The NET4SOCIETY ('Trans-national co-operation among National Contact Points for socio-economic sciences and the humanities') project has improved international cooperation in the field of economic sciences and humanities (SSH) through efforts to facilitate the participation of scientists in these fields.

The NET4SOCIETY project is setting up new structures for the exchange of experiences and ideas. It is funded under the SSH Theme of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) to the tune of EUR 2.6 million.

At the heart of NET4SOCIETY are the National Contact Points (NCPs), which provide researchers worldwide with invaluable advice on how to get involved in the EU's research framework programmes. Among other things, NCPs help researchers to identify appropriate calls for proposals, find partners, provide assistance in writing proposals and offer support regarding the tricky administrative and financial aspects of EU project management.

Over 47 SSH NCPs are working together in the NET4SOCIETY community, whose members come from as far afield as Argentina, Egypt and Mexico. The newest recruit to the group hails from Taiwan. The initiative provides these diverse NCPs with a platform through which they can share experiences and ideas.

In addition to providing training and facilitating a mentoring system, NET4SOCIETY offers a dedicated SSH research database of key SSH players and is carrying out a survey of SSH experiences within FP7.

NET4SOCIETY helped to organis a conference on education research entitled 'Educating Europe - Educational Sciences go FP7 and beyond', which took place in Brussels, Belgium. Because education is traditionally viewed largely as a national affair, education researchers in different EU Member States tend not to know each other well. The aim of the conference was to bring together education researchers from many countries to meet one another and discuss shared issues. Importantly, the event highlighted the significance of education research for other key policy areas such as employment and social care.

Looking to the future, NET4SOCIETY is scheduled to end in early 2011, but a follow-up project is already in the pipeline that will enable the consortium to continue to provide services to SSH NCPs with a greater focus on outreach activities aimed at the broader SSH community.

Although the social science communities are now fairly well integrated into the EU's framework programmes, work still needs to be done, in particular to convince many humanities researchers to get involved.