During the lifespan of a COST Action, a network builds and grows a community of like-minded researchers and innovators who are connected by a core topic or interest. But what happens when the grant period ends? How can Actions successfully sustain and continue to collaborate?
COST Action TN1302 The voice of research administrators – building a network of administrative excellence (BESTPRAC) officially ended in 2019. However the network members felt it was essential to continue with its activities, to further support the development of the European Research Area(ERA) and support its widening objectives (building research and innovation capacity for countries that underperform in terms of R&I performance).
In September 2021, when we last spoke to the BESTPRAC team, they just kicked of a one-year pilot programme to organise joint meetings with The European Association of Research Managers and Administrators (EARMA) and were starting to look into future funding opportunities. One year on we chat to Andri Charalambous, BESTPRAC Thematic Group Chair, and Nik Claesen, EARMA Director, to discover what’s been happening and what’s next.
COST: Andri, Nik, when we last spoke the BESTPRAC-EARMA pilot event series had just begun. How did it go?
NC: Since the beginning of this collaboration, we have been delighted to work with BESTPRAC on the shared mission of bringing the European RMA community closer together. Already, the events that we have jointly organised have been a great success and we received strong feedback from attendees. The collaboration has been so successful that BESTPRAC has now officially joined EARMA and we will be working on important projects together. Our vision of an open and inclusive community is further realised by this partnership.
AC: We have been collaborating with EARMA since 2020. This collaboration went extremely well. In the last year and a half, BESTPRAC and EARMA have organised three very successful virtual meetings. These meetings, although organised virtually, followed the BESTPRAC principles of a bottom-up, open and inclusive approach. This collaboration, which proved successful and beneficial for both networks, ended up with two significant achievements that impact the future of BESTPRAC network. The first is that BESTPRAC was included as a partner in the recent Horizon Europe project, RM ROADMAP. The second is that BESTPRAC has now become a thematic group within EARMA, while maintaining the participation of all BESTPRAC community openly.
COST: Please tell us a little more about this new thematic group?
NC: As a thematic group, BESTPRAC is now part of the EARMA family. We want BESTPRAC to continue being the major success that is has been. This means that they will have the freedom to pursue topics that the community sees as most relevant, within the EARMA framework. BESTPRAC has been hugely beneficial for the professional development of the group’s members, bringing colleagues together to share knowledge and expand their networks. That is the kind of added value that BESTPRAC provides for individuals and I know that we will see further benefits for the wider community as the group becomes an influential and integral part of EARMA.
AC: This new collaboration started with the main aim to facilitate the former BESTPRAC community to continue with all our previous activities such as exchanging experiences, sharing and developing best practices, encouraging knowledge sharing and transfer via training schools, creating guidebooks, organising meetings etc. Integrating with EARMA was important as EARMA is a well-established and experienced organisation and we hope that this initiative will allow BESTPRAC to continue and broaden our impact. Currently, we are in a pilot phase where both governance structures are adjusting in an effort to find the best ways to collaborate. The first in-person meeting of the group takes place this week on September 6-7 2022.
COST: Congratulations on this new Horizon Europe project. What is RM ROADMAP about?
NC: EARMA and partners are delivering an important project under the HORIZON-WIDERA-2021-ERA-01 call that will support the strengthening of an inclusive research management community in Europe. ‘Creating Framework Conditions for Research Management to Strengthen the European Research Area’ (RM Roadmap) will chart a course for the future of research management (RM) in Europe and further develop a community to support its delivery. It will be conducted over 36 months and is funded to the amount of €1.5m. BESTPRAC members are a key component of this project, with three core group members represented. We are greatly looking forward to the kick-off meeting in Belgrade on September 8, following the first in-person meeting of the BESTPRAC as a Thematic Group within EARMA.
AC: Sincere thanks for your wishes. It is true that the former BESTPRAC core group, since the official end of the COST action in October 2019, remained active trying to find alternatives and opportunities to keep the network, hence its activities, active and alive. One of the ways we were looking for was through the widening participation programme under Horizon Europe. We managed to succeed this via our involvement in RM Roadmap. The project has successfully received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme under grant agreement number 101058475, with the main aim to strengthen and create a roadmap of research management in Europe. BESTPRAC is being represented in the consortium by the institutions of 3 of of 8 of our core group members – HETFA Research Institute, Hungary (Virág Zsár); Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Portugal (Cristina Oliveira) and The Cyprus Institute, Cyprus (myself, Andri Charalambous) providing an important coverage of widening countries complementing the outreach of EARMA. The project will be developed in co-creation with all the broad community of Research Managers and Administrators, Research Performing Organisations, Research Funding Organisations, and Industry.
COST: What advice would you give to other COST Actions who are starting to look at ensuring the sustainability of their network?
AC: Firstly, it is important to understand that sustainability requires long-term planning. Hence, I would advise them to start thinking of ways to sustain their network well before the end of the COST Action. Engaging with already formalised associations and networks, at national and international level, having them participating in the COST Action activities and plan possible synergies are very important. As the COST Action is based on volunteering, both the success of the Action and its possible continuation necessitates dedicated persons and institutions. This can be secured if the Action as such makes an added value and a difference in the professional life of the people involved, and possibly in the institutions they work. This was probably one of the most important factors in the success of BESTPRAC: the significant amount of knowledge, experiences, and connections gathered and absorbed by the members proved that it is worth to keep it going. Thirdly, besides the professional life, it also impacted the personal relations of its active members: we became friends and are happy to work together in the long run.
Andrei, Nik, thank you very much for catching up with us today. We look forward to hearing more from RM ROADMAP and the BESTPRAC thematic group over the coming months.