Baltic – Nordic Universities in the EU Research and Innovation Programme Horizon 2020

This study looks at the research education in universities and is aimed at assessment of the Baltic – Nordic Higher Education Establishments’ participation to the EU Horizon 2020 Framework Programme on basis of the open source data. The author analyses university interest in Horizon 2020 support for doctoral students’ training, correlation between university PhD intensity and involvement in research projects, correlation between Horizon 2020 success and World university rankings, participation comparison of Nordic universities versus the Baltic ones. A brief overview of universities’ commitment to Sustainable development goals is also included. The study concludes that Nordic universities are more thoroughly engaged than the Baltic ones and are taking advantage of the Horizon 2020 opportunities; however, Estonia has a remarkable success. Although Nordic universities are looking for collaboration partners further into Western Europe than to the neighbours across the Baltic Sea, for teaming activities Baltic universities choose Nordic mentors. Nordic universities are more involved in activities leading to excellent research. On contrary – in many cases participation of Baltic universities is limited to coordination of research activities without a direct access to the leading European science communities and respective possibilities for students.


Introduction
Fundamental principles laid down in the Magna Charta of the European Universities (Magna Charta Universitatum, 1988) emphasise close relationship of tuition with research: 'Teaching and research in universities must be inseparable'. Therefore, in parallel to academic education, universities involve students also in research activities thus enriching their level of knowledge.
The major research and innovation programme Horizon 2020 is open to everyone. Higher Education Establishments (HES) are top beneficiaries of this programme for both participations (33%) and EU contribution (39%) received.
This study is targeted at assessment of the Baltic -Nordic HES participation to the Horizon 2020 activities based on open data: Dashboard (2020), Cordis (2020), Eurostat (2020), and ETER (2020). However, online databases are updated regularly, and the current study reflects results as of March 2020.
Earlier correlation for Horizon 2020 participation success and 15-year old students' mean performance in OECD Programmes for International Student Assessment was analysed by Geske and Bērziņa (2017) concluding that there are no decisive factors responsible for success in the Horizon 2020.

Data Sample selection
A multi-level selection has been chosen for analysing HES performance according to country group, performance in Horizon 2020 and university's research profile.
This survey focuses on Baltic -Nordic country group. In terms of Horizon 2020 it means: three 'old' member states (Denmark, Finland, and Sweden), three 'new' member states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) and two associated countries (Iceland and Norway). All of them are participants of the Nordic -Baltic space for higher education and research.
Further, according to the ETER -European tertiary education register (last data from 2016), only universities identifying themselves as research ones have been chosen for the study. Two universities in Norway and one in Sweden are excluded.
Considering the three above-mentioned prerequisites, 48 universities would form the study sample. However, due to space limitation only up to three (according to H2020 ranking) per country are included in the current study (Tab. 1). All Nordic HES (with exception of Iceland) rank among the top-100 universities according to Horizon 2020 ranking; two Estonian universities are in the second hundred. The list ends on Latvian and Lithuanian universities.

Horizon 2020 activities
The latest official evaluation of the Horizon 2020 is available from 2017, and separate flash sheets from 2018 -2019 (EC Horizon 2020 programme analysis, 2020). Published survey data differ from today's; although, some trends remain throughout the programme. This study looks at Baltic -Nordic HES participation in early 2020 for several selected topics.

Country collaboration and success
Figure 1 reflects relative collaborations (i.e., percentage of project partners from the respective country). Obviously, that for all selected counties Germany is the most frequent partner due to its size (1 st line: around 10% of collaborations), but for Germany Baltic countries is a minor partner (1 st column, collaboration below 1%). But noteworthy is the country self-cooperation (highlighted diagonal boxes): the 'big-5' countries go for projects with more involved participants form the country (collaboration ~9%), while for majority cases participants from Baltics are included as single country representatives in the projects.
Although Sweden is the most retained (above 3% of EC total contribution) Baltic -Nordic country as the largest one (Worldometer, 2020), other Nordic counties are more successful with respect to EU contribution per capita. Iceland, the smallest country in the sample, has the most successful participants (21%) and the highest EU contribution per capita (338 €). Also, Iceland is the 'most Baltic -Nordic' country: 19% of its project partners come from the region. Baltic countries are far behind the Nordic neighbours. However, Estonian success is remarkablecontribution per capita is higher than in UK, France, Spain and Italy.

Excellent science and Enhancement of educational programmes
Projects under Excellent science consolidate research and promote competitiveness on a global scale. The best HES invest efforts for this pillar; however, Baltic universities are seriously lagging behind the Nordic neighbours (Fig. 2). Hereinafter data are provided in percentage of the 'reference' projects against the total number of projects. 259

Baltic -Nordic Universities in the EU Research and Innovation Programme Horizon 2020 Figure 2. University involvement in Excellent science projects (%). Source: Dashboard (2020).
Horizon 2020 foresees a special activity co-funded with national governments for advancing national/regional/international programmes for Doctorate and Post-doc researchers' training. By early 2020, 87 such projects have been supported (Dashboard, 2020); about a quarter of them have participants from Baltic -Nordic countries (mainly Nordic): Finland -20, Sweden -19, Denmark -7, Iceland and Norway -2 for each, Estonia -1. The top-listed universities (Tab. 1) are also the most engaged for this activity. Based on participation intensity in Excellent science projects, it is obvious -Nordic HES have more opportunities for promotion of students' scientific and research education.

Research and innovation versus Coordination and support activities
Research and innovation projects (RIA) are aimed at development of a new knowledge versus coordination and support actions (CSA), which do not enclose any research activities; therefore, scientists are more interested in the collaborative research. There is no significant difference in the share of research projects among Baltic -Nordic universities (grey bars, Fig. 3). However, when involvement in Excellent science and research projects is aggregated ( Fig. 2 and grey bars Fig. 3), Nordic universities are far ahead. Therefore, it could be concluded that scientists (and thus also students) from Baltic universities are less integrated into the European Research Area. The said is reflected also by considerably lower citation index (THE, 2020) for Baltic researchers.
Yet, Baltic participants are thoroughly involved in research supporting activities -CSAs, i.e.: establishment of thematic research networks, conducting of studies, etc. (blue bars, Fig. 3).

Spreading excellence and Widening participation
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania belong to so called 'widening countries' eligible for special Horizon 2020 support actions. The most influential of them are Teaming activities aimed at consummating existing research centres in 'widening countries' through coupling with leading European research institutions.
Baltic countries' efforts have resulted in 2 teaming projects for Latvia (3 universities) and one for Estonia. Two of three Baltic teams have chosen mentors form leading research centres Nordic countries (Tab. 2): here Baltic -Nordic neighbour links work well.

Doctoral students and Horizon 2020
Doctoral students in science and technology fields for Estonia and Finland are at 0.7% and 1.3% of the 20-29 years aged population (Eurostat, last data from 2012). These countries have improved the performance in comparison to the previous EU research programme (FP7,Dashboard). For example, Estonia accumulated around 0.2% of total FP7 EC contribution, but in Horizon 2020 it has doubled its share (0.38%, Fig. 1). Also, Finland has slightly improved from 1.9% to 2.2%, while Latvia and Lithuania (0.3% doctoral students for both) remain at the previous around 0.1% level. Draft trend: countries with higher Doctoral students' ratio have higher potential for future growtha topic for study in Horizon Europe.
There is a correlation between Horizon 2020 funding attributed to one Doctoral (PhD) student and the number of total PhD students enrolled and graduated (Fig. 4). According to Lehman et all. (2013) Spearman's correlation coefficients are respectively 0.50 (moderate) and 0.68 (strong). One can concludea university investing more in research can attract more students and provides more possibilities for research education.

Universities and Sustainable development
The next Horizon Europe programme is aimed at achieving Sustainable development goals (SDG, 2015). Therefore, it is interesting to look how universities cope with these goals today.
In 2019 THE has published a ranking focusing on how HES are contributing to the Sustainable development goals. The list reflects 4671 HES performance against SDGs.
Fifteen Baltic -Nordic HES are included, half of them among top-100 (Fig. 5). The best are Swedish universities; from Baltics, only Latvian have submitted data on SDGs. A university's final overall score is calculated by combining its score for SDG 17 (mandatory) with its top three scores of other SDGs; therefore, all are not assessed against the same SDGs.
It is certainly worth emphasising the University of Gothenburg (Fig. 5, grey highlighted, not included in sample of this paper as ranks 7 th for Sweden). Hypothesis: mission based Horizon Europe programme could become a game-changer for university participation.