Introduction to COST
The acronym 'COST' stands for European Cooperation in the
Field of Scientific and Technical Research.
Founded in 1971, COST is an intergovernmental framework for
European Co-operation in the field of Scientific and Technical
Research, allowing the co-ordination of nationally funded
research on a European level. COST Actions cover basic and
pre-competitive research as well as activities of public utility.
The goal of COST is to ensure that Europe holds a strong position
in the field of scientific and technical research for peaceful
purposes, by increasing European co-operation and interaction
in this field.
COST has clearly shown its strength in non-competitive research,
in pre-normative co-operation and in solving environmental
and cross-border problems and problems of public utility.
It has been successfully used to maximise European synergy
and added value in research co-operation and it is a useful
tool to further European integration, in particular concerning
Central and Eastern European countries.
Ease of access for institutions from non-member countries
also makes COST a very interesting and successful tool for
tackling topics of a truly global nature.
To emphasise that the initiative came from the scientists
and technical experts themselves and from those with a direct
interest in furthering international collaboration, the founding
fathers of COST opted for a flexible and pragmatic approach.
COST activities have in the past paved the way for Community
activities and its flexibility allows COST Actions to be used
as a testing and exploratory field for emerging topics.
The member countries participate on an "à la
carte" principle and activities are launched on a "bottom-up"
approach. One of its main features is its built-in flexibility.
This concept clearly meets a growing demand and in addition,
it complements the Community programmes.
COST has a geographical scope beyond the EU and most of the
Central and Eastern European countries are members. COST also
welcomes the participation of interested institutions from
non-COST member states without any geographical restriction.
COST has developed into one of the largest frameworks for
research co-operation in Europe and is a valuable mechanism
co-ordinating national research activities in Europe. Today
it has almost 200 Actions and involves nearly 30,000 scientists
from 32 European member countries and more than 46 participating
institutions from 11 non-member countries and Non Governmental
Organisations.
Some principles of COST
- All COST member countries can propose COST Actions. Individual
research institutes and universities identify the topics
on which they wish to collaborate.
- Participation in these Actions is voluntary and associates
only those countries interested.
- The research to be co-ordinated is funded nationally.
Co-ordination costs are borne both by the participating
countries and by the European Science Foundation.
- COST-ESF funding supports only co-ordination costs (scientific
secretariat, workshops, meetings, seminars, scientific missions,
publications, evaluations, etc.).
- Any COST country can join any Action by signing the Memorandum
of Understanding (MoU), which is the basis of the Action,
even though it resembles an expression of good faith rather
than a legally binding document.
Domains and actions
An overview of COST can be found here :
http://cost.cordis.lu/src/whatiscost.cfm
There are 17 COST domains. See http://cost.cordis.lu/src/domains.cfm
One of the domains is Telecommunications, Information Science
and Technology (TIST). About 21 actions are running
in this domain. COST270 is one of these.
For more information about COST :
- http://cost.cordis.lu/
- http://www.belspo.be/belspo/res/coord/res_euro/cost_en.stm
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