Stakeholders’ Perspective on Integration Gabi Lombardo PhD Net4Society Advisory Board

From FPs to Horizon 2020: Developing an SSH Community  Scientific Community building: cooperation across disciplines  Growing scientific ambitions: cooperation across borders and big scale projects  Interdisciplinary model (SCs) added an extra level of complexity - Failure to utilise the contribution of SSH research to address Europe’s greatest societal issues  Framework programme research imposes natural science ’project model’

Integration and a Dialogue with the Stakeholders  Vilnius declaration (Sept 2013) calling on EU to recognise SSH contribution to delivering H2020  Commission introduces ‘embedding’ policy in first calls of H2020  Commission creates stakeholder consultation ‘platform’ first meeting 27 th November 2014  2 nd SSH Stakeholder meeting; 2 nd December 2015 and commitment for a regular meeting every 6 months  3 rd SSH Stakeholder meeting; 5 th July 2016

Recommendations after the Second Stakeholders’ Workshop  Improve data collection systems  Review the membership of the Expert Advisory Groups  Review the process of evaluation, including membership of the evaluation panels and Evaluator guidance  develop a more robust methodology for analysing the integration of SSH research in projects

Monitoring the Integration of SSH: Two Methods in Comparison  EC: Notion of SSH Partner:  66% or more of the personnel working for such consortium partner have an SSH background  Share of budget to such partner  A new methodology to assess integration:  Core contribution to the design and framing of research questions  the level of contribution to the core delivery of the project research programme

Preliminary results (ch. 1, 2 and 5) Topic Score 0 Score 1 Score 2 Totals SC SC SC % of Total 53.5%30.7%15.8%

Conclusions in Comparison  The EC: The quantitative integration of SSH is satisfactory whereas the qualitative integration is uneven across the SCs. Encouraging results  Alternative methodology: poor integration of the SSH research contribution

Overall conclusions emerging from the analysis  The “qualitative” approach suggests that the integration is rather weak  A better way to collect data on the research fields is needed for the analysis  Aspects of Horizon 2020 implementation need to be improved in order to achieve a better integration of SSH in Societal Challenges

Contribution of the stakeholders  Partners in understanding the integration of disciplines  Improve the machinery that delivers the challenges not suggesting topics  Outreach: the impact of SSH research to other stakeholders beyond academia

Thank you

Key points in the first meeting  SSH ‘scientific field’ or cross-cutting issue?  Workprogramme Content – from Advisory Group reports to Scoping Papers. A more detailed analysis:  16% Experts with SSH background (mainly in SC6)  lack of expertise in designing proper multidisciplinary calls  Framing the challenges in technological rather than social contents

Key Points in the second meeting  INTEGRATION REPORT published  30% of awarded projects in flagged topic did not present any SSH research  Obstacles to integration  Membership of the Expert AG  Evaluations: Evaluators, guidelines, and flagged topics  Steps to improve the integration

EC report: scale  None No threshold was met for any of the four dimensions  Weak Threshold met for one dimension  Fair Threshold met for two or three dimensions  Good Threshold met for all four dimensions

Three band scoring 0 = Projects where there is barely discernible mention of SSH contributions to the project 1 = projects where there is some mention of SSH 2 = projects where there is a substantial contribution to the core research of the project.

EC report: Quality of SSH integration  the share of SSH partners is higher than 10%;  the budget going to SSH is higher than 10%;  contributions from the SSH are well integrated in project abstract, keywords, working programmes and deliverables;  contributions from the SSH came from at least two distinct SSH disciplines.

Alternative methodology: qualitative integration of SSH research The level of contribution to the core of the project research programme.  Contribution to the research design and implementation  Contribution in terms of approach and research methodology  Coordination of research (WP leader with SSH background and publications)

Results comparison Project awarded (SSH integration) EC report Score: Good Score 2 alternativ e method SC1 30%12.5% SC2 55%0.05% SC5 15%16%