Introduction
Running a cascading grant programme in the context of an EU-funded project requires seamless collaboration between experts in different specialised disciplines and a flexible management approach that makes it possible to ramp up the grantees' work quickly and ensure their questions and concerns are addressed with minimal delay.
The EOSC Future/RDA open call programme was not an exception. During the project's lifetime, a total of 11 open calls were published, 41 grants were awarded, and 80 reports were formally reviewed. Four major events (EOSC Symposium 2022, RDA 21st Plenary and Open Research Commons satellite event and EOSC Symposium 2023) were used to promote the work of the grantees and to maximise the visibility of their contributions. To date, the projects have reported almost 500 distinct outputs that have been tracked and published on the project pages on this website.
To help plan and implement similar programmes in the future, we would like to present the team members and the roles they played in making the programme possible.
Contractual aspects
- Fleur Lebhardt (Technopolis Group Belgium)
- Contract negotiations, compliance, liaison with the project management and European Commission
- Financial management
- "Level 3" support for questions related to contractual issues
- Melina Jander, Merle Schatz, Inke Achterberg (University of Göttingen)
- Formal management of all call relevant steps, including processes related to call publication, evaluation, formal monitoring, reporting
- Reporting, progress follow-up and output tracking of the projects
- Level 2 support for contractual issues
- Email-based helpdesk service
- Appointment of external experts (together with RDA)
- Ranking of the proposals and proposal for selection for funding
- Najla Rettberg and Matti Heikkurinen (RDA)
- Liaison with the project oversight group ("Grants committee")
Dissemination and outreach
- Patricia Nugent, Nicholas Ferguson (Trust-IT)
- Promotion of the calls, publishing the call results and grantee profiles
- EOSC in practice stories featuring several of the grantees
- Alexandra Singer (Arctik)
- Social media campaigns ensuring maximal visibility of the open calls
- Alexandra Delipalta, Najla Rettberg and Matti Heikkurinen (RDA)
- Promoting the projects and their results through RDA channels (grantee spotlights, bulletins, blog posts,...)
Engagement and day-to-day support
- Najla Rettberg and Matti Heikkurinen (RDA)
- Level 1 support for grantees
- Innovation management and cross-pollination support between grantees
N.B. The above role definitions are the result of an evolutionary process during the project's lifetime. In many cases, the team members could exchange roles based on the demands of the situation. Perhaps one of the key lessons learned from the programme is that also the support team needs to operate in a trans-disciplinary manner (similar to the projects supported).