HALFWAY THROUGH HORIZON 2020. WHAT TO EXPECT NEXT?

The European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, Carlos Moedas, announced measures to be adopted for the Horizon 2020 Work programme 2018-2020, the final work programme of Horizon 2020 for the last three years.

In his announcement during the press conference, he stated the importance of the funding programme and how much has been achieved since 2014 until now as under Horizon 2020 there were 14 thousand projects that have created collaboration between countries that no one in the world is able to do.

We are just beyond half way as four years passed, and there are still three years to go. What happened concretely until now?

• More than 14,000 research and innovation projects received EUR 25 billion.
• EUR 4 billion went to SMEs under Horizon 2020 grants, including under the SME instrument.
• EUR 30 million has been allocated to Horizon Prizes to support innovation for clean air in European cities, including green engine development and CO2 reuse.
• Launch of the first phase of the European Innovation Council (EIC) to support high-risk, high-gain, breakthrough innovation to create the markets of the future financed with EUR 2.7 billion from Horizon 2020.

 

But how about the upcoming three years? As Commissioner Moedas stated in his speech, for the last three years there are still 30 billion euros to invest. We have 3 years to go and we need to focus, and we have to give direction to the scientists and to the researchers.

Next priorities of the Commission will also focus on cooperation with extra-European areas such as Canada or Africa:

We have decided to have 30 new flagships with total budget of 1 billion euros. We will work with Canada on personalized medicine, we will work with Africa for food, nutrition and renewables. C. Moedas

On the second part of Horizon 2020, the Commission will focus on fewer topics for efficient results as the press release stresses:

 

• A low-carbon, climate resilient future: €3.3 billion
• Circular Economy: €1 billion
• Digitising and transforming European industry and services: €1.7 billion
• Security Union: €1 billion
• Migration: €200 million

 

During the Q&A session, different hot topics were addressed. One of them was the situation of the UK researchers and the request for more clarity about the UK applicants’ access to Horizon 2020 after 2019. In this occasion, Commissioner Moedas stressed on the fact that everybody in the science field feels very sad about the Brexit issue:

We should preserve the relationship that have been created through great UK and European universities. I will do everything I can to create a relationship for the future, but there is nothing I can tell about that now because it does not depend on me or on us. We will keep being open to the world and that has always been our motto. But we should all keep fighting on both sides.

When asked about the difference between the European Innovation Agency suggested by Macron and the European Innovation Council, Moedas stated that there is none. Innovation comes from different fields and we need to boost that breakthrough innovation that creates new markets. Highlights should be on the role of Horizon 2020 and this is for the EU to solve as the solution has to be at EU level, showing that he is not in favour of any inter-governmental solution.

All in all, we hope that the upcoming period of Horizon 2020 will be a flourishing one for the research and innovation EU projects and we look forward seeing and actively taking part in the extra-European partnerships.

 

written by Cosmina Bisboaca

Proposal Development Challenges. Building an International Consortium

Whether you are an organization with extensive experience in proposal development or a newcomer looking to develop a competitive proposal, you’ve faced the challenge of building a consortium, which is best suited to carry out the tasks envisaged within the Work Plan.

We all have close partner networks (organizations that we worked extensively with, and whom we can contact regularly in order team up in for a specific project idea) as well extended contacts (organizations recommended by our partners or those we know from other projects).

It might be relatively easy to build a consortium including partners from EU Member States, but what is the best strategy to follow, if the call requires participation of partners from countries we never worked with before, moreover, outside the European Union?

We at Europa Media tackled this challenge on several occasions while developing proposals targeting non-EU countries (for example, from Eastern Partnership (EaP) and Western Balkans regions) and are happy to share useful tips:

• If you are as lucky as us to have a multinational team, make use of the added value of multilingualism: the initial search for the best partners can be done in the local language, as in many cases organizations might not have their websites in English, even if they have experts who are fluent in the language.

For example, for our new project, which is currently in Grant Agreement Preparation stage, our colleague did an extensive research in Macedonian, established initial contacts with relevant organizations and then the communication was continued in English.

• If you’ve had any previous experience of working in the country/region, but you need experts in a different field, ask your local partners for recommendations.

While developing a proposal on EU-EaP cooperation, another EM’s project manager from Ukraine contacted her previous colleagues working in the migration field and asked for recommendations on organizations experienced in the fields of democracy, security, good governance from Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, and Moldova.

• Once you have identified several equally professional organizations, conduct a background check on CORDIS to see their track record in participating in EU-funded projects.

As the regional interdisciplinary network is quite developed, we obtained a number of expert contacts in the case described above and then we were able to decide whom to invite to the Consortium based on their experience in participating in EU-funded projects.

• If you didn’t manage to find any organizations through networking, try using the Participant Portal Partner Search function.

It is a relatively new feature, enabling you to search for partners by country, key words, programmes and organization types.

• As a friendly gesture, include a greeting in a local language in your initial email on potential partnership as a sign of being aware of regional peculiarities.

Be aware, of mixing, for example, Slavic languages in your email :)

Once you found the potential perfect partner to carry our local tasks, make sure to be as clear in your initial email as possible, however, without giving up confidential details of your project idea. Describe the call, potential consortium and required tasks and expertise. Based on the reply, you will be able to judge whether a partner will be able to contribute at the proposal development stage, meet the deadlines and fulfill the tasks accordingly. A follow-up call on task distribution is always a good idea, if you decide to include the organization into your consortium.

Remember, with the new Work Programmes already published, it is never too early to start building a consortium for your competitive proposal. Good luck!

Written by Liliya Levandovska

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PLANNING PUBLICATIONS IN A HORIZON 2020 PROPOSAL

While preparing materials for our own training courses on impact, exploitation and dissemination activities under H2020, I came to re-read a classic guideline for researchers to understand the publishing process: “How to publish in scholarly journals”, by Elsevier.

 

This short guidebook gives quite useful information, tips and resources to early career researchers approaching the publishing world, and I thought in this blogpost I would try and discuss the main aspects described in those guidelines under a Horizon 2020 lens.

 

Once you agree with your partners on the outcomes deriving from your project, you can start thinking of which new findings may be worth becoming the content of new publications. While it can be pretty hard to estimate in advance exactly the types of results you are going to achieve, adding a realistic plan for publications to your section 2.2 can give a great added value to your proposal, especially if you’re submitting a Research and Innovation Action.

 

Where to start?

 

 

For each new knowledge item, you or your partners plan to write an article about, try to estimate the following:

 

1. The type of publication that can best fit your results.

 

*Text from “Understanding the publishing process. How to publish in scholarly journals”, by Elsevier

 

2. Examples of appropriate journals you are going to submit to

Based on the type of article you have decided to publish, look at the relevant literature in your field and then carefully read the aims and scope of each potential journal on their homepage. Other useful elements can be the journal’s metrics (e.g. international outlook, audience, impact metrics, etc.), and open access options.

 

3. Open Access option

It is worth mentioning that H2020 does not force you to publish your results. For specific cases, e.g. if you are planning to protect a project result with a patent, or there are ethical/security issues associated with it, you are allowed to keep the results confidential; just make sure you include a proper explanation of the rationale behind this choice. However, if you decide to publish the results, then you are required to provide open access. This may take two possible forms:

 

*Table from “Understanding the publishing process. How to publish in scholarly journals”, by Elsevier

 

Both options are acceptable for Horizon 2020 projects (and you may choose different options for different publications in the same H2020 project), but remember to budget the necessary resources in case you plan to opt for Gold Open Access, which you can find on the journal’s homepage. Also bear in mind that, according to the H2020 General Model Grant Agreement, the author processing costs may be eligible only if they are incurred within the duration of the project.

 

4. Copyright issues

An additional detail concerns the discussion on the article’s author is going to retain its copyright, while granting appropriate licenses to the publisher. This might be relevant especially whenever you are going to use trademarks or other protected IP in the article, a frequent case for Innovation Actions for example. In such cases, you may want to briefly discuss the planned license agreement, as well as the potential type of user license, which determines the rights granted to readers. As a minimum in H2020, readers must be able to read online, download and print your article from online repositories such as OpenAIRE; you are then encouraged to provide additional rights, such as to copy, distribute, search, link, crawl and mine. Check this Creative Commons tool to choose the most appropriate user license for your article.

 

5. Estimated timeline

Based on your proposal Gantt chart and on the selected journal’s publication timeline, you may provide a realistic estimation of the publication timeline to evaluators. This is a useful exercise also for you, as you can double check if gold open access fees can in fact be charged to the project.

 

*Text from “Understanding the publishing process. How to publish in scholarly journals”, by Elsevier

 

6. Promotional plan for the publications

Whether you manage to have the published article before or after the end of the project, it can be a good idea to include in your proposal measures to promote it to the interested audiences. In case the publication timeline ends after the project’s lifetime, of course you should be realistic and include only cost-efficient measures, such as promotion on social media, on your personal website, or through networking activities. For publications ready before the end of the project, on the other hand, why not linking their promotion to specific conferences/events you are planning to organise or to attend as part of your dissemination activities?

 

7. Monitoring and evaluation

As you do with other dissemination and communication activities, you can easily include measures for monitoring the impact of your articles, such as the number of views on your articles, or if you use social networks such as ResearchGate or Mendeley, you can obtain further statistics such as the geographic locations and research disciplines of your readers.

 

To recap all this into a ready-to-use template for your next H2020 proposal, find here below a potential table describing your plan for publications, with a fictitious example.

 

I hope this article was useful for you; to suggest more tools or ideas to include this section, or share specific issues and problems you have encountered, please do not hesitate to e-mail us or tweet us including the hashtag #askEuropaMedia!

Written by Valentina Zuri