Image: European Research Council
Matchmaking initiative will offer expertise of past grantees and reviewers to national support offices
The European Research Council, the EU’s flagship research funder, is launching a mentoring scheme intended to raise the “modest” rates of ERC participation from underperforming countries in the EU and associated to the bloc’s R&D programme.
It announced on 15 February that the Mentoring Initiative will identify past grantees and proposal reviewers to work with local and regional support offices. Such offices “often struggle to identify international experts to provide coaching and advice for the ERC grant applicants they work with”, it said. In a first step, the ERC said it will identify local offices for the initiative.
The ERC will not pay the mentors, nor cover any costs linked to the scheme, it said. Instead, local offices should pitch time commitments and compensation to mentors. “The expectation of the ERC is that the extra costs of the implementation of the initiative will be fully covered by its promoters,” the guidelines for the scheme state.
While researchers worldwide are eligible for ERC funding, its grantee lists tend to be dominated by wealthier countries with advanced research systems. In 2007-17, just 2 per cent of ERC grants were hosted by an institution in one of the ‘EU13’ countries—those that joined the EU in or after 2004.
The European Parliament’s in-house research service suggested in 2020 that the EU should “offer professional advisory support activities and training for project applications” to narrow the gap between the EU13 and the 14 countries that have been in the EU since before 2004.