Activities
Projects - COST A21
COST Action A21: Restorative Justice Developments in Europe - What is COST?
COST - European Cooperation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research - is the oldest and widest system for research networking in Europe. It is based on an intergovernmental framework for cooperation research agreed following a Ministerial Conference in 1971. Starting from a limited number of domains, COST has now grown into a system for research collaboration covering 34 Member States plus one cooperating state, Israel, and is active in 13 scientific domains.
The mission of COST is to strengthen Europe in scientific and technical research through the support of European cooperation and interaction between European researchers. It aims to maximise European synergy and added value in non-competitve and pre-normative research.
The funds provided by COST support the coordination costs of the research networks (Actions), while the research is funded nationally. The COST system is primarily funded from a specific part of the EU Framework Programme.
COST Actions usually have a lifetime of 4-5 years. Once a proposal has been accepted, then the Action is opened for COST Member States to join it by signing a formal Memorandum of Understanding. From that moment on, researchers from that Member State can benefit financial support to participate in the Action. Each Action is under the supervision of a Management Committee. Normally, within a COST Action working groups are constituted addressing specific topics of the Action's work programme as described in the Technical Annex to the Memorandum of Understanding.
COST Actions cover support for Management Committee and working group meetings, workshops and conferences, publications and dissemination, training schools and short-term scientific missions for the support of exchange visits of (young) researchers.
Workshops and conferences are open to a larger public, since they present the Action's results and give room to external contributions and further discussion.
More information on COST: http://cost.esf.org
COST Office
European Science Foundation
149, Av. Louise - P.O. BOX 12
B-1050 Brussels
Tel.: +32 2 533 38 00
e-mail: office@cost.esf.org