New report highlights contribution of MSCA fundings to COVID-19 pandemic research

Funding from the European Commission is playing a large role into all-important COVID-19 pandemic-related research. A large part of that funding comes through the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), according to a new report, out now.

The publication, entitled “Meeting the pandemic challenges: Contribution of EU R&I funding to COVID-19 related research”, looks at the extent to which previously allocated EU Research & Innovation funding helps to meet the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and how it contributes to research.

Relevant publications

The study identifies 2 700 COVID-19 relevant publications, to which the EU research and innovation funding has contributed. The year 2020 saw 47% of the papers being published. The other half of the papers examined were published before the pandemic.

These publications were supported by all parts of the two previous framework programmes FP7 and Horizon 2020, forerunners to Horizon Europe. Taken together, 

• MSCA, the European Research Council (ERC) and the Health Programme account for about 80% of them
• MSCA supported 203 related publications in the framework of Horizon 2020 (2014-2020
• MSCA supported 125 papers under the “People” programme of FP7 (2007-2014)

By comparison, the analysis reveals that ERC support and Health Programme support during that time was also effective. Specifically

• the ERC supported 310 and 297 publications, respectively
• the Health Programme supported 559 and 249 publications, respectively

International co-operation

The report also highlights the role of international co-operation. Of the 1 419 publications analysed, the majority (56%) were internationally co-authored. This underlines the important role MSCA has in promoting international cooperation to tackle societal challenges.

The report also includes a comparison between the EU and other funding sources:

• Out of 1 400 publications for which full funding data is available, 64% list other sources of funding alongside the EU.
• Globally, the EU is the third most-frequently acknowledged source of funding for COVID-19 related research, after the US Department of Health and Human Services and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

Useful links

Follow the link below to download the publication in full: “Meeting the pandemic challenges: Contribution of EU R&I funding to COVID-19 related research”.