ERC 2018 Work Programme Published

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Budget

The ERC has allocated €581 million to the Starting Grant call, €550 million to the Consolidator Grant call and €450 million to the Advanced Grant call to fund approximately 391, 287 and 194 grants respectively, a decrease from the 2017 Work Programme calls. This is in order to accommodate a budget of €250 million for the Synergy Grant call, which will fund approximately 30 grants. The Proof of Concept Grant budget remains the same at €20 million to fund around 130 projects across three deadlines.

Call dates

Indicative dates for the 2018 calls are as follows:

Starting Grants (ERC-2018-StG): opening 3 August 2017; deadline 17 October 2017.
Consolidator Grants (ERC-2018-CoG): opening 24 October 2017; deadline 15 February 2018.
Advanced Grants (ERC-2018-AdG): opening 17 May 2018; deadline 30 August 2018.
Synergy Grants (ERC-2018-SyG): opening 3 August 2017; deadline 14 November 2017.
Proof of Concept Grants (ERC-2018-PoC): opening 6 September 2017; deadlines: 16 January 2018, 18 April 2018 and 11 September 2018.

Main new features

Reintroduction of the Synergy Grant scheme, last included in the 2012 and 2013 Work Programmes:

2-4 Principal investigators, up to 6 years in duration and €10 million funding (pro-rata) plus up to €4 million in additional funding where applicable;
will include a three-step evaluation process;
the goal of the scheme is to "give support to close collaborative interactions that will enable transformative research, cross-fertilizing disciplines and capable of yielding ground-breaking scientific results".

Revision of the Life Sciences domain descriptors, and also those for PE3, SH3 and SH5.
Changes to the Proof of Concept call guidance in terms of clarification of the evaluation criteria and modification of Part B of the proposal.
Under other actions, there is support for the development of the OAPEN initiative related to Open Access.