The European Commission (EC) published the fourth report on the integration of Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) within the framework programme Horizon 2020.
At the launch event of the newly published monitoring report, Jean-David Malo, Director for Open Innovation and Open Science at the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (DG RTD), highlighted that integrating SSH across the research and innovation framework programme is necessary to address the societal challenges (SC) under pillar III. The report, containing data from 2017, shows overall results demonstrating an increase in SSH integration across the programme. This confirms the positive trend already observed in the last report. The scope of the new report is broader, now including the monitoring of SSH integration across the whole ‘Excellent Science’ pillar, i.e. Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), Research Infrastructures (RI) and Future Emerging Technologies (FETs) were newly integrated. Data from the European Research Council (ERC) was already included in the last report and taken up again in the recently published one. Within the SCs of pillar III, the largest share of SSH integration (35%) remains under SC6 ‘Inclusive, innovative and reflective societies’.
The overall annual budget going to SSH partners across all topics has increased from 7% to 8.5% from 2016 to 2017. In total, 113 topics were marked as having SSH character (SSH flagged), under which 262 projects were selected and received funding. This corresponds to 37.5% of all projects and to an increase of 34.5% compared to 2016 resp. 36.2% compared to 2015 (both in relative terms). A total of €1.174 bn was allocated to the 113 SSH flagged topics, which constitutes a 37.3% share of the total budget for Horizon 2020. Within the 262 projects under the SSH flagged topics, 225 (86%) have at least one SSH partner in the project, a strong increase from 71% in the year before.
Turning to the disciplines within SSH, political science/–administration, economics and business/marketing are well represented, whereas humanities/arts and legal studies are less involved. Germany, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, France and the Netherlands are in the lead when it comes to the number of SSH partners and SSH coordinators involved in the projects.
Even though SSH integration is increasing, the current approach of integrating SSH in Horizon 2020 has reached its limits. This means that new ways are needed to mainstream SSH across the next framework programme, Horizon Europe. Projects must include SSH in a more holistic way and in every stage of the project phase i.e. from selection to implementation of projects. According to information given on the launch event of the report, there are now dedicated SSH liaison officers in DG RTD as well as in associated DGs, supporting SSH embedment all across Horizon 2020, which will continue under Horizon Europe.
The final legislative text (regulation) on Horizon Europe, agreed on in the inter-institutional negotiations (trilogues), mentions that the mainstreaming of SSH should continue to be monitored by the EC; a statement not originally present in the EC’s original proposal for a Regulation. Other topics like SME and gender participation, the geographical composition of consortia in collaborative projects and climate actions will be monitored under Horizon Europe as well. The integration of SSH under Horizon 2020 could hence serve as a test for monitoring and mainstreaming other cross-cutting issues, as pointed out by Krzysztof Kania, Policy Offer at DG RTD, at the launch event.