Abstract
This paper aims to analyze patterns of participation of higher education institutions (HEIs) to European Framework Programs (EU-FP) and their association with HEI characteristics, country and geographical effects. We have analyzed a sample of 2235 HEIs in 30 countries in Europe, derived from the European Tertiary Education Register (ETER), which has been matched with data on participations in EU-FPs in 2011 using the EUPRO database. Our findings identified (1) a high concentration of EU-FP participation in a small group of HEIs with high reputation; (2) the participation of non-doctorate awarding HEIs in EU-FPs is very limited despite the fact that they account for a significant share of tertiary student enrolments; (3) the number of participations tends to increase proportionally to organizational size, and is strongly influenced by international reputation; (5) there is limited evidence of significant country effects in EU-FP participations, as well as of the impact of distance from Brussels. We interpret these results as an outcome of the close association between HEI reputation and the network structure of EU-FP participants.