The main objective of the HERITAGE PLUS proposal is to pool the necessary financial resources from the participating national programmes and the European Community and to launch a single Joint Call for Proposals for research projects in the cultural heritage field that will be evaluated and managed jointly by the participating programmes.The 18 Partners have a strong background in designing, promoting and managing transnational, collaborative research programmes having participated to the Era Net Projects NET HERITAGE, HERA and DCNET and implemented the Joint Programming Initiative “Cultural Heritage and Global Change: a new challenge for Europe” (JPICH). Within JPICH, the launch of the first pilot call, actually open, represents the factual commitment of Partners to implement transnational research programming.The HERITAGE PLUS project is fully in line with the JPICH as part of the implementation of the Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) and of the Action Programme. Consequently the HERITAGE PLUS call will be focused in topics on tangible cultural heritage research, developing new methodologies, technologies and products for the assessment, protection and management of historical and modern artefacts, buildings and sites, while not excluding interlinked aspects of digital and intangible heritage, following the interdisciplinary basic criteria on which the JPICH SRA devolved.This collaborative approach will provide a better use of public resources, while the European Community contribution to the Joint Call budget will stress the high interest generated by this common action.This ERA NET PLUS action will support the JPICH by proposing concrete solutions for pooling national expertise and resources and establishing closer and robust collaboration among the participating States in the field of cultural heritage.The HERITAGE PLUS action will improve the coordination of national research activities and policies in the domain of cultural heritage research.