Work in Progress
METRIS project: Monitoring European trends in the Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities
The implementation of the European Research Area (ERA) requires an information base that allows stakeholders (governments, funding agencies, interested parties), to develop their actions whilst remaining aware of the context of the strategies, to be able to benchmark their performance against each other, and to be able to collectively set targets and evaluate progress.
Identified in the SSH 2007 Work Programme, as part of its Strategic Activities, the METRIS project is designed to increase the visibility of research endeavours in the field of socio-economic sciences and humanities (SSH) by optimising the stock of SSH resources and facilities. METRIS is oriented to support evidence-based decision-making in the EU SSH, thus allowing for the development of further cooperation in Europe, on the basis of the identification of common trends, common interests and common challenges at the appropriate level, be it regional, national, transnational or European.
One of the major tasks of METRIS will be to compile a report on important trends in SSH research in Europe that point specifically to the seven activities of the SSH Theme under the Cooperation Specific Programme. In addition METRIS will be providing information about relevant national funding structures, performance and research governance in the Member States.
A METRIS online portal will be equally set up. It will be based on the information provided for the European Report; it will include national reports, profiles of national research programmes, institutions, data-bases, analyses of trends at national and European levels, but also at regional levels, as well as tools to facilitate interaction with the information, and with other users of the system. Finally, the European report will be launched in a conference on socio-economic sciences and humanities in Europe where the work underpinning the report will be presented, together with strategic round tables, and possibly further academic sessions. In order to achieve these goals METRIS needs to build on the support to be provided by national systems developing the socio-economic sciences and humanities in the EU.
METRIS will build on the experience and resources of a number of projects developed under the previous framework programmes. A workshop with relevant experts from these projects was held recently, where the objectives, the scope and the broad lines of METRIS implementation were discussed, as were possible means of integrating their existing information resources into the METRIS system.
An invitation had been addressed to the countries, through the national representatives in the SSH Programme Committee, for nominating the most appropriate institutions to liaise with the Commission in a better implementation of METRIS's work, at national level. The project (which will be run and managed by the Commission Services) will have an initial duration phase of two years.