ERC 2018 Work Programme Published
The European Research Council (ERC) Work Programme for 2018 has been adopted by the European Commission and subsequently published by the ERC.
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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.
