What is the problem/issue being addressed?
The goal of AURORA RI is to facilitate research collaboration between the member universities. The project develops closer research and innovation support structures within the partner universities. The issues being addressed are underlying systemic differences between the institutions, countries, and cultures. There are barriers to research collaboration, and we seek to identify those and eliminate them wherever possible. The project is focused on research support systems, rather than research itself.
Why is it important for society?
We believe that the societal importance of our work can be divided into two categories:
1. Levelling the playing field.
It is our goal to establish an assessment technique that is more inclusive than those commonly used. This is in line with the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (COARA). The Aurora Universities are all signatories of the latest COARA Agreement, published on 20 July 2022.
We are developing training plans on transversal skills in recruitment. Through this, we intend to develop and implement a culture and practice of recruitment, development and reward for academic staff conducive to the matching of academic excellence and societal impact in education, research and innovation.
Additionally, we are building an extensive knowledge base of Open Science resources, policies and practices. The Aurora Open Science Monitor allows anyone to explore the practices, publications, datasets, and software published by Aurora partners.
Our goal is to combine resources and experiences within the consortium and open them to other European alliances and beyond, allowing others to use, replicate and improve.
2. Engaging with societies
Through deliverables 4.1 and 4.2 in this project, the members have shared best practices on entrepreneurial activities and planned training programmes for university staff. By sharing best practices and R&I networks, thereby linking the local and regional R&I ecosystems, we enlarge our innovation ecosystem and contribute to the European R&I ecosystem. Through increased cooperation between academia, for-profit (businesses, entrepreneurs), not-for profit organisations as well as public sectors and authorities, each member and in turn Aurora as a whole can further streamline knowledge and technology transfer and increase the impact of their research activities and strengthen local and regional R&I ecosystems.
Our ultimate goal is to increase the meaningful involvement and engagement of all groups of citizens, civil society and public/cities authorities in research, innovation and education by building a knowledge base on citizen engagement methodologies and build the engagement capacities of our staff and students. To this end, a report on Inventory of Inspiring Engagement Practices (Deliverable 7.1) was submitted in M14, wherein the universities each share 1-3 examples of robust practices for citizen and/or societal engagement.
What are the overall objectives?
The overall objective of this project is to strengthen and streamline research and innovation support to enhance academic excellence and the innovation environment in our universities. This complements the Aurora Learning for Societal Impact strategy with a long-term Aurora strategy towards research and innovation (R&I) for Societal Impact, supporting achievement of the SDGs. By matching he educational and institutional focus on support with a research and innovation aspect, the Aurora RI project further complements the goals of the Erasmus+ project, intensifying and deepening the links between the universities on several levels. This, in turn, will help building a common identity as part of the European knowledge system, which combines education with research and innovation. The project has seven specific objectives supporting the overall objective, which are described in chapter 1.1 of the DOA in the Grant Agreement, and in the technical report on Work Packages.
