Report finds little progress on European Research Area - University World News

"With just three months to go before the launch of the European Research Area, or ERA, much work is still needed before a border-free international market for research projects can be established, a new report has found. The European Commission said last Monday that the European Union (EU) research market was still fragmented, with many different funding schemes for researchers in the 28 EU member countries and different policies for knowledge-sharing and open access to publicly funded research. A majority of research grants were still not portable across borders within the EU: 'National research programmes still operate according to different rules, for example on reporting, which makes transnational research cooperation difficult,' read a statement released by the European Commission together with the report. 'Gender inequality means female researchers' talent is still being wasted, and this is the area of the ERA where progress has been weakest,' the communiqué noted. Recruitment practices in the field of research were still not fully open, transparent and based on merit, the report showed, with the European Commission complaining that most of the vacancies were not advertised at European level on the jobs portal Euraxess. 'We could improve on the use of Euraxess,' Professor Kurt Deketelaere, secretary general of the League of European Research Universities, or LERU, told University World News later. He argued that many of the LERU member universities, thanks to their reputations, did not need to use the jobs portal to attract researchers. 'If the commission would develop a less burdensome tool, we could maybe make better use of this,' Deketelaere noted ..."