The project InCITIES kick-off meeting took place online on 7th October 2022, and the representatives of the project’s partners attended the meeting. At the beginning of the meeting, Maria das Dores Guerreiro, Vice-Rector for Internationalization of Iscte, welcomed all attendees, highlighted the importance of the project InCITIES, and presented the InCITIES main goal and vision. Furthermore, she proposed the first meeting (online) between the InCITIES Advisory Board members and the InCITIES Governing Board to take place on 29-30 June 2023, which all partners accepted.
The next presenter was Catarina Ferreira da Silva (Iscte), who summarized the main activities the consortium has done since the InCITIES proposal approval. She provided some information regarding five management board meetings that took place online before the official start date of the project, during which the consortium discussed the Grant Agreement, the Consortium Agreement, the data collection, and the Advisory Board member appointment process.
The next presentation was provided by Alina-Maria Bercea, a European Commission Project Officer from the European Research Executive Agency. She presented the implementation and reporting rules, including the continuous online portal reporting tool, the reporting steps, the financial and personal costs, an amendment procedure, a mandatory open science, and a data management plan, while emphasizing the importance of strictly following the Grant Agreement.
The meeting was followed by an overview of the objectives and activities of the project within all seven WPs. WPs leaders briefly talked about the proposed activities of the respective WPs and highlighted tasks and deliverables for the first six months of the project implementation. WP leaders and contributors planned kick-off and progress meetings for each WP to discuss the implementation of those tasks and deliverables in depth.
At the end of the meeting, the consortium considered possible options for organizing the next InCITIES physical consortium meeting and decided to meet on 17-18th November 2022 at Iscte in Lisbon. In this regard, Catarina Ferreira da Silva (Iscte) presented the preparation of the meeting logistics and the preliminary agenda activities of this meeting, which involve the progress on the WP ongoing tasks, meeting with professors and researchers, meeting with the Iscte International Relations Office staff and visiting the Iscte premises. This meeting is also set as the Advisory Board members’ nomination deadline.