To great interest, The Regional University Network - European University (RUN-EU) consortium's founding workshops on open science, research strategy and topic leadership and mentoring were held with the participation of Széchenyi István University. The programme also offers a wide range of opportunities for joint international publications and the creation of international research teams.

The Regional University Network-European University (RUN-EU) consortium partners - Széchenyi István University together with six participating higher education institutions - the University of Leiria in Portugal, the University of Cavadó-Avé, the Technical University of the Shannon in Ireland, the University of Applied Sciences of NHL Stenden in the Netherlands, the University of Applied Sciences of HAMK in Finland and the University of Applied Sciences of Vorarlberg in Austria.

The members of the "alliance" aim to innovate future higher education under the "European University" brand. In the framework of this cooperation, preparatory workshops have been organised in recent months to deepen joint research activities.

"RUN-EU provides an excellent framework for building international co-authorship relationships and for the individual creation of international research teams," said Dr Katalin Czakó, adjunct professor at Széchenyi István University. She added that the main aim of the preparatory workshops was to gather information and transfer experience for further education and research programmes and topic leader training planned in the RUN-EU network level cooperation.

Dr Katalin Czakó, Adjunct Professor at Széchenyi István University (Photo: Csaba József Májer)

In recent months, three such events have taken place. In the middle of summer, Renáta Farkas and Diána Skultéty, colleagues from the University Library and Archives, organised a workshop entitled "Open Science", with participants mostly from our partner institutions abroad. In September, Dr Petra Szakonyi and Dr Katalin Czakó, assistant professors, led a day on the challenges of building a publication strategy and writing a research proposal. Following this was a presentation by Dr László Imre Komlósi, Professor at the Department of Management and Organisational Communication, and Dr Zoltán Baracskai, Associate Professor at the Department, who discussed the expectations of subject supervisors with participants.

"The workshops, which actively involved hundreds of international participants, provided an opportunity for Széchenyi University staff and RUN-EU partners to get to know each other", emphasised Dr Katalin Czakó. She added that the consortium could provide valuable fuel for individual partner search and co-authorship in support of the university's internationalisation efforts. In fact, RUN-EU+ brings partnership to the research and publication level and offers various programmes to this end.

"The university is a pioneer in research and publishing collaboration, as the interest of its partners shows. The next working meeting will take place at home, where we will agree on the themes and technical framework for programme-level collaborations. In addition, the first interested researchers have come forward to visit us for concrete cooperation at their own expense. This shows that cooperation is worth pursuing on a broad scale," she stressed.

The innovation platforms on the RUN-EU website, online events, calls for applications for “research missions” and the central e-mail address run-eu@sze.hu provide an internal, university framework for this. For interested researchers, these opportunities provide a one-step involvement in the project, which is worth taking advantage of as it can bring new international contacts, research and publication opportunities.