The Factors Behind Participation: Evidence from the European Framework Programme, Horizon 2020, 2019

Public sector PhD-project (246964) that has looked more closely on the terms for participation among research institutes across Europe.

In 2014, the Norwegian government launched the strategy for Norway's research and innovation relationship with the EU. The strategy paints an ambitious goal for the participation in the EU framework program for research and innovation, Horizon 2020, and the European Research Area (ERA). A main objective is to increase the return share to Norwegian researchers from 1,67 per cent under the last framework program to 2 per cent. Because of larger budgets under Horizon 2020, such a goal would demand an activity growth of about 60 per cent. In order to meet the goal the government developed the strategy with 49 different measures for increased participation. Even though the degree of participation and return shares from announced funds for research and innovation in the EU programs are well known, one know very little about which factors that's contributing to the application and acquirement of funding of different organizations. In this field, the research is still insufficient, especially in a Norwegian context. In the light of this research gap the PhD-project, seek to towards uncovering different factors that contribute to and hinder the participation on research and innovation cooperation with the EU. The project will especially evaluate the effect of national measures and programmes for mobilizing increased participation. The benefit of the project is not limited to the research field in itself, but will be of particular value to the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research work on research political challenges and the following-up of the EU-strategy. The project is asking a broad, but original, research question concerning which factors that is contributing to the ability of Norwegian organisations to acquire funding from the EUs research programmes on different structural levels.