HORIZON EUROPE: ERC Science Journalism Initiative

Objective

The ERC wishes to support an organisation or a consortium of organisations to set up a funding scheme that would facilitate 3-5-month stays of journalists at research institutions. The purpose is to give the journalists opportunities to learn and work on in-depth reporting projects by immersing themselves in the research environment and interacting with scientists and scholars. Such opportunities – organised for example in collaboration with ERC host institutions and in ERC grantees’ teams and labs – should facilitate better understanding of frontier research, while respecting journalistic independence.The holder of this coordination and support action grant would be expected to, among others:

1. design the support programme that addresses the aforementioned goals, advances the set objective and respects the principle of editorial independence of journalists,
2. set up a high-level media advisory committee to ensure the credibility and independence of the programme vis-a-vis journalists’ community,
3. prepare conditions to carry out the actions, especially establish relations with ERC grantees and host institutions’ press offices to make sure the fellowships and placements are well organised and useful both to the journalists and to researchers,
4. launch calls for applications or proposals for fellowships or placements potentially using the Financial support to third parties (FSTP),
5. evaluate the proposals based on the criteria of excellence and impact, ensuring balance in terms of topics covered by the participating journalists, geographical distribution of host institutions, and gender of the participants,
6. provide funding to journalists or researchers,
7. organise meetings, networking opportunities for the participating journalists and researchers,
8. monitor the implementation of the programme, and report to the ERC on the performance of the programme.

This ERC call allows for financial support to third parties (FSTP). Those applicants that foresee implementation of actions by providing FSTP must clearly describe the objectives of the action and the expected results, as well as meet the specific conditions on the use of FSTP as set out in the Model Grant Agreement (see Article 6.2.D.1 and Article 9 of the Horizon Europe Model Grant Agreement), and describe among others the conditions for submission, evaluation and selection of proposals of third parties.

The maximum duration of the project will be 48 months. One proposal will be selected.

Deadline

15 December 2022

For further information: Funding & tenders