Social sciences and humanities research funded under the European Union Sixth Framework Programme (2002–2006): a long-term assessment of projects, acknowledgements and publications

The Framework Programmes (FP) are the EU’s main instrument to fund research in the European Research Area. This article explores how the EU contributed to Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) through FP6 (2002–2006), where SSH gained prominence via the thematic priority “Citizens and governance in a knowledge-based society” (247 million euros; 1.3% of FP6 total). The study takes a different approach from prior policy-document analyses by examining features of SSH projects funded under FP6, the types of support provided by funds (as reflected in acknowledgements), and characteristics of journal articles published as a result. Given the slower pace of SSH knowledge production, data collection and analysis were conducted in 2020–2021 to capture long-term outputs. Purpose and research questions: - a) How many SSH research projects were funded under FP6? - b) What are their features (length, grants, disciplines, topics, countries and institutions involved)? - c) What kinds of support do researchers acknowledge from FP6? - d) What was the scholarly output in terms of Scopus-indexed journal articles?

SSH progressively gained inclusion in European FPs from FP4/FP5 to FP6, where Humanities were officially added to Social Sciences, forming SSH. Prior work highlights: dominance of economic and integration priorities, emphasis on interdisciplinarity linking science/technology with society, and a marginal budgetary position for SSH (Kastrinos, 2010; Schögler & König, 2017; Kropp, 2021). Official statistics (2007–2020) show SSH at 22% of funded projects (ERC, 2022). Publication and communication patterns in SSH differ from the Natural/Life sciences: national/regional orientation; more books and non-journal outputs; slower theory development; more single-scholar work; and outreach to non-scholarly audiences (Nederhof, 2006; Van Leeuwen, 2013). Studies observe an increased use of English and journals due to evaluation pressures, but substantial field and country differences remain. Evidence includes: stability of monographs (Engels et al., 2018), rise in peer review/English/WoS-indexing (Guns et al., 2019), and multilingual publishing with growth of English yet sustained local-language outputs (Kulczycki et al., 2018, 2020). Co-authorship has risen in many social sciences, with large variations across fields and stronger increases in data-intensive/experimental areas (Ossenblok et al., 2014; Henriksen, 2016). An exploratory OpenAIRE look at FP7 SSH outputs shows journals as dominant (83.3% of 3,099 records; 86.8% Scopus-indexed among those articles). Assessment of FP6 has largely focused on S&T domains: e.g., nanotechnologies/materials (Vallés-Brau, 2005), transport (González & Albahari, 2007), ICT outputs (Breschi & Malerba, 2011), and health (Galsworthy et al., 2014). Ex post FP6 evaluation (Rietschel et al., 2009) noted SSH contributions to policy but lacked systematic impact evidence; Watson et al. (2010) found limited impact on national SSH programmes but more researcher–policy-maker interaction. Measuring societal impact remains challenging (Bornmann, 2012). Belcher & Halliwell (2021) propose distinguishing outputs, outcomes, and benefits; this study focuses on outputs (journal articles), aligned with FP6 reporting that emphasized articles and patents.

Design: Descriptive, long-term assessment of FP6 SSH projects and their Scopus-indexed journal outputs acknowledging FP6 support. Data sources: CORDIS (EU Open Data Portal) for FP6 project identification; Scopus for retrieval of acknowledging publications. OpenAIRE was not usable for FP6 outputs. Project identification and classification: - Considered three FP6 calls relevant to SSH: FP6-Citizens (144 projects), FP6-Policies (519), FP6-Society (164). - Read each project’s title/keywords/abstract (and project website when needed) to determine SSH relevance. Identified 275 SSH-related projects. - Manually classified projects by discipline and key issues/topics using an iterative scheme based on project summaries and the UNESCO top-level nomenclature (1974), with minor adaptations. Classification used methodological/scope/institutional cues where discipline was not explicit; occasionally consulted outputs to confirm. Publication retrieval in Scopus: - Constructed searches combining project IDs and acronyms within Scopus funding fields (sponsor name, sponsor acronym, grant number), using logic: (FUND-ALL([ID]) AND (FUND-ALL(CT) OR FUND-ALL(EC) OR FUND-ALL(European Commission) OR FUND-ALL(FP))) OR FUND-ALL([acronym]). - Downloaded records when ≤25 per project. Because acronyms can be ambiguous, if >25 records were retrieved, added a stricter funder filter (AND (FUND-ALL(CT) OR FUND-ALL(EC) OR FUND-ALL(European Commission))) and again downloaded when ≤25. Searches still yielding >25 records were discarded. - Outcome: 1,847 records downloaded from 177 projects (64% of 275). Manually read funding texts to assess relevance; 586 records labelled relevant (articles acknowledging FP6 project support) used for analysis. Quality and data issues: - Observed heterogeneity and errors in Scopus funding fields (e.g., inclusion of reference-list items or author bios due to the keyword “funded”). Acknowledgement texts are free-form and inconsistently indexed, requiring manual validation. Analytical focus: - Descriptive statistics of project features (length, budget, disciplines, topics, countries, institutions, coordination) and of acknowledging articles (counts per project, institutional co-authorship, timing). Qualitative coding of acknowledgement types into four categories: direct funding; prior FP project as basis; conferences/networks stemming from projects; datasets/other products from projects.

Project volume and focus: - Identified 275 SSH-related projects within FP6 out of 10,098 total (2.7%). Of these, 208 (76%) were SSH-focused; 66 (24%) combined SSH with experimental sciences/engineering/technology. Project duration and funding: - SSH project durations: 42% lasted 25–36 months; 25% lasted 37–48 months; 21% lasted 13–24 months. - Grants: 52% received up to €1M; 34% received €1–2M; 14% received >€2M. Relationship between length and budget followed a power law (r2 = 0.65). Disciplines and topics: - By discipline: Economics 42% (117 projects); Sociology 29% (79); Political Science (55); Public Administration Science (47); Law (40); Education; Cultural and Social Anthropology; Psychology; Social sciences in general; History. - Top issues: tools for policy decision-making (19 projects), metrics/indicators (18), migration (16), governance (16); also regulations, crime, rural development, women/gender, SSH research, employment, entrepreneurship. Collaboration patterns: - High consortium collaboration: mean 7.8 countries and 10.8 institutions per project. - Country participation/coordination (selected): UK participated in 185 projects, coordinated 43 (30.3% of its participations); Germany 177/47 (36.2%); Italy 130/31 (31.3%); Netherlands 126/22 (21.2%); France 124/28 (29.2%). Lower coordination shares despite high participation: Spain 103/6 (6.2%); Poland 77/6 (8.5%); Hungary 70/4 (6.1%). - Active institutions (10+ projects) concentrated notably in Belgium and the UK (e.g., CNRS; University of Amsterdam; LSE; KU Leuven; Oxford; etc.). Acknowledgement types (qualitative): - Four types identified: (1) direct funding support; (2) citing earlier FP projects as the basis for current research; (3) involvement in conferences/networks originating in FP6; (4) use of datasets/other products created by FP6 projects. Publication outputs acknowledging FP6: - From 1,847 downloaded records (177 projects), 586 Scopus-indexed articles were validated as acknowledging FP6 SSH projects, spanning 116 projects (42% of 275 total). Most projects had few or no Scopus-indexed acknowledging articles; median = 1 per project. For projects combining SSH with experimental sciences/engineering/technology (n≈67), median rose to 3. - Co-authorship at output level was modest relative to consortium size: average 2.8 institutions per article (median 2). - Long-term effects: articles acknowledging FP6 funding appeared many years after project end, including publications in 2019–2020 acknowledging projects that concluded ~11 years earlier.

The study answers the research questions by mapping the FP6 SSH project landscape, describing their attributes, and quantifying/qualitatively characterizing acknowledging journal outputs. Findings align with EU policy emphases: economics and governance dominate, reflecting socio-economic priorities and European integration aims. Although consortia were large and transnational by design, institutional co-authorship on resulting journal articles remained comparatively low, consistent with SSH authorship norms and heterogeneous, often monographic or locally oriented dissemination practices. The identification of four acknowledgement types indicates diverse ways FP6 support influenced research: direct funding, foundational prior projects, sustained conferences/networks, and reusable datasets/products. The observed long lags to publication underscore the slower SSH knowledge cycle and suggest that evaluating programme outputs requires extended time windows. Data-retrieval challenges—heterogeneous, non-standardised funding fields in Scopus; multilingual and non-indexed SSH outlets—limit straightforward bibliometric assessment. Nevertheless, the approach demonstrates a replicable procedure for subsequent FPs to assess contributions to a European Research Area in SSH.

FP6 marked a consolidation of SSH within EU research funding, though with relatively modest budgets and a concentration in economics and political sciences. Projects showed extensive international collaboration at the consortium level, but this translated into limited institutional co-authorship in journal outputs. Acknowledgements reveal multiple support pathways, including durable infrastructures (networks, datasets) and long-term publication timelines, with outputs continuing to appear more than a decade after project completion. Methodologically, the study contributes a practical, albeit labour-intensive, approach to identify and validate acknowledging outputs. Future research should extend this protocol to FP7 and Horizon 2020, integrate additional sources (e.g., OpenAIRE for later FPs; national repositories), and broaden output types beyond journals (books, chapters, policy reports) to better capture SSH dissemination. More standardised funding metadata would substantially improve evaluative accuracy and reduce manual effort.

- Coverage limitations: Scopus underrepresents SSH journals (language bias toward English; less than 25% coverage of SSH journals per Ulrich’s comparisons) and excludes many books/chapters central to SSH. - Funding metadata heterogeneity: Free-text, inconsistently indexed funding fields in Scopus caused noise (e.g., inclusion of reference-list items or author bios) and necessitated manual filtering. - Search constraints: To manage ambiguity of acronyms and volume, searches returning >25 records were discarded, potentially omitting relevant outputs. - Output scope: Focus limited to Scopus-indexed journal articles; other key SSH outputs (books, national-language journals, policy documents) were not systematically captured. - Temporal factors: Although a long time window was used (data collected 2020–2021), some outputs may still emerge later; conversely, recall biases in acknowledgements may affect attribution. - Impact not assessed: Outcomes/benefits (societal impact) were beyond scope, limiting conclusions to outputs.