ECRP Protocol

Scientific Rationale
The EUROCORES Programme for European Collaborative Research Projects (ECRP) is a response to the continuing demand from the scientific community in the countries of the SCSS’s Member Organisations for funding to support responsive-mode, investigator-driven Collaborative Research Projects within all fields of social science in Europe. The ECRP Programme is designed to promote research of the highest quality, offering opportunities to test innovative ideas, pool expertise and strengthen research capacity in line with the objectives of the European Research Area.

The contribution of research in the social sciences to the knowledge base is widely recognised at national and international level, whether it be in understanding the forces driving socio-economic change and shaping human behaviour, in finding solutions to social problems, informing policy, monitoring and evaluating outcomes, or developing more effective systems of governance. The enlargement of the European Union, and consequently of the European Research Area, to the East has brought greater awareness among social scientists of the importance and interest, as well as the difficulties, of working together with counterparts from diverse research cultures, often with different research agendas, funding arrangements and operational and evaluation procedures. New opportunities for mutual learning have been opened up across countries and disciplines, for both researchers and Research Councils.

The ECRP Programme has a dual aim: firstly, to act as a catalyst to promote multilateral research projects in the social sciences that go beyond networking activities, by offering funding support to cover salaries, equipment, consumables and access to infrastructures; secondly to provide a forum at which Research Councils can work together to devise common procedures for applications, peer reviewing and monitoring, while retaining funding decisions at national level. Proposals submitted under the Programme are competing – directly and indirectly – for funds alongside projects under national schemes.

The ECRP Programme is designed to enhance the continuing process of European academic networking and to advance international research collaboration in the social sciences by funding research through problem-driven projects, covering theory development, empirical research and data collection within a European collaborative framework, thereby promoting synergy and concentration of research effort.

The process of carrying out high quality collaborative research in the social sciences is more complex than in the natural sciences. Making sense of complexity in research that crosses national and cultural boundaries is a major issue for social scientists. Language is both a medium carrying concepts and an object of scientific observation and discourse; culture is not only the subject matter under study, but also an agent that has shaped the researcher’s mindset and thought processes, creating problems for scientists from different research and disciplinary cultures in working together to design research and select techniques for collection, analysis and interpretation of data. The challenge is how to ensure that collaborative work produces synergy and added value in situations where the personal and cultural values of researchers are likely to influence their scientific approaches and interpretations of findings.

European collaboration in the social sciences is as much about the research process as about the field of investigation. European funding for collaborative research is, therefore, essential to enable high quality social science research to be carried out across national borders, to promote the exchange of information, datasets and methods, and to bring to bear a wider range of cultural and disciplinary perspectives on topics of common concern within a global research environment.

The ECRP Programme can make an important contribution to the objectives of the European Research Area by increasing the international impact of the research effort in the social sciences across the European Union and by adding value to European co-operation. The Programme creates the conditions under which complementary expertise can enable an integrated approach towards research fields and projects in seeking effective solutions to complex socio-economic problems.

The SCSS does not impose specific research themes in the ECRP Programme. Three main reasons explain the decision to retain the responsive mode of funding: firstly, the SCSS considers that innovation is best encouraged when researchers are able to access funds that enable them to explore new ideas and approaches with their opposite numbers in other countries in areas that have not been identified for priority funding; secondly, the social sciences embrace an extremely wide range of heterogeneous disciplines and fields of study, making it difficult to identify priority topics that match the research interests and expertise of a sufficiently large body of researchers, without excluding many sectors of the social science research community; thirdly, Research Councils in the social sciences operate predominantly in the responsive mode, and researchers are used to working with this approach, which allows them to take the lead in identifying promising new directions, without having to observe time-consuming, complicated administrative procedures.

Researchers and Research Councils consider the responsiveness of the Programme to be its greatest attraction, and international collaborative research in the responsive mode is widely believed by social scientists to be the most important mechanism for achieving added value.

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Guiding Principles

1. The overall aim of the ERCP Programme is to support high quality responsive-mode, researcher-led, collaborative international research within and across all fields of the social sciences, offering opportunities to test innovative ideas, pool multidisciplinary expertise and strengthen European research capacity.

2. The Programme is open to applications on any topic within the social sciences that is able to demonstrate an international framework for research collaboration. Projects need not be European in their topic focus.

3. Researchers based in universities and research institutions in countries whose national research funding agencies are signatories to the Programme’s Protocol are eligible to apply for awards.

4. Protocol countries are those whose Research Councils have agreed to observe a common application process, common procedures and criteria for reviewing proposals and a common deadline for decisions. They should be able to commit themselves to fund ECRP projects that meet the competitive threshold under their national procedures and are within their budgetary limits.

5. SCSS Member Organisations that are unable to observe the common procedures may have Associate Status. Scientists in these countries may propose Associated Projects to be run in parallel to the programme, if Associated Partners are able to secure their own funding support.

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Operational Procedures

1. The Management Committee, composed of senior science administrators and representatives of ESF, prepares the Call for proposals, which is normally announced in January each year on the ESF and national websites.

2. Collaborative Research Project applications must involve collaboration among a minimum of three Individual Projects from different signatory countries and may be funded for a duration of up to five years.

3. A common application form, agreed by the Management Committee, and with provision for EUROCORES Funding Organisations to require supplementary information, is available on the ESF website in a downloadable format.

4. Applications must be written in English.

5. The Common Application Form requires Project Leaders to supply details about each of the Individual Project teams (cvs and budgets), and a full description of the planned Collaborative Research Project, showing clearly how the collaboration contributes added value to the Individual Projects.

6. The Management Committee prepares a list of Frequently Asked Questions for the website.

7. The Common Application Form must be completed by Project Leaders and submitted online by 28 April 2008. Additional information, as required by individual EUROCORES Funding Organisations, must be submitted to them by the same deadline.

8. Member Organisations carry out an eligibility check against their national funding rules and select referees for eligible Collaborative Research Projects.

9. A single set of referees is used for each Collaborative Research Project. Referees are asked to complete a common review form for each collaboration, covering:

• scientific quality

• originality and potential contribution to knowledge

• research design and methods

• competence and expertise of the applicants

• added value of the collaboration

• feasibility and value for money

• planned outputs

10. The ESF Secretariat compiles a grading sheet for each Collaborative Research Project based on the referees’ reports. The Review Panel, including scientists from the SCSS and senior officials from EUROCORES Funding Organisations, oversees the quality of the assessment during the review process. In early October, the ESF Secretariat relays consolidated reports on the reviewing to funding bodies in time for board meetings scheduled between October and January.

11. Research Councils decide which projects to fund and at what level of funding, and inform ESF accordingly.

12. Applicants are informed about the funding decision in February of the year following the application submission date in accordance with national rules and practices.

13. The ESF Secretariat monitors the Collaborative Research Projects. Project Leaders submit final award reports to ESF, and these are assessed, using a common procedure agreed by the Management Committee.

14. The EUROCORES Programme Coordinator is responsible for organising the yearly Calls and peer review process, monitoring the progress of the Collaborative Research Projects and reporting to the Management Committee.

15. The Management Committee keeps the Operational Procedures under review.

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