware that there is this option. 

There will be a build-up of interest, that is for sure. We know the need is there, it just takes a bit of patience from our side as well.

This is an extract from an article in Research Professional’s Funding Insight service. To subscribe contact sales@researchresearch.com

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The gap between the EU’s R&I funding and its ambition is in the spotlight again

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