Working Groups
Many of the topics that are on the EUROHORCs Plan of Action are developed in small groups of EUROHORCs members. The work performed in these working groups forms the basis for decisions and discussions during Steering Committee and General Assembly meetings.
Currently, the focus is on the EUROHORCs / ESF Road Map activities. Groups are working on the following topics:
Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)
The mission of the Task Force on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) is to identify key issues that prevent or limit the exploitation of research results generated or funded by EUROHORCs members, by industry and especially by small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). Also, it proposes joint policies to be implemented by EUROHORCs members.
Financial Regulations
This working group deals with the simplification of financial regulations of the EC, especially concerning the rules pertaining the awards of FP7 grants. It works on contributions to the ongoing debate within the EC, as EUROHORCs is convinced that this simplification is an essential step towards making the European Research Area a more attractive place for researchers and research organisations.
Promotion of Public Engagement between Science and Society
The goals of this working group are to introduce executives of scientific institutions to the multiple managerial dimensions into which they must translate science policy, establish communication standards with social players to reinforce the trust, the credibility and the image of science in society and to better anticipate possible crisis situations, especially towards the public opinion.
Development of High-Level Interactions with Representatives of the Private Sector
The working group aims at increasing opportunities for EUROHORCs members and private sector partners to work together regarding European policy and legal frameworks in areas of mutual interest and inform EUROHORCs members on best practice for engagement with the private sector in their own country and technology sector.
Development Towards a Grant Union
The group works on the expansion of the Money follows Researcher-, Money follows Co-operation Line- and Lead Agency-schemes to many EUROHORCs member organisations. Also, it would like to further develop the Eurocores scheme into a flexible and high quality mechanism for joint programmes, both for investigator-driven topics and for topics that have been decided upon top-down.
Comparative Study of Scientific Output Evaluation
The goals of this working group are to recommend to EUROHORCs members areas that would benefit from joint action in order to strengthen the evaluation of research, drawing on best practice internationally and to improve the accessibility of information on EUROHORCs evaluation programmes between EUROHORCs members.
ERA Connect and Regional Clusters of Excellence
This working group explores effective mechanisms to launch joint European initiatives between research performing organisations, including universities, and research councils in which funding for scientific networks is operated according to simple procedures that maintain the focus on excellence.
Exploitation of Medium-sized Research Infrastructure
The group works on a definition of medium-sized research infrastructure, discusses the standards they should fulfill and tries to enable networking between these organisations. Also, it encourages external access to these infrastructures.
Open Access
The main goal of this group is to facilitate a process after which all peer-reviewed publications in scientific journals resulting from publicly funded research are available free of charge to the public no longer than 6 months after publication, either via self-archiving in institutional or subject repositories or via direct Open Access publishing in Open Access journals or as author-/funding agency-sponsored Open Access article.
Connection of European Research to the World
The goals of this working group is to achieve international standards for data assembling and sharing, open up programmes to research groups from countries outside Europe, find ways to simplify contacts between research organisations in Europe and those outside Europe. Also the group members work on facilitating dialogue and joint actions with heads of non-European research organisations.