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Who's afraid of FP7?

A spectre is haunting British universities – the spectre of FP7. FP7 is the typical Brussels-style acronym for the 7th Research Framework Programme of the European Union. The 7th Research Framework Programme constitutes the main research funding instrument of the European Commission for the period between 2007 and 2013. The European Union decided to have seven-year research programmes, thus avoiding associations with the rather unsuccessful five-year-programmes of the late Communist command economy. The first reaction by many British scholars to FP7 is that they don’t wish to be another ‘Euro-victim’ as they are described on a regular basis on BBC World radio. The general expectation is that an application for FP7 is long, complicated, bureaucratic, terribly complex and has a success rate comparable to a British lottery jackpot. In short, a bureaucratic nightmare with very little chance of success which has to be avoided.

This is a short story about some recent FP7 attempts by myself and other colleagues in the School of Social Science. The College in general, and the College Research Director Peter Duff in particular, financed a small FP7 preparation conference in April 2007 at the University of Aberdeen. I invited around a dozen scholars from several European countries to Aberdeen in order to discuss with them potential themes of joint research projects. On the other side, I invited senior and junior researchers from our School of Social Science with an interest in international research projects to sit on the other side of the FP7 roundtable. This one-week meeting between Aberdeen academics and European academics in April 2007 served as a ‘FP7- application incubator’. Before the meeting, I used invigilations and other exciting events of academic life to go through hundreds of FP7 pages, describing the different new calls in the fields of social sciences, security and health. This boring reading exercise produced about 20 ideas for joint international research projects. At the end of the April meeting, the joint decision was to go ahead with three grant applications, one in each of the fields of ‘European Identity’, ‘Security’ and ‘Health and Health Policy’.

Several months later, we can report on the first results: the application on European identity under the leadership of Professor Claire Wallace got a mark of 13.5 out of a maximum of 15 points and received an award with a total budget of € 1.4 million. The application on security was short listed, but did not get funded because of a shortage of funds in that specific research field. The application on health and health policy in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States has been submitted, with the evaluation results due in December 2007.

On the basis of our experience with the ‘dark beast’ of FP7 applications, we can summarise the following basic rules and recipes for success.

A successful project should include at least 3 European partners and can have up to 15 partners. Legally, a consortium of 50 partners is possible, but you are not advised to go that route.
If you never have been principal investigator in a European Union Framework research project, you should start not as co-ordinator, but as a partner within the international consortium.
The average length of a FP7 application is 100 pages, which appears to be terrifying as a task. In reality, there are only 20 pages of academic prose, very similar to the ‘case for support’ in ESRC standard grant and large grant applications. The remaining 80 pages are just one-page CVs, one-page descriptions of all partner institutions and short pieces on dissemination as in ESRC applications and the budget.
The Research and Innovation (R&I) office has already several ‘best practice’ examples of successful FP6 and FP7 applications and those can be used (provided that the successful PI’s agree to their release) as a sort of blue-print and inspiration for new grant applications.
One advantage of FP7 research grants is that the European Commission does not pay the first instalment of the budget 3 months after the start date like the ESRC, but within the first month after the commencement of the project.

In conclusion, we would like to argue that a research grant application within the 7th Research Programme of the European Union involves some investment of our time and intellectual capacities, but not considerably more than a normal or large grant application to the ESRC or AHRC. The R&I and Research Financial Services (RFS) staff have been extremely helpful in our previous FP6 and FP7 research grant applications and are certainly ready to support us academics fully in future grant applications within CASS with guidance and navigation through the jungle of the 7th Research Framework Programme. We think that FP7 is well worth a try despite its negative image …

Christian W. Haerpfer is Head of Politics and International Relations and Research Director of the School of Social Science.

This page was last modified on: Monday, 10-Mar-2008 16:05:23 GMT

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