On October 24th-25th, the second periodic BHO meeting of 2018 was organized in Brussels by the EC. During this meeting the following topics were discussed:
RESAVER
An update on the status of the initiative was presented, particularly highlighting its advantages:
- Its transferability
- It can be a key element to attract researcher talent
- It could be applied to the entire organization’s staff, not only mobile researchers
- Supported by EC and non-profit (i.e., probably best fees possible)
EURAXESS members are requested to actively raise awareness about the initiative to support the adhesion of new countries.
Consulted about the situation for Spain, RESAVER acknowledged ongoing contacts with the ministry to tackle public sector restrictions. Currently only private organization could join without any problems.
CEF - Connecting European Facilities- Building Blocks (Joao Rodrigues Frade, DG CNECT, EC)
Connecting European Facilities (CEF) from DG CNECT gave a presentation on the initiative, and particularly on the development of CEF Building blocks and funding opportunities:
- To see who is doing what and how, visit the CEF Monitoring Dashboard
- You can also find Success Stories
An EURAXESS-CEF workshop will be organized by the EC to identify connection points between CEF and the EURAXESS portal developments.
EURAXESS updates
Directorate-General for Research and Innovation is going through some restructuring:
- EURAXESS is now within section B7
- Mr. Philippe Mathieu is currently the running Head of Unit. The position is now open, and probably the new Head of Unit will be appointed at the beginning of 2019.
EURAXESS Worldwide:
- New Zealand / Australia tender is currently under development
- The possibility of having one or at least half person in Sub-Saharan Africa is being explored.
- EURAXESS Worldwide in the EURAXESS portal is the third most visited section. Engagement activities between the network members and the Worldwide chapters are expected to receive a lot of visibility.
EURAXESS Biannual Conference Prague 2019 will take place on the 21st-23rd May 2019 (from afternoon of day 1 to lunch of day 3). The programme will need from BHO input and the plan is to open the registration on late January 2019.
EURAXESS European portal developments
The presentation reviewed the current statistics of the portal, as well as planned developments for the future.
Functionality updates currently in the pipeline:
- Organization accounts – depending on domain to avoid blocking org accounts due to staff change. November 2018.
- Material for EURAXESS members to attract non-academic users to EURAXESS. Q1 2019
- Organization account can grant publication of vacancies to BHO (without losing the possibility to publish themselves) Q1 2019
- Organization administrators and members will have access to visitor’s data (number of clicks, per publications, etc.) Q2-Q3 of 2019
- Video being planned addressing how to create organization account, how to handle dashboard, etc. Input will be sought from BHOs Q1-Q2 2019
Future plans:
- CV Europass e-Portafolio (waiting for DG Employment developments, tbc early 2020?) to better match people to jobs and skill gaps with learning resources:
- Update the new ESCO classification
- CV section of EURAXESS will be changed
- Researchers will be able to upload any kind of CVs, including videos CVs
- Should allow full interoperability with other platforms (e.g. EURES)
- Hosting offers to be improved though a collaboration with RICH 2020
HRS4R
HR Award IT Tool was launched in May 2018. All new processes are already done through the IT tool and those cases in the middle of the process will be uploaded
Streamlines the HRS4R process for all stakeholders:
- More structured approach for institutions and facilitating monitoring of process
- More rapid and efficient evaluation process
- Faster feedback from EC
Latest figures:
- 91 HRS4R newcomer accounts
- 42 have already sent endorsement letters
Instructions for participants:
- HR admin account (1 per institution and with an email account sharing the same domain of the institution)
- Shift to the IT tool for everybody. Those already in process will be gradually contacted to introduce information by hand (with support of CE who will upload the documents/steps already provided). Tentative timeline to finalize this process is summer 2019 (but depends also on institution’s reply to the workflow).
- Make sure to check guidelines.
- Contact: RTD-CHARTER@ec.europa.eu
Info day on end January 2019
Webinars with institutions and experts to be organized in short
Project-related activities:
SAIA, BHO of EURAXES Slovakia, reported on their very cost effective Facebook promotion campaign done within the framework of TOP III.
BZN, BHO of EURAXESS Hungary informed about the closing of TOP III which finalized on August 2018. All deliverables are accessible to any EURAXESS member in the Extranet Library. The full list can be found here
CERTH, BHO of EURAXESS Greece presented the content of EURAXESS TOP IV project, which began on September 2018 and celebrated its Kick-off Meeting on the 17th-18th October 2018 in Heraklion, Crete.