The European Heads of Research Councils (Eurohorcs) and the European Science Foundation (ESF) have published their vision on the ERA and joined forces in a road map with proposed actions to achieve it
The Eurohorcs and ESF vision on a globally competitive ERA and their road map for actions to help build it details essential requirements that need to be fulfilled in order to build a globally competitive ERA within the next five to ten years.
This vision is complemented by a road map with an outline of concrete actions for Eurohorcs and ESF member organisations, as well as partners.
"Eurohorcs and ESF are committed to play a key role in shaping this ERA and this road map is the proof of that commitment.
"This policy briefing is a result of our analysis of what is needed and how our members, together with other partners, could contribute", said ESF president professor Ian Halliday and the president of the Eurohorcs Professor Par Omling in a joint statement.
A task force established by the Eurohorcs and ESF, chaired by DFG president Professor Matthias Kleiner, prepared the vision and road map.
The task force emphasises that building such an ERA requires the involvement of a variety of actors: national and European research organisations, national governments, the EU and the private sector.
In their latest briefing the Eurohorcs and ESF list ten essential criteria (vision points) that need to be met in building a successful European Research Area:.
1) An effective European research policy, capitalizing on cultural, geographic and scientific diversity.
2) A stimulating education system.
3) A single European labour market for researchers.
4) Adequate funding for top quality curiosity-driven research.
5) Cross-national funding, benchmarking of quality and shared scientific priorities for strategic research and bottom up researcher-driven programmes.
6) Excellent research institutions.
7) World-class research infrastructures.
8) Open access to the output of publicly funded research and permanent access to primary quality assured research data.
9) Effective and trusted bridges between science, society and the private sector.
10..) Openness to the world.
Eurohorcs and ESF and their member organisations are committed to develop concrete actions in 11 domains to help construct the ERA.
The domains are described hereafter together with an indication of the type of actions that will be considered.
Proposed action plan.
1) Strengthening the dialogue between research organisations and political actors at the European level (Addresses Vision point 1).
2) Promoting European research careers (Addresses Vision points 2 and 3).
3) Scientific foresight as a basis for joint strategy development (Addresses Vision point 5).
4) Developing the ERA towards a European Grant Union (Addresses Vision points 3, 4 and 5).
5) Peer Review of researchers and proposals at the European level (Addresses Vision point 5).
6) Ex-post evaluation of research projects and programmes (Addresses Vision point 5).
7) ERA Connect and Regional Clusters of Excellence (Addresses Vision point 6).
8) Shared funding and exploitation of medium-sized research infrastructure (Addresses Vision point 7).
9) Common policy on Open Access and Permanent Access to research data (Addresses Vision point 8).
10) Strengthening the relations between science, society and the private sector (Addresses Vision point 9).
11) Connecting European research to the world (Addresses Vision point 10).
The task force is now collecting comments from the member organisations, which will be used in the further elaboration of the actions identified in the outline of the Road Map.
Concrete action plans to be approved in coming governance meetings of ESF and Eurohorcs are currently being prepared.
Following this approval, member organisations will be invited to sign up for the implementation of the actions.
