Accessibility Instruments for Planning Practice in Europe. Results of the Accessibility Instrument Survey of COST Action TU1002 (original) (raw)

Facilitating innovation in European research area through pre-competitive EU-funded COST Actions

2014

The European Union (EU) Heads of States regularly confirm that knowledge and innovation are critical to Europe's growth and agreed to make the EU the most competitive knowledge-driven economy. The EU's ability to facilitate innovation by strengthening its research capacities is central to achieving this goal. Some EU initiatives under this innovation policy integrate research capacities already existing in individual states through pan-European participation in collaborative projects in science and technology. The EU is financing a number of formal pre-competitive networking programs aiming at a better deployment of existing national research capacities via their inclusion in joint research initiatives. Although there is a general consensus that increasing levels of collaboration amongst researchers produce better results, the issue of research networking and of related research outcomes continues to generate debate with a wide variety of views on what roles such programs play and their general implications for research and scientific performance. As the EU Framework Programme 7 is coming to its end, this paper explores whether such formal networking programs contribute to facilitating innovation in the European Research Area by enabling Science and Technology participants to achieve anticipated research outcomes from their involvement in such programs.

Improving the coordination of national research programmes in Europe: an impact assessment framework for ERA-NETs

In Europe around 85 percent of civic public research funds is programmed, financed, monitored and evaluated at a national level. Less than 6 per cent of total R&D investment and only 15 per cent of European publicly financed civil R&D1 is financed in a cross-border, collaborative manner (European Commission, 2008a). This fragmentation2 of research funding in Europe has variously been put forward as a barrier to the attainment of the critical masses of research excellence, a potential source of duplication of effort and an inefficient use of administrative resources.3 It has, in fact, been widely interpreted as one of the main factors preventing Europe from achieving its full research potential. In this context, the ERA-NET scheme was launched in 2002 as part of the Sixth Framework Programme (6FP) to improve coordination between Member States in terms of the design, implementation and evaluation of R&D programmes. It was conceived as a bottom-up approach to foster transnational colla...

COST : matchmaking for researchers

2013

As many researchers are aware, while the EU offers a huge variety of funding possibilities, many of the funding mechanisms are tied to projects which require consortia made up of partners from different countries. Many researchers based in Malta, especially younger researchers, query on how one gets invited to participate in such consortia. In addition, the complex funding and administrative procedures involved in many of these EU projects, may put off several local scientists and researchers from applying for such funds. COST, Cooperation in Science and Technology, offers a facilitated mechanism which tackles and overcomes these hurdles. Since the early 1970s, COST, European COoperation in Science and Technology, has brought researchers from various countries together to promote transnational coordination of nationally-funded research. This is a unique approach which enables the sharing of research interests across thirty-five European countries, and has even attracted the particip...

Malta's participation in Europe's oldest research cooperation frame-work

2015

COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) is the longest-running European research framework supporting networking and knowledge sharing amongst science and technology communities in Europe. It does not fund research as such but greatly facilitates the networking and the coordination between researchers working on nationally funded research across Europe. The wide range of networking activities supported by COST, such as meetings, workshops, short term scientific missions, publications and training schools and easy administration made it even very amenable to researchers based in Malta. Since 2011 Malta has participated in a constantly growing number of running COST Actions and this has resulted in better exposure opportunities for them. More importantly, early stage researchers have been given an invaluable opportunity to increase their contacts circles in their fields of interest. This has resulted in unique opportunities for participation and networking in research fo...

Scale and Scope as Drivers of the European Research Area Final Report

2015

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The objective of this study was to assess empirically whether economies of scale and scope exist at the research project level. The assumption underlying European Union research policy appears to be that such economies exist, hence the emphasis placed on the 'critical mass' of research and development (R&D) projects. Overall, the results of this analysis do not support a simple assumption that 'bigger is better' in the context of the European Framework Programmes (FPs). Consequently, some of the basic assumptions underlying the change in the general orientation of the FPs towards larger projects should be reconsidered. There are many factors that must be taken into account when determining the relation between scale, scope and performance of individual participants. Three sets of factors mediate the relation between project scale and performance: (a) the pool of available resources; (b) the learning process (absorptive capacity); and (c) transaction...

THE EVALUATION OF RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURES: A COST- BENEFIT ANALYSIS FRAMEWORK MASSIMO FLORIO EMANUELA SIRTORI

When decision-makers consider pure and applied research infrastructures, such as genomics platforms, astronomic observatories, nanoelectronic laboratories, oceanographic vessels, or particle accelerator facilities (just to mention some examples) are faced by this question: what is the net social benefit of these costly scientific ventures and of the public goods they produce? The answer is often given qualitatively, or even rhetorically, by scientists and other stakeholders in these projects. But can we go beyond anecdotal evidence, narratives and ad hoc studies and try a structured ex-ante and ex-post evaluation of the socio-economic impact of research infrastructures? This paper explores some of the methodological issues involved in a CBA framework for capital-intensive scientific projects. The paper proposes a conceptual model based on the estimation of quantities and shadow prices of cost aggregates, and of six main categories of economic benefits (pure value of discovery, knowledge outputs, technological spillovers, human capital formation, cultural effects and services to third parties). Empirical approaches are suggested for further applied research, including the use of probability distribution functions to generate expected net present values of research infrastructures by Monte Carlo methods.