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.

Well-designed, clearly structured and regularly updated bilingual PDF document that serves for orientation and support of international PhD students and staff.

It is also useful to have the Welcome Pack downloadable from the website which international PhDs/visiting scholars use to get informed about their stay and activities at your university.

The package should contain:

• Guide on the organisation administrative procedures,
• Cultural guide/information leaflet about the city,
• Contact details for the services offered by the hosting institution to the international researchers prior to or on the day of their arrival.

By providing such a pack the institution ensures that the incoming researcher/PhD student will be able to:

• understand better the hosting organisation's culture,
• understand better the local culture,
• avoid potential misunderstandings.

Volunteering is a great way to meet people, become familiar with the community and develop skills to include on a resume. 

Volunteer opportunities offered to international partners help spouses connect and feel welcome as international students and scholars embark on a new life in another country. Such opportunities foster the level of satisfaction, social integration and wellbeing of international students and staff and their family members.

The higher education institution is responsible for ensuring personal safety and security of its employees and students including international ones.

International academics might not be familiar with the surroundings and lack awareness of local risks (e.g. related to accomodation, streets at night, use of transport, health safety risks).

The objective of the international scholar safety support/guide is to provide concise English-language information about off-campus and on-campus risks and guidelines on how to act in specific situations and where to seek help.      

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.

The FAQ section/page with well-structured quality content organized by relevant topics/categories and easy to navigate is a useful way to organize valuable information that incoming academics often ask. The FAQ page offers a lot of benefits, including:

• Provide quick/standardized responses to recurring questions helping thus incoming academics efficiently navigate through administrative duties and other topics of their interest.
• Reduce the time the HE institution's support staff members need to answer often simple questions.
• Reduce a lot of stress of incoming academics since they receive clear information to make the right decision and move.
• Improve your incoming academics' experience.
• Increase the institution's online visibility on Google and other search engines.
• The FAQ section usually draws most of the traffic.
• Could help in set-up of future chatbots

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.

The use of bilingual signage at key university areas creates an internationally welcoming environment by facilitating orientation and access to main university sites and helping international students and staff navigate the campus.   

Information Systems (IS) are an extremely important aspect of any properly organized institution, academic institutions in particular. As its components collect, store, organize, and distribute data throughout the organization, it could be said that in order to get acquainted with an institution, one has to have access to its information system. However, most academic institutions possess information systems in their country's official language. Due to that fact, international PhD students, academic, and management staff members may find it difficult to understand the data. 

Preparing and circulating a Glossary of common phrases used in welcome processes for support staff and its regular update will raise support staff's awareness of the institutional processes related to welcoming incoming researchers, academics, and PhDs. It is also likely to increase the level of their confidence in dealing smoothly with the most typical needs and expectations of incoming researchers, academics, and PhD students as well as following the institutional rules at the same time. 

This practice is best implemented in collaboration with the HEI management structures, the institutional legal matters office and language specialists.

It is also a good idea to consider having the Glossary multilingual rather than maintaining it in English only.

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.

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.

The practice includes collecting relevant information and providing it to international researchers and PhDs in a structured and user-friendly way. It is important to envisage a regular update of the information in case of changes in the legal framework, national or organisational specifics regarding recognition of diplomas, study periods, educational outcomes, etc. 

This practice will save the support staff effort and time when providing information and support in view of the above.

A regular newsletter can be a nice-to-have instrument for sharing knowledge and improving the visibility of research activities and supporting services, organised at your institution.

This newsletter can be a very useful tool especially for doctoral/post-doctoral students and the junior/project engaged research staff, appointed for specific research tasks. The newsletter can also be used to inform the local community and partner institutions about the activities at your university, strenghtening industry-academia links and opportunities for collaboration.

Benefits of initiating a regular Research newsletter:

• Improved visibility of the research/teaching activities of the university;
• Improved visibility of the events, conferences, invited lectures, etc.;
• Improved collaboration between departments and faculties within the university
• Improved visibility and enhanced opportunities for cooperation with local HEI/ institutions/ industry partners
• Strenghtened local community
• Improved visibility of the university in an international perspective - for this reason it should be either bilingual or issued only in English and available online/shared with relevant international bodies and partners.

Employment is one of the ways to facilitate the integration of foreign academics’ family members. This service will help the target group to acquire basic information about the labour market quickly. As a result, they will maintain continuity in their professional activity and improve their professional portfolio. This may also increase the financial stability and comfort of the researcher's spouses during the mobility.

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.

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.

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.

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.