An Impact Report on Teaming, Twinning and ERA Chair actions under Horizon 2020 shows positive effects on scientific excellence, societal & economic development.
The ‘spreading excellence and widening participation impact report’, published on 5 January 2022, analyses the effects of Spreading Excellence and Widening Participation (SEWP) actions, introduced under the Horizon 2020 programme to improve research and innovation (R&I) excellence in Widening countries. The SEWP actions’ goals for the latter include “to strengthen their R&I intensity and performance, to increase their participation in transnational networks and, overall, to obtain greater research outcomes in low performing Member States and Associated Countries to improve their research and innovation systems and policies”. The rationale is that upgraded research excellence in Widening countries will advance and strengthen the European Research Area (ERA) overall. The impact report seeks now, five years after the first SEWP action started, to assess whether the following three SEWP actions contributed to the realisation of the R&I potential across Europe:
- Teaming actions create new or update existing centres of excellence (CoE) in Widening countries through a coupling process with a leading scientific institution. Their main aim is institution-building. Teaming Phase 2 projects receive funding to set up future CoE in line with the host region’s Smart Specialisation Strategy (S3).
- ERA Chair actions aim to create the appropriate conditions for and bring high quality researchers and managers to institutions in the Widening countries in order to boost research excellence. The respective institutions should implement structural changes to achieve excellence on a sustainable basis.
- Twinning actions aim to enhance networking activities between research institutions in Widening countries and internationally leading counterparts at EU level. As a result of the Twinning action, Widening Country institutions should enhance their scientific capacity and raise their research profile.
The 295 SEWP projects analysed by the report include thematic clusters of 22 scientific domains in 9 scientific areas. Widening projects are highly focused on the following three areas: Computer sciences, health/medical fields and biology/agriculture. Cyprus and Estonia demonstrate the highest shares of SEWP budget allocated to computer sciences and the electrical engineering domain. Portugal, Poland and the Czech Republic lead in the Health/Medical Sciences and Biology/Agriculture domains. In terms of project numbers, Portugal, Cyprus, Poland and Estonia are the most successful participants in the three SEWP actions. Portugal, Cyprus, Estonia and the Czech Republic obtained the highest EU financial contributions. The report demonstrates that Malta, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Latvia and Slovenia align best their S3 priorities in terms of project budget and thematic distribution.
All three Horizon 2020 SEWP actions (Teaming, Twinning and ERA Chair) have positive impacts on ‘Strengthening human capital in R&I’, which in turn play an essential role in contributing to research excellence and attractiveness of research institutions. In the case of Teaming, the highest impacts on research excellence are linked to new international activities and R&I collaborations, publications in high impact journals and developing new research topics. Twinning projects, while strongly affected by the pandemic (given their networking and training focus), indicate that the main measures contributing to excellence are training, conferences and expert visits. In the case of the ERA Chair actions, scientific impacts relate to acquisition of expertise and new knowledge as well as new R&I collaborations. Also fostering ‘Diffusion of knowledge and Open Science’ is a key scientific impact of the SEWP actions. The respective data show the highest number of publications in Twinning, followed by ERA Chair and Teaming. The latter has the highest number of publications in Open Access, followed by ERA Chair actions. In all the three Widening actions, the majority of publications are scientific articles, followed by conference proceedings. For all actions, around 50% of peer-reviewed publications are in high impact journals. The SEWP project portfolio shows that the Widening actions also address the topics of the EU Societal Challenges – and contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
In addition to scientific and societal impacts, economic impacts are addressed in the SEWP actions and relate to aspects such as innovation and cooperation with the business sector for more sustainability of projects. More than 70% of Teaming projects attract new, competitive research funding, mainly from EU Funds and National Research Programmes. Especially more mature SEWP projects show improvement in secured funding “at very high levels”. About half of the CoE indicated that the generation of income is a critical activity. In addition to competitive funding at national and European level, income through agreements with industrial partners plays a relevant role. Sustainability strategies in SEWP projects include applications for new grants, commercial incomes, diversification strategies and additional government funding. Commercial exploitation is more widespread in Teaming projects than ERA Chairs and Twinning – due to the larger duration and scope of the former. The survey results show that in 40% (2016/2017 Call) and 28% (2018/2019 Call) cases of two Teaming Calls complementary funding is delayed mainly due to the pandemic context, public administration procedures or major cut/reduction of governmental financial support. Problems in receiving complementary funding are reported in particular for Cyprus and Portugal. The impact report concludes that this aspect needs to be better controlled, for instance through a more concrete commitment from national governments towards Teaming projects, requested at the proposal stage.
A less targeted area of the SEWP actions is the one of ‘Systems’, including institutional and/or systemic reforms at national and regional level and the triggering of reforms at the coordinating institution. While ERA Chair and Teaming prioritise this more than Twinning, the analysis indicates that also for ERA Chairs and Teaming actions, ‘Systems’ are still less in the foreground than the area of ‘Excellence and Participation’. This is an aspect, the report concludes, that requires more analysis to better understand the identified trends. The report also refers to Horizon Europe (HE) novelties such as Missions to connect the previous and the current programmes and pave the way to a better understanding of future impacts.