Through the special Horizon 2020 'Science with and for Society" call, the EU has endorsed efforts to transform research and innovation support in European University Alliances. In 2019, the 4EU+ Alliance was among the first 17 consortia to receive EU funding in the pilot Erasmus+ "European Universities" initiative to develop and consolidate alliance collaboration, focusing on education. In 2021, research and innovation came into focus when 4EU+ received funding for the three-year R&I support project TRAIN4EU+. The project outcomes will, among other things, provide the basis for making recommendations for future EU research framework programmes and funding policy.
Read the latest news on boosting citizen science, sharing research infrastructure, trends in co-publication, welcoming international researchers and the impact of the project. Discover TRAIN4EU+, coordinated by the University of Copenhagen.
Researchers at European universities are central stakeholders in citizen science and the societal commitment the field of research represents. However, universities have no shared knowledge base or support for these efforts and central citizen science hubs can be the solution.
In the Work Package 5: Mainstreaming Open Science led by the University of Warsaw, TRAIN4EU+ takes the first step to make recommendations on how to strengthen citizen science at European universities.
Read about the TRAIN4EU+ approach to citizen science >>
TRAIN4EU+ aims to gain insights into the member universities' practices in terms of supporting the development of human resources involved in research & innovation.
The team of Work Package 2: Strengthening R&I human capital led by experts from Charles University is in the process of mapping current best practices in several HR domains. Among them, recruiting top R&I talent in an international setting, talent management and training practices, including training for leadership in research, as well as in the field of HR working with and for researchers.
University of Copenhagen has furthermore conducted a workshop on Performance Development Review as a good practice, and University of Warsaw is in the process of implementing it. As part of the pilot actions, there will also be a series of short job shadowing visits between staff from 4EU+ welcome offices.
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Universities across Europe have high-end instruments, databases, digital libraries and technical support staff and units for research infrastructure. How could the know-how from this infrastructure be best and most efficiently
shared in a sustainable manner, in order to yield benefits across scientific fields, universities and borders? The team of Work Package 3: Sharing research infrastructure and developing research support resources led by experts from Heidelberg University has analysed the research infrastructure and core facilities across 4EU+ universities. They mapped out facilities at the six alliance members who participate in TRAIN4EU+ in order to identify which are suitable for sharing and upscaling, what are the obstacles to sharing infrastructure and what can be done to overcome them. The results will be published later this year.
Photo credit: Christoffer Regild
While the number of scientific publications may reflect how much new knowledge universities produce and disseminate, statistics of co-publications across the 4EU+ Alliance may serve as a barometer for how much we are working together within research fields. TRAIN4EU+ is therefore monitoring the development of co-publication within the Alliance. Click on the image below to see how 4EU+ member universities presently work together, as reflected in co-publications.
The TRAIN4EU+ pilot action Res4Net focuses on sharing knowledge on funding opportunities for Horizon Europe projects related to sustainability. A number of networking meetings to present and exchange ideas on how best to offer
support on EU funding opportunities to researchers, and to find potential research collaborators, have been arranged since the project started in 2020. ‘Res4Net – Green Transitions pilot actions’ built on these experiences, with an inter- and transdisciplinary approach to sustainability and related calls for proposals.
A catalogue of ideas for future events and training activities includes:
4EU+ School on project writing
4EU+ Supervisors academy
Matchmaking between supervisors and postdocs
Thematic master classes
Sessions on thematic topics such as foreign interference, export control, data security, research assessment, gender in research, research ethics.
The Res4Net pilot action is carried out under TRAIN4EU+ project's Work Package 1: Developing a common research agenda, led by the University of Milan.
TRAIN4EU+ at the CIVICA Research event "Research Management in European Alliances: Fostering institutional transformation"
At the event held on 25 May 2023, Elena Del Giorgio (University of Milan), Torben Hansen (University of Copenhagen) and Eleonora Zuolo (Sorbonne University / EARMA) contributed to the panel on building a research management network in European university alliances.
TRAIN4EU+ sharing its perspective on citizen science
Szymon Andrzejewski (University of Warsaw), responsible for citizen science tasks in TRAIN4EU+, spoke about the challenges of promoting the citizen science idea at the "UNICA – EUTOPIA 3rd webinar: How European University Alliances can support citizen science", 25 May 2023.