EARMA Conference Oslo

Bridging the R&I divide within Europe

How to enhance the excellence and research infrastructure of WIDERA countries?

Format: Fifteen-Minute Discussion Tables

Category: Discussion Starter

Topic: Policy, Strategy, Evaluation and Foresight

While the Horizon 2020 funding framework has produced great results and impacts across Europe, its effectiveness to bridge the research&innovation divide between East and West is a more complicated question. This roundtable invites participants to reflect on past developments (impact of Horizon 2020 on R&I capacity building in widening countries, targeted calls, imbalance of funding) and the potential of Horizon Europe to address the lingering issues and offer new opportunities for building convergence and a more even European Research Area.

Applying eight communication management principles in a research organization

Format: Oral 30 Minutes

Category: Operational Lessons Learned

Topic: Policy, Strategy, Evaluation and Foresight

The discussion on how to manage organizations effectively has been ongoing for decades but problems persist and the research organizations make no exception here. “My door is open” is a sentence that belongs to every manager's vocabulary. What does it mean in reality? And how can a manager apply this policy in virtual teams? This study dives into these practices and experiences gained through experimentation with creating strong communication practices at TalTech, Estonia. 

ERION: The Ethics & Research Integrity community within EARMA

Building bridges between administrators, researchers and policy-makers

Format: Oral 30 Minutes

Category: Good Practice

Topic: Policy, Strategy, Evaluation and Foresight

We will reflect on the importance of
ethics and research integrity for research managers and administrators in the European
context and what EARMA is doing in this regard since 2018. ERION is the
Ethics and Research Integrity Officer Network within EARMA. Topics addressed in
the meetings have covered ethics and research integrity in Horizon Europe, Open
Science, GDPR implementation, training and many others.ERION acts as a stakeholder for the European Commission DG R&I
Ethics Sector.

A key component
of ERION is the SOPs4RI project which is working for a strong research
integrity culture in Europe.

European developments as catalyser for advancing EU research support

Example of UASNL

Format: Oral 30 Minutes

Category: Operational Lessons Learned

Topic: Policy, Strategy, Evaluation and Foresight

Practice based research, next to education and innovation, has become an important pillar of Universities of Applied Sciences (UAS). Accordingly, development of EU strategy and research support at UAS has picked up the pace. Over the last decade, UAS have started to contribute to the European research landscape, establishing valuable research collaborations with international partners in order to tackle societal challenges together.
In this context, we would like to share our experiences with establishing a national network of UAS, which affected different levels of research support. Our main observations are a) that this external organisation accelerated also internal support processes in each organisation, and b) collaboration rather than competition has advanced the EU readiness of all partners.

From Strategy, to planning, to execution

How theory collides with reality in a practical case study

Format: Oral 30 Minutes

Category: Case Study

Topic: Policy, Strategy, Evaluation and Foresight

For any organisation the journey from initial ideas, through to a high level strategy, then detailed planning and actual implementation is fraught with challenges, but also filled with the promise of a better future. This talk will cover current thinking in organisational strategy, highlight key implementation differences between corporate and university strategy as identified by EARMA surveys, and walk through how University College Dublin managed the journey from overall university strategy, to research strategy, to annual planning, and execution. The talk will close with a live survey of the audience's experience of developing and implementing strategy.

Grant proposal : journey or end?

Researchers and RMAs spend considerable time and effort writing grant proposals. How much of it is worth it?

Format: Oral 30 Minutes

Category: Discussion Starter

Topic: Policy, Strategy, Evaluation and Foresight

Modern public science funding practices involve ever larger recourse to grant-in-aid systems. The recent plummeting success rates proportionally increase the amount of time researchers have to spend on project proposals, and the need for more research support staff. In response, recent research has shown the lack of predictive validity of grant schemes. Against this background, we propose in this panel discussion session to start reflecting on the question of how much time and effort researchers’ and RMA’s should allocate to answering calls for projects.

Improving researcher's participation in Horizon Europe through effective showcase of interests in upcoming calls

Format: Oral 30 Minutes

Category: Good Practice

Topic: Policy, Strategy, Evaluation and Foresight

Some of the challenges every large organization has, when it comes to participation to European programmes and that normally impact the research support systems activities are:
• Creation of collaboration dialogues with other organisations to generate proposals
• The possibility to have fast and easy access to available expertise for specific collaborations generation
• The possibility to facilitate/stimulate the participation of newcomer scientists

Research evaluation matters

Barriers and incentives towards responsible research evaluations at Danish Universities

Format: Oral 30 Minutes

Category: Good Practice

Topic: Policy, Strategy, Evaluation and Foresight

Research evaluation is too often about measuring what can be measured instead of what should be measured. The starting point should not be the availability of data, but what is valued about the entity under evaluation. The PARE-project (Probing 5 arguments for responsible evaluation on HE leaders) examines knowledge and attitudes toward value driven research assessment among leaders at Danish universities and uncovers barriers and incentives to responsible research evaluation practice.

The Evolution of the EU Framework Programmes (Framework 7 to Horizon Europe +)

Future Challenges for Research Support Offices

Format: Oral 30 Minutes

Category: Practical Initiatives

Topic: Policy, Strategy, Evaluation and Foresight

The European Framework Programmes started in 1984 (Framework 1) and have evolved in one of the World’s biggest research funding programme. The early programmes (Framework 1 to Framework 5) focussed on bringing European researchers together to tackle specific technological problems.
After Framework 6 the scope of the programmes included Social challenges. If Framework 7 the introduction of the European Research Council (ERC) expanded the scope of the programme to Fundamental Research.
This presentation will example the evolution of the Framework programmes, in particular, the evolution from Framework 7 to Horizon 2020 to the current Horizon Europe programme. The presentation will also indicate future directions of the programmes beyond Horizon Europe.

Research Offices in Universities and Research Centres support researchers in responding to immediate calls for proposals. They also support Senior Management and Directors of research groups to plan strategically for European progammes.

Based on the evolution of the Framework programmes what new support will be expected from Research Support Offices? The presentation will look at:
- How can support staff monitor these trends and develop appropriate training for their staff.
- How to support senior management in planning for new European research strategies
- How to encourage researchers to participate in European foresight activities to be part of the EU planning process

First Impressions and reflections of Horizon EU

Format: Oral 60 Minutes

Category: Interactive Session

Topic: Policy, Strategy, Evaluation and Foresight

Speakers: Dipti Pandya, Stavros Fotiadis, Daniel Spichtinger, Eleonora Zuolo

As the first results of the first rounds of the Horizon Europe land, how do we, as research managers and administrators view its impact within our research and innovation communities?

Have the original aims been served such as simplification and synergies with other EU initiatives?

The EARMA Policy and Representation Committee would like to take this opportunity to fully articulate the EARMA community’s sense and initial impressions of the first calls of Horizon Europe.

The transformation of basic research governance in Hungary: implications for research management

Format: Oral 60 Minutes

Category: Case Study

Topic: Policy, Strategy, Evaluation and Foresight

The presentation aims to analyse the interplay between organizational transformation, staff development and regulatory framework in case of the transformation of the research governance of a given country. The focus is on Hungary, where a new actor, the Eötvös Loránd Research Network was established two years ago.

A holistic approach to researcher’s career development

The role of the Office for Coordination and Research Management

Format: Pecha Kucha

Category: Case Study

Topic: Policy, Strategy, Evaluation and Foresight

The Office for Coordination and Research Management promotes researchers career development, facilitating and aligning actions from the different departments, especially Education and Training and Human Resources.
We will present ISGlobal’s holistic approach for researcher’s career development covering the whole track from predoctoral researchers to research professors. We will discuss the training, mentoring, career development activities and periodic research assessments all along the research career track.

European Research Strategy

A systematic approach towards Horizon Europe that activates resreachers.

Format: Pecha Kucha

Category: Practical Initiatives

Topic: Policy, Strategy, Evaluation and Foresight

To foster a systematic approach of PIs and resreach groups towards HEU we developed a workshop series with the following purpose: 1) To develop a structured and personalized application plan for PIs, groups and departments for the various HEU programmes and calls for over the coming 4 years. 2) To outline the support need to execute this plan (capacity building, hiring, matchmaking,…) Our target group: were research groups and PIs who wish to develop a structured plan for their funding activities in the first 4 years of Horizon Europe (European Research Strategy); the workshops were open of all PIs.Outcome:1) PIs had an understand the EU funding landscape, know how to plan ahead and have a clear and realistic process to follow for the coming 4 years, including a detailed schedule for the calls for the first 2 years.2) The reserch groups have developed an understanding and plan for:Who are the ERC PIs,Who are the Marie Curie PIs,Who are the global challenge (consortia) PIs,Who are the “close to industry / innovation” PIs in our group?And how do we get there.3) Increased cooperation between research groups Univerisity internally.4) less and more intersting work for the reserach supportIn this Pecha Kucha we present the concept, methodology and first results of the European Research Startegy.

Funder metadata at 10: where are we and where to next? (Pecha Kucha)

Format: Pecha Kucha

Category: Practical Initiatives

Topic: Policy, Strategy, Evaluation and Foresight

Crossref has been working with funders to help tie grants to research outputs. This aims to help more accurate reporting and save time and manual data entry and searching for funders, research offices and researchers themselves. As part of this work, Crossref has been surveying funder members and the wider funder community to investigate what their needs are in terms of supporting their grantees. We’re also collaborating with other infrastructure organizations - ORCID, ROR and DataCite.

We’ll report back on the progress we’ve made in grant registration, grant identifiers and other methods of improving connections between different research objects. Join us for an update, questions and to see what you can do with openly available grant metadata and suggest next steps for us

Development of a national standard research classification system in Ireland

Format: Poster

Category: Case Study

Topic: Policy, Strategy, Evaluation and Foresight

This project is developing a national standard research classification system in Ireland. It is being designed for the primary purpose of the categorisation of all exchequer-funded research in the Republic of Ireland, but will have the potential to be used more broadly in categorising all research being undertaken nationally. The classification will be inclusive of all research performing sectors in Ireland. It will contribute to the development of evidence-based policy and contribute to the discussion of the impact of research funding.

Implementation of European Charter for Researchers by Estonian research institutions

Format: Poster

Category: Case Study

Topic: Policy, Strategy, Evaluation and Foresight

The European Commission ‘Human Resource Strategy for Researchers’ supports research institutions and funding organizations in the implementation of the Charter & Code in their policies and practices. The aim of the study carried out in 2021 was to analyse the implementation of the Charter & Code principles by research institutions in Estonia, also if and how the implementation is supporting the goals of the national Research and Innovation Strategy. 10 institutions in Estonia took part of the study. The outcome of the project were recommendations to the R&D institutions and policymakers.
The poster gives a comparative overview of the outcome.

REDCap a CTMS management solution for Italian Research Hospitals – IRCCS: simplifying the management of research teams

Format: Poster

Category: Practical Initiatives

Topic: Policy, Strategy, Evaluation and Foresight

“IRCCS” - Ricovero e Cura a Carattere Scientifico - are (private or public) Italian Research Hospitals with excellence qualification partially funded by Italian Ministry of Health (MOH) and in some cases affiliated with public universities.
IRCCS research teams handle projects funded by MOH, pharmaceutical companies and private and/or public research grants. Research Administrators need different types of competences to manage this complex reality and to control the progress of milestones and deliverables of the projects.
Researchers and Scientific Directorate work together to achieve strategic goals, to attract increasingly competitively sought after funding, to engage with audiences within the hospital, and juggling the many administrative requests in between all this. In this scenario, we think it is certainly worth to contrive tailored tools for research management and administration.
REDCap (Research Electronic Data Capture) is a secure, web-based software platform designed to support data capture for research studies, providing:
1. an intuitive interface for validated data capture;
2. audit trails for tracking data manipulation and export procedures;
3. automated export procedures for seamless data downloads to common statistical packages;
4. procedures for data integration and interoperability with external sources
5. fast and flexible production-level database based on requirement
6. sharing of data between different roles in clinical research
Scientific Directorate of IRCCS Policlinico San Donato (PSD), in 2018 decided to use REDCap for eCRF, patient recruiting, patient monitoring, document management but also for investigator research management with national and international projects registry, clinical trials registry and Scientific Library registry.. These registries included technical specific aspects of research area.
Each Team Leader of a Clinical Unit can control online and update his research activities by REDCap, which is organised and managed by the Research Administration. In three years, the Scientific Directorate organized with REDCap the annually reports of 482 trials, 106 MOH and other funded projects and archived characteristics of 1482 scientific papers. The Trial registry includes information about type of study, Ethical committee approval, insurance policy and ongoing update during enrolment. Grant office database contains for each project the type of funding and deadlines, MOH classification, background, aims and annual results. Scientific Library manager updates for physicians every 3 months all papers printed and researchs could classify the property of each publication. PSD Scientific Direction.
Finally PSD use REDCap for institutional survey for education activities.
Based on the first three years, we are implemented this scientific tool as institutional CTMS aspects and important connection way between researchers and administrators.