Scope:

A first ERA-NET on gender equality in R&I policy called GENDER-NET was funded under FP7 for the period 2013-2016. It helped mapping and analysing existing national and regional programmes and initiatives aiming at promoting gender equality through institutional change in research organisations, as well as the gender dimension in research contents and programmes. It also aimed at developing common indicators for the monitoring of gender equality policies, and identifying priority activities for strategic transnational cooperation.

On the basis of the priorities identified by GENDER-NET, collaboration will be further supported between Member States and Associated Countries, their research programmes and their initiatives addressing the shared challenges described above.

The ERA-NET Cofund action shall extend the partnership to other Member States and Associated Countries, and enlarge the mapping and analysis to these new partners. Moreover, joint assessments will be extended to the quantitative and qualitative analysis of gender differences and bias in access to research grants. The ERA-NET Cofund action shall help define and develop appropriate conditions for equal opportunities in research funding.

The ERA-NET Cofund action will also launch, co-fund, and monitor strategic transnational cooperation/ actions in support of the implementation of the ERA objectives and based on the priorities identified by GENDER-NET, both from the angle of institutional change in research performing and funding organisations and in view of integrating the gender dimension in research programmes and contents. Priorities may include initiatives such as support to gender equality plans, and development of monitoring systems and of evaluation strategies.

Monitoring arrangements, including indicators, shall be further developed and used.

Proposals should pool the necessary financial resources from the participating national (or regional) research programmes with a view to implementing a joint call for proposals resulting in grants to third parties with EU co-funding, aiming at institutional change and integrating the gender dimension in research contents.

Proposers are encouraged to include other joint activities including additional joint calls without EU co-funding.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of the order of EUR 5 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

This action allows for the provision of financial support to third parties in line with the conditions set out in Part K of the General Annexes.

Expected Impact:

The ERA-NET Cofound action is expected to strengthen the development of gender equality measures in research and innovation across the EU and consequently improve the overall research productivity. Through mutual learning, it will improve the implementation of research and innovation programmes and monitoring of gender equality policies.

The ERA-NET Cofound action will help overcome the disparities among countries and implement appropriate conditions for equal opportunities in the research programmes of the participating countries. It will foster closer cooperation and greater pooling of resources between regional, national and EU-wide research programmes. By mobilising Member States and Associated Countries funding and scaling it up, it will contribute to the implementation of the gender priority of the ERA Roadmap.

Topic conditions and documents

Please read carefully all provisions below before the preparation of your application.

1. List of countries and applicable rules for funding: described in part A of the General Annexes of the General Work Programme.
   Note also that a number of non-EU/non-Associated Countries that are not automatically eligible for funding have made specific provisions for making funding available for their participants in Horizon 2020 projects (follow the links to Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Hong Kong&Macau, India, Japan, Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Taiwan).
    
2. Eligibility and admissibility conditions: described in part B and C of the General Annexes of the General Work Programme [, with the following exceptions]:
   
   
   Proposal page limits and layout: Please refer to Part B of the standard proposal template.
    
3. Evaluation
   
   3.1  Evaluation criteria and procedure, scoring and threshold: described in part H of the General Annexes of the General Work Programme [, with the following exceptions]:
   
   3.2 Submission and evaluation process: Guide to the submission and evaluation process
   
         
4. Indicative timetable for evaluation and grant agreement:
   
   Information on the outcome of single-stage evaluation: maximum 5 months from the deadline for submission.
   Signature of grant agreements: maximum 8 months from the deadline for submission.
    
5. Provisions, proposal templates and evaluation forms for the type(s) of action(s) under this topic:
   
   Coordination and Support Action:
   
   Specific provisions and funding rates
   Standard proposal template
   Standard evaluation form
   H2020 General MGA -Multi-Beneficiary
   Annotated Grant Agreement
    
6. Additional provisions:
   
   Horizon 2020 budget flexibility
   
   Classified information
   
   Technology readiness levels (TRL) – where a topic description refers to TRL, these definitions apply.
   
   Financial support to Third Parties – where a topic description foresees financial support to Third Parties, these provisions apply.
    
7. Open access must be granted to all scientific publications resulting from Horizon 2020 actions, and proposals must refer to measures envisaged. Where relevant, proposals should also provide information on how the participants will manage the research data generated and/or collected during the project, such as details on what types of data the project will generate, whether and how this data will be exploited or made accessible for verification and re-use, and how it will be curated and preserved.

This topic participates per default in the open access to research data pilot which aims to improve and maximise access to and re-use of research data generated by projects:
• The pilot applies to the data needed to validate the results presented in scientific publications. Additionally, projects can choose to make other data available for open access and need to describe their approach in a Data Management Plan (to be provided within six months after the project start).
• Note that the evaluation phase proposals will not be evaluated more favourably because they are part of the Pilot, and will not be penalised for opting out of the Pilot.
• Projects can at any stage opt-out of the pilot.

The legal requirements for projects participating in this pilot are in the article 29.3 of the Model Grant Agreement.
Further information on the Open Research Data Pilot is made available in the H2020 Online Manual.

8. Additional documents:

H2020 Work Programme 2016-17: Science with and for society

H2020 Work Programme 2016-17: Dissemination, Exploitation and Evaluation

H2020 Work Programme 2016-17: General Annexes