This could be a combination of a dictionary and glossary of the most common phrases and their definitions in English used in the academic and institutional life of the host institution/country. Special attention should be paid to country/region specific terms that have no actual parallel outside the host country/region, for instance, academic ranks and their hierarchy in the region of Central and South-Eastern Europe. It could be also extended by terms related to the administrative duties that need to be done shortly before or fight after arrival to or upon departure from the host country/institution. Such a tool would be of immense help to both international as well as local PhDs and academics struggling with proper vocabulary when talking to their colleagues.

This service requires well-trained support staff in the area of work-related issues such as employment, health insurance and social security, taxation, and institutional duties with a focus on a specific group of academics – international academic staff. The goal is to provide highest level and quality of the service which might also require in-house legal advice. Safety, healthcare and wellbeing are essential for good functioning and a particular challange facing guests from abroad. It can be safely assumed they would be needing assistance all the way from the simplest general information, through getting through the necessary paperwork, to personal assistance and intervention.

Customised assistance provided to international Ph.D. students, academics, and researchers that fits best their specific needs, especially regarding information that may not be readily available on the institution's website or checklist. Immigration issues are the most crucial area of support. This service requires well-trained support staff in this area, with understanding of legal issues, practical procedures and possibly also collaborations and contacts for exact expert information provision. The goal is to provide the highest level and quality of service. Various levels/intensities of service provision might be opted for based on specific needs and available resources.

Customised assistance regarding social integration and daily life of incoming international PhD students, academics and their families helps to make a better experience of settling-in in a new place, whether it is finding housing, opening a bank account, finding a suitable health care provider (s), securing childcare, building a new social network, learning a foreign language and generally, getting accustomed to a new culture and way of life. It can also include information on local/regional public transportation, host city parking policy, waste collection, registering a car, bringing in a pet, etc. Various levels/intensities of service provision might be opted for based on specific needs and available resources. The service might also be helped to deliver by a trained buddy/guide.

Customised assistance ranges from providing an overview of available funding opportunities from various sources to tips for writing an application and pre-screening of application as well as assisting in finding a project team or inter-institutional project team. Individualised support will also facilitate the professional development of the academic staff and will improve communication and cooperation between the HEI’s support staff and the international academics and PhDs. Increased academic activity will influence positively the HEI’s visibility and may increase enrolment and retention of academic staff. This service requires well-trained support staff in the area of academic development, funding opportunities and procedures, and project drafting. However, writing an application is not a simple matter. It requires knowledge of the methods and techniques of creating applications.

An indispensable part of the application preparation is a thorough reading of the funding scheme documentation, e.g.call for proposals with attachments. programme thematic priorities, guidelines for applicants and project beneficiaries, funding principles, etc.. These documents describe all major information, including who can apply for a grant (i.e. eligible applicants), what grant can be obtained (grant size and total call budget), the procedure and deadline for application (when and where to submit an application), what the project evaluation criteria are, how will they be assessed, what costs are eligible, or it is possible to find the content of the future contract along with the terms of the project implementation. Before completing the application, each applicant should also check whether the instructions for its preparation have been provided. The task of the support staff is to provide support and assistance to the applicant in the process of preparing and submitting the application.
 

Short course/series of courses on local cultural specifics. These include both specifics of everyday life and of organisational culture. The trainees will be able to deal better in everyday communication and to act more efficiently as a member of your ourganisation. Their spouses will find it easier to adapt to local cultural specifics..

Intercultural differences, sometime invisible, may destroy any team. The best way to:

• Avoid miscommunication;
• Ensure good athmosphere at work;
• Achieve better scientific results and
• Retain attracted foreign students and researchers,

Is to integrate them as much as possible into the local and organisational culture. 

The easiest and most effective way is to offer a series of short (preferrably 1-hour-long) courses on different themes from your local and your organisational culture. It is even more efficient if each of them is combined with a relevant informal event involving local researchers or visiting an external event, museum or exhibition. This way the international PhD students/academics and their spouses will be able to combine theory and practice, which in turn will facilitate their integration in the local/organisational culture providing them with opportunities to further socialise and with (hopefully) nice memories.

The institutional welcome website is usually the first source of information about the HEI, typically containing information on the most important aspects related to smooth preparation and actual onboarding. It is important that the information is structured in a way that reflects the logic of end-users perspective. The webpage should be easy to navigate and high-quality SEOs should be used. The information on the website has to be regularly updated including the FAQ section which typically draws the highest traffic. 

Social integration, in a narrow sense, may refer mainly to socio-cultural integration enabling the creation of personal connections/networking of international PhD students/researchers/academics, and their family members with their local and other international doctoral and academic fellows. In a broader context, it covers also other integration activities like finding a proper place for living, opportunities for career development, language learning, smooth access to the labour market and education to family members, access to health care, etc. However, also handling all the administrative issues related to relocation (residence permits, health/social insurance, tax, vehicle registration, pets, etc.) in smooth, clear procedures helps a lot for better navigation in the new setting. Being comfortable with the local environment may be substantial to the overall PhD/academics' performance.

Often international welcome centres or one-stop shops established by local/regional/national authorities or associations of several HEIs/research organisations in the city can take over many of the mentioned responsibilities, provide services in a structured manner for a critical mass of clients, promote the city/region efficiently, organise various events about life in the country/city, provide labour-market orientation and dual-career counseling services, offer domestic language courses, etc.

Here we focus on listing possible partners for collaborations to provide more advanced and higher quality services and a broader portfolio of them. Practical steps on how to establish them are also briefly drafted. Although establishing collaborations with numerous external partners might seem a laborious effort, such synergies might bring fruit in clearer/more detailed guidelines, databases, shared responsibilities, better information flow, and even saved human/financial resources.

Accommodation is the second most important aspect of the successful impelemtation of international academic mobility, right after getting a job/fellowships/scholarship. The requirements for accommodation may vary according to cultural customs, financial possibilities of academic, family conditions (single or with a partner, or children), relationship to ecology (type of transport), health status (need for lift, etc.) In any case, the apartment should have basic equipment: furniture, basic electrical appliances. In the case of international academic and international PhD. student, it is usually a lease for a certain period of time. It is necessary to take into consideration the possibility that some young academics or students may be interested in living together (larger flats), some prefer single living (smaller flats). It is welcome if the institution can offer accommodation in its own accommodation facility, which usually represents a separate room with basic facilities and accessories and a shared kitchen / study room.

In case the own HEI lodging facilities are limited, it is desirable to reach out to external partners for ensuring extra rooms, flats. The practice idenifies practical activities, where a HEI can be a mediator between the external contractor and the incoming international.

Database of PhD students/academics and a structured programme how to engage alumni in the academic and public life of the HEI.

Various forms of collaboration engaging alumni are possible e.g.: information sharing/distribution, organising events, alumni as academic and cultural ambassadors, alumni as academic and intercultural mentors

Active alumni networks of international PhDs and academics play an important role in strengthening the HEI reputation at the international level. Their knowledge and working and life experience represent a valuable resource from which potential/future Ph.D. students and visiting academics can greatly benefit. Active alumni are valuable assets for the HEI, their experience of living in a host country and the knowledge of how they incorporated their study or research/academic activity at the particular HEI into their further professional career can help the HEI optimize their study/research programmes, academic or research conditions, and external cooperations. Alumni can help in achieving higher visibility of the HEI nationally and internationally, they can create bridges among different cultures and reach out to broader academic and public audience.

On the other hand, the alumni can benefit from a variety of professionals and workplaces and continue their lifelong learning and develop rewarding collaborations.

Well-structured checklist covering the necessary steps to undertake to prepare for arrival efficiently. It can help improve the efficiency of preparing for the arrival in a host country/institution by minimizing mistakes. It should be precise, efficient, easy to use, and straight to the point. It may include a roadmap of the necessary steps.

The well-structured checklist should help international PhD students, researchers and other academics efficiently navigate through the administrative duties and procedures right after arrival in a host country /institution. It may include a roadmap of the necessary steps. It should be precise, efficient, easy to use, and straight to the point.

The goal of preparing a check-lists of internal support processes is to collect and describe information in a user-centered manner.

• This checklist can improve the understanding of the most common service delivery paths across the whole organisation.
• It can be designed for several users' scenarios, facilitating service delivery description and visualisation.
• It can improve understanding of the services provided by every department and the organisational capacity to support researchers' needs.
• It can facilitate the training of the newly appointed staff. 
• The checklist can improve service delivery, easily orientating visitors about specific service paths across different departments.

This checklist will help international PhD students and academics efficiently navigate through the administrative duties and procedures before the departure/completion of their stay/position at a host country /institution. It provides a written trail detailing what should be done on departure. It should be precise, efficient, easy to use, and straight to the point covering areas such as (reporting the end of stay at the respective authority office (foreign police office/local registration office/other, deregistration from the system of public health insurance, closing a bank account, termination of electricity provider/utilities/services/phone/internet/TV/garbage, deregistration from university services/ children from day-care, schools, deregistration of car, etc.).

The checklist can have or include a roadmap of necessary steps to be undertaken right before departure from the host country/institution.

IT mobility system/database is an important segment in organizing information regarding mobility. Each institution should develop its own database, and, if needs be, offer information from it to the other institutions. 

Career development support for PhDs and junior academics is an important part of preparation for future employment. The main aim of career development support is to help PhD students and early career researchers:

• Understand the specifics of job search in the labour market for researchers
• Explore career opportunities within and beyond academia
• Navigate them in terms of decision making of their future job and
• Develop their skills to match the requirements of potential employers.

If there is career support service for researchers at your institution, make sure that it is also available for international PhD students and researchers and that it takes their specific needs into account.  As they probaly have neither knowledge of local labour market nor strong professional network in your country they might benefit from availibilty of career advice a lot.

Ensuring accessibility of career advice to international PhD students and researchers might help you to:

• Increase the attractiveness of your institution for international talents as they see that the support for their next step will be available to them
• Retain international researchers (and your potential collaborators) in your region
• Develop collaboration with local employers who gain an access to wider pool of highly skilled candidates.

Final output: career support services available to international researchers and PhD students.

Major activities: Examples of such services might include professional career coaching, individual career counselling, interactive trainings, workshops, online navigation tools etc.

Allotting a space on the institution's website for the list of career promotion criteria could greatly contribute to foreign researchers seeking a more permanent involvement at the welcoming institution. Career paths should be structured, transparent, and clear for foreign researchers.

One of the reasons why career planning skills trainings are being held is to encourage proactive career planning by equipping participants with the skills, resources and self-assessment information necessary to make informed career choices both inside and beyond academia. Organizing career planning skills trainings and labour market preparation trainings focus on professional career of PhDs and academics who are often uncertain in terms of decision-making for their next future career life. Therefore, the training possibilities for PhDs and academics can help, maintain and improve job skills, professional level of employees and prepare them for possible promotion.

By organising these events the HE institutions can benefit in terms of the overall job satisfaction level of their PhDs and academics.

Considering the fact that English is not the native language in countries, many international PhD students and academic staff members face problems when it comes to filling in the forms necessary for the application process or collecting documents that would confirm their mobility/study/research abroad. Therefore, it would be extremely important (and favorable for both parties involved) to create forms in both the national language of the receiving institution's country as well as in English. The aim of this practice is to produce bilingual documents that can be filled in without seeking assistance or causing confusion.

Bilingual or multilingual policies and practices enhance the international dimension of a higher education institution. They foster the inclusion of international students and staff in the academic and social life of a university by improving communication on key issues.