Europe faces major social, environmental and economic challenges that require innovative solutions. Universities, through education, research and innovation, help to create solutions to these challenges. The EU-funded project EDUC-SHARE aims to transform the Alliance of the European Digital UniverCity (EDUC) into a fully integrated university that fulfils all these missions, giving full importance to the participation of European citizens in identifying and solving current and future challenges in an open science approach, while promoting EU values and fundamental rights.
The EDUC-SHARE project had the ambition to deepen the ongoing transformation and institutional change of both the EDUC university members and the Alliance as a whole, based on their own identified needs, with an Open Science oriented evolution of practices. As part of its implementation, EDUC-SHARE has identified barriers at institutional, local, national or European level, which will be reported to the relevant authorities in order to reduce them and achieve full integration of its proposed actions at Alliance or inter-Alliance level. The EDUC Alliance will then serve as a model for the implemented European Research Area (ERA) and European Higher Education Area (EHEA) by creating a favourable, inclusive environment that connects the research and innovation ecosystems of its university members to accelerate technology transfer and take into account citizens' concerns in policy making.
The work in the EDUC-SHARE project was organised along three specific objectives:
• Objective 1: To jointly develop pilot tools and methodologies to enhance multidisciplinary collaborative research, speed up technology transfer and promote sustainable career development in an Open-Science-oriented approach.
• Objective 2: To share a long-term roadmap for addressing identified key global challenges that the EDUC alliance members will jointly tackle with a multidisciplinary approach.
• Objective 3: To share a career development agenda in line with the HRS4R (Human Resources Strategy for Researchers) to offer an open, inclusive, favourable work environment within the Alliance with common policies in Ethics, Equality and Parity.
