Category / EU

Welcome to the EU section of the blog! Emily Cieciura (BU’s Research Facilitator – EU and International), Jo Garrad (Funding Development Manager) and Dianne Goodman (Funding Development Co-ordinator) together try to take the pain out of finding and applying for EU funding by horizon scanning many sources and placing the most important information on this page.

We blog as often as possible on everything from calls for proposals and partner searches, to networking event opportunities, all the latest on Horizon 2020 and international funding. We also use the blog to disseminate information on EUADS (BU’s EU academic training initiative), how to write brilliant proposals, how to find partners and other top tips!

research*eu – latest update

BU research, EU, Funding opportunities, international, Research news

EveryCORDIS research eu month the European Commission publishes research*eu, their round-up of the latest news from research projects funded by their various schemes.

The following highlights will be of interest to academics at BU:

October 2016 (Special feature: What we can learn from insects?)

November 2016 (Special feature: Shaping the future of offshore wind)

By taking a look at these items and the many others reported in research*eu, you may find potential partners or spark ideas for future research collaboration. In addition, CORDIS, the European Commission’s primary portal for results of EU-funded research projects, provides a wealth of information to assist you when building a new project.

If you are considering applying for EU funding, please contact Emily Cieciura, RKEO’s Research Facilitator: EU & International, to discuss your ideas!

COST Action Training School attended by FHSS Postgraduate Researcher Preeti Mahato

EU, international, Student Engagement, Training, Uncategorized

img_5141Last week I attended COST Action Training School BEYOND BIRTH COHORTS: from study design to data management which was conducted from November 23- 25 in Valencia, Spain. COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) is a unique platform where European researchers can jointly develop their ideas and initiatives across all scientific disciplines through trans-European networking of nationally funded research. The specialist training to which I was invited focused conducting longitudinal cohort studies especially birth cohorts.
Various aspects of birth cohort were discussed during the training which included data collection, development of standard operating protocols for analysis of samples, techniques and tools to study biological samples, different methods of data analysis, and data management. Training also included the use of the R-package for data analysis and management. There were presenters from different countries including the UK, Germany, Spain, Malta who were associated with the COST Action.
Overall this training was very helpful and I found it interesting to discover more about the COST Action, their objectives and activities and also about the data on birth cohorts including designing cohort studies and ways to analyse the data. I am sure it will help with my PhD fieldwork which links with the THET-funded project on mental health training for community maternity care providers in Nepal. My fieldwork in Nepal starts in January 2017. I would like to thank the EU for the funding and FHSS for the co-funding of the travel expenses.

One of the presentation from training

IP Management in H2020 – with a special focus on MSCA Webinar

EU, Events, Guidance, Knowledge Exchange, RKE development framework

dev_framework

The European IPR Helpdesk is running a number of webinars over the next few months and RKEO are registering and promoting those relevant to BU’s activities.

The next webinar on IP Management in H2020 – with a special focus on MSCA will be next Tuesday:

29/11/16     9:30 AM     Location:  PG30d, Poole House – Talbot Campus

Duration: 60 minutes (presentation) + 15 minutes (Q&As)

Please arrive at 9:15am for a prompt 9:30 start with the webinar duration being one hour. We have the room booked for a longer time so that we can have a post-webinar discussion afterwards, if appropriate. Please only register on the European IPR Helpdesk link if you will be joining the webinar from your own desk rather than joining us.

You can also check the European IPR Helpdesk Calendar for all their events. RKEO will be attempting to secure one of the limited webinar slots for each one which is relevant to BU – details of future webinars, where BU is registered, will be posted on this blog. In the meantime, please find out more about the work of the European IPR Helpdesk.

If you would like to attend this event, please do so via the Organisation Development page for this event.

Catering is not provided, but do feel free to arrive coffee in hand.

Science and Technology Committee – Leaving the EU report

EU, Funding opportunities, policy, Research news

The House of Commons Science and Technology committee’s report into leaving the EU has been published.

To quote the main points from the summary:

  • “The Government has provided some helpful and welcome short-term reassurances in relation to underwriting EU funding for research and maintaining access to student loans, but the Government’s strategy for communicating these recent announcements is insufficient.”
  • “we are not convinced that the needs of science and research are at the heart of the Department for Exiting the European Union’s (DExEU) thinking and planning for Brexit. Science should have a strong voice as part of the negotiations. DExEU needs a Chief Scientific Adviser urgently. The Government should also involve the interim Chair of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)”
  • “the Government should now act to reduce uncertainty by setting out a vision for science. This should include commitments to raise science expenditure as a percentage of GDP (as we have previously urged).  It should also include measures to attract skilled researchers and students, to be taken forward in Brexit negotiations separately from immigration controls more broadly, and should include an immediate commitment to exempt EU researchers already working here from any wider potential immigration controls.”
  • “The Government must also seek to capitalise on the opportunities of Brexit, including in terms of setting regulations to facilitate accessing markets and research collaborations beyond the EU.”

On the EU funding guarantee, the report concludes that this is helpful to provide reassurance but that it doesn’t go very far, because it would be strange if the EU were not required to honour its contractual commitments under awards made before the UK leaves the EU and so it is unlikely that there will ever be a call under the guarantee.  However, given that there was widespread concern – whether justified or not – in the summer, the guarantee has been given in order to encourage people to keep bidding and to provide reassurance of the government’s commitment to mitigating these potential direct negative effects of Brexit.  However, if this is its main purpose, the report notes that it hasn’t really been communicated very well – hence the high level point noted in the report’s summary.

What matters to science and research?  The report highlights 5 main issues:

  • Funding – e.g. on-going participation in H2020 after Brexit or a UK replacement for it
  • People – guarantees for those already here and attracting EU researchers after Brexit, and Erasmus
  • Collaboration – being able to participate in international projects and influence the EU research agenda
  • Regulation – influencing EU regulation which might otherwise stifle innovation
  • Facilities – access for UK researchers to EU facilities

Note on people that the Education Committee are running a separate inquiry into the impact of Brexit on staff and students, and we have just submitted evidence – read it here.  The report notes that it is not clear whether Brexit will mean that EU staff become subject to the same controls as international staff – and of course there is about to be a new consultation on what the controls for international employees are going to be.

The report calls for a specific guarantee for staff already in post.  Note that Jo Johnson made helpful noises about this in the House of Commons this week – he “expects” that this assurance will be given but it depends on reciprocity (so it will come later in the negotitations?).

IP Commercialisation and Licensing – European IPR Helpdesk Webinar

EU, Events, Guidance, Knowledge Exchange, RKE development framework

The European IPR Helpdesk is running a number of webinars over the next few months and RKEO are registering and promoting those relevant to BU’s activities.

The next webinar on IP Commercialisation and Licensing will be this Wednesday:

dev_framework09/11/16     9:30 AM     Location:  The Octagon, The Sir Michael Cobham Library – Talbot Campus

Duration: 60 minutes (presentation) + 15 minutes (Q&As)

Please arrive at 9:15am for a prompt 9:30 start with the webinar duration being one hour. We have the room booked for a longer time so that we can have a post-webinar discussion afterwards, if appropriate. Please only register on the European IPR Helpdesk link if you will be joining the webinar from your own desk rather than joining us.

You can also check the European IPR Helpdesk Calendar for all their events. RKEO will be attempting to secure one of the limited webinar slots for each one which is relevant to BU – details of future webinars, where BU is registered, will be posted on this blog. In the meantime, please find out more about the work of the European IPR Helpdesk.

If you would like to attend this event, please do so via the Organisation Development page for this event.

Catering is not provided, but do feel free to arrive coffee in hand.rkeo-rke-working-with-business

The event is delivered as part of the RKE Development Framework.

Open Access in Horizon 2020

BRIAN, EU, Guidance, open access, Publishing

horizon 2020Open access to peer reviewed publications has been anchored as an underlying principle in the Horizon 2020 and is explained in the Regulation and the Rules of Participation. If you are a beneficiary or hoping to be a beneficiary of a Horizon 2020 grant, you need to be aware of your obligations to publish open access. Below are some of the key points taken from Horizon 2020 guidance which can be accessed in full here.

Are you supposed to deposit?

All Horizon 2020 beneficiaries are required to deposit and ensure open access.

What to deposit

  • A machine-readable electronic copy of the published version publisher’s final version of the paper, including all modifications from the peer review process, copyediting and stylistic edits, and formatting changes (usually a PDF document)

OR

  • A final peer-reviewed manuscript accepted for publication final manuscript of a peer-reviewed paper accepted for journal publication, including all modifications from the peer review process, but not yet formatted by the publisher (also referred to as “post-print” version).

Where to deposit

Researchers should deposit in a repository for publications of their choice. In order to manage and monitor open access compliance, BU request that all authors publish in our institutional repository (BURO) this can be done easily through BRIAN. Further information on how to do this can  be accessed here.

When to deposit

Each beneficiary must deposit as soon as possible. To comply with HEFCEs Open Access policy this should be on acceptance of the article.

Open-Access-logoWhen should Open Access be provided

Each beneficiary must ensure open access to the deposited publication — via the repository — at the latest: (i) on publication, if an electronic version is available for free via the publisher, or (ii) within six months of publication (twelve months for publications in the social sciences and humanities) in any other case.

For open access publishing, researchers can publish in open access journals, or in journals that sell subscriptions and also offer the possibility of making individual articles openly accessible (hybrid journals).  Where the case, the Author Processing Charges (APCs) incurred by beneficiaries are eligible for reimbursement during the duration of the action. For APCs incurred after the end of their grant agreement, a mechanism for paying some of these costs will be piloted. In the case of open access publishing open access must be granted at the latest on publication.

Beneficiaries must also ensure open access to the bibliographic metadata that identify the deposited publication. The bibliographic metadata must be in a standard format and must include all of the following:

  • the terms [“European Union (EU)” and “Horizon 2020”][“Euratom” and Euratom research and training programme 2014-2018″];
  • the name of the action, acronym and grant number;
  • the publication date, and length of embargo period if applicable, and
  • a persistent identifier.

In all cases, the Commission encourages authors to retain their copyright and grant adequate licences to publishers. Creative Commons offers useful licensing solutions in this regard (e.g. CC-BY, see Creative Commons Licenses).

In the context of the digital era, the notion of’ publication’ increasingly includes the data underpinning the publication and results presented, also referred to as ‘underlying’ data. Beneficiaries must aim to deposit at the same time the research data needed to validate the results presented in the deposited scientific publications, ideally into a data repository, and aim to make open access to this data. But there is no obligation to do so.

European Research Council – Consolidator Grants

EU, Funding opportunities

ercWhat are ERC Grants?

The ERC Work Programme 2017 sets out the objectives and principles of ERC funding. ERC Starting and Consolidator Principal Investigators must demonstrate the ground-breaking nature, ambition and feasibility of their scientific proposal. ERC grants are open to researchers of any nationality, who intend to conduct their research activity in any EU Member State or Associated Country .

The ERC’s frontier research grants operate on a ‘bottom-up’ basis without predetermined priorities. Applications can be made in any field of research with particular emphasis on the frontiers of science, scholarship and engineering6 . In particular, proposals of an interdisciplinary nature, which cross the boundaries between different fields of research, pioneering proposals addressing new and emerging fields of research or proposals introducing unconventional, innovative approaches and scientific inventions are encouraged.

The next call for the Consolidator Grant closes on 9th February 2017. Consolidator Grants can be up to a maximum of EUR 2,000,000 for a period of 5 years (pro rata for projects of shorter duration).

Are you at this stage?

  • Have you been awarded your first PhD > 7 and ≤ 12 years prior to 1 January 2017 – cut-off dates: PhD awarded from 1 January 2005 to 31 December 2009 (inclusive)?
  • Can you demonstrate research excellence?
  • Are you starting or consolidating your own independent research team or programme?
  • Do you have several important publications as main author or without the participation of your PhD supervisor?

The ERC guidance for Starting and Consolidator grants guidance has recently been updated.

What next?

If you are considering applying to this scheme, please contact Emily Cieciura, RKEO’s Research Facilitator: EU & International, as soon as possible.

 

Interim Horizon 2020 questionnaire now open!

EU, international

horizon 2020Have your say about Horizon 2020 as it reaches its mid-way point.

If you are a BU member of staff and wish to participate in this questionnaire, please complete this as an individual rather than on behalf of BU. This questionnaire is also open to the public to record their thoughts on this flagship research and innovation funding scheme.

With Framework Programme 9 (the, as yet, unnamed successor to Horzon 2020) already in planning, make your opinions count.