About the European Science Foundation 1

2 ESF Member Organisations ESF is an independent association of 13 Member Organisations ● research funding organisations ● research performing organisations ● academies and learned societies in 11 countries About the European Science Foundation

3 A time of change ESF has finished the winding-down phase of a number of its traditional activities in accordance with the Multi-annual Plan approved by its former Member Organisations The ESF governance has unanimously approved the continuation of the Association with a new remit, new trading name (Science Connect) and corresponding Business Plan The new Business Plan lays out the activities and science services that ESF will develop as of January 2016 with the aim of ensuring that they are honoured and executed with the level of quality that ESF has always delivered

4 About the European Science Foundation A new focus ●After 41 years of stimulating European research through its networking and coordination activities, ESF has undergone a major change of focus ●Concentrating on activities designed to support and sustain the funding and conduct of scientific research across Europe ●Aim remains to promote scientific developments through collaborative actions with the emphasis shifting to helping research funding organisations carry out their decision making processes

5 ESF’s aim is to serve the needs of the European research community and it is currently developing offers of valued services to science and research in Europe through, for example: ●Peer review services ●Evaluation services ●Programme and Project Management o Mapping Research Infrastructures of European interest – MERIL o Career Tracking o Management of collaborative research programmes About the European Science Foundation SERVICES

Peer Review services for third parties ●Professional services to support competitive calls for proposals ●Modular approach: o From external expert evaluation of proposals only to end-to-end management of competitive calls o Approach tailored to the size and scope of the projects to be supported Why ESF? ●Integrity and independence ●Vast network of independent, highly-skilled reviewers ●Strong experience and know-how (>5,000 research proposals evaluated since 2005) ●Quality controlled and optimised process and infrastructure ●Experienced scientific staff and efficient management of workflow processes About the European Science Foundation 6 SERVICES 

Evaluation services ●Ex-ante evaluation (of programmes or schemes) ●Formative evaluation (activities or programmes) ●Ex-post evaluation and strategy (schemes, organisations, etc) Why ESF? ●Independence and neutrality of the ESF ●Tailored evaluation of proven quality ●Clear criteria and indicators based on European & international standards ●ESF is a privileged actor between Academia and funders ●A pool of over 5,000 international Academics ●A large network of international high-level policy and evaluation experts About the European Science Foundation 7 SERVICES 

Career tracking and management About the European Science Foundation 8 SERVICES ●Research Career Tracking and Monitoring services for surveys and studies ●Running joint international or national projects ●Tracking the quality of research training and skills ●Tracking to find out where researchers move in their careers ●Tracking for accountability and impact assessment 

Project management About the European Science Foundation 9 SERVICES ● ESF has developed a strong expertise in project proposal development, project management and project coordination ● ESF has been involved as a key partner or Coordinator in several successful proposals within FP6, FP7 and H2020 ● In most cases, representatives from the scientific community and/or industry came to ESF to ask for coordination and/or project management support ● The ESF office offers its key expertise and know-how to scientific consortia set up for these projects in the areas of, e.g. proposal writing, financial and human resources management, networking, programme coordination, conference organisation and consensus-building

●A continuously updated inventory of the most excellent research infrastructures (RIs) in Europe of more-than-national relevance, covering all scientific domains. ●A unique source of publicly available information for policy makers and scientists. ●Initial development of the database and portal supported by the European Commission ( ) – further development and exploitation in 2013 and 2014 supported by ESF Member Organisations. Why ESF? ●Built on expertise of Member Organisation Forum on RIs. ●Able to mobilise and coordinate pan-European, multi-stakeholder effort. About the European Science Foundation 10 SERVICES Mapping of the European Research Infrastructure Landscape (MERIL) 

11 Hosting Scientific Expert Boards and Committees Composed of high-level independent researchers or research managers to provide targeted expert advice in areas of science, policy, infrastructure, environment and society in Europe: ●Nuclear Physics European Collaboration Committee (NuPECC) ●European Space Sciences Committee (ESSC) ●Marine Board (EMB) ●Committee on Radio Astronomy Frequencies (CRAF) ●Materials Science and Engineering Expert Committee (MatSEEC) About the European Science Foundation

12 About the European Science Foundation