Editorial – Olga Solovova

As a research unit, CEIS20 promotes, enhances and supports the activities of its community by identifying relevant national and international calls for proposals, receiving expressions of interest for individual and collective proposals, guiding their early preparation and participating in their peer review. The timing of major national competitions means an intense volume of work, as can be seen now, two weeks before the deadline for the FCT competition to stimulate individual scientific employment.

However, science management is not limited to competition periods, but covers the entire process of scientific production, from the preparation of initiatives and applications to the valorisation, dissemination and exploitation of their results. At CEIS20, the preparation of a quality application begins long before the application process and continues during and after the process: by organising internal exploratory activities, by organising the space dedicated to evaluating experiences, identifying the most urgent needs and clarifying doubts (Projetório – Research in Perspective). The success of science management is the result of close collaboration with the UC's Institute for Interdisciplinary Research , on the one hand, and the coordination of CEIS20 and its research groups on the other hand. This means identifying the initiatives that deserve priority, formulating and measuring scientific production indicators, and determining the most appropriate means of communication. Another challenge is to translate the artistic activities into the evaluation language of FCT – a real interdisciplinary challenge!

More recently, the focus on science management has been broadened to include CEIS20 PhD students, alerting them to the importance of planning their production trajectories. We also sought to participate in outreach activities with primary and secondary school students and in the preparations for the 50th anniversary celebrations of 25 April. All these efforts contribute to harnessing the skills, the knowledge and the experience of our research community and help us build a momentum capable of attracting new national and international researchers to achieve excellence.