Despite the advances in modernization and capacity building of the research landscapes of the Western Balkan countries, especially in universities, management of the human resources in research and science is still lagging behind the level of the practices and standards of the EU universities. The national funding of science in the WB countries is far below the ERA Lisbon targets, and it is project-oriented, while the building of the universities’ capacities to effectively and efficiently deal with the non-scientific challenges is not sufficiently addressed by the national policies. Thus, the national funding for human resources development is very low in most of the cases. Individual universities are dealing with these challenges by participating in far more competitive European funding programmes, such as Horizon 2020 (especially Marie Sklodowska Curie actions), Erasmus+ and earlier, FP7.The main objective of the proposed project is to contribute to enhanced management of human research potential at WBC region universities in line with national and EU strategies for researchers to remedy the issues mentioned above.Besides day-by-day visible outcomes (reports, analyses, trainings, action plans, bylaws etc.), more prominenet outputs showing to what extent the project objectives are met will be:- Mentoring System for junior professors implemented- HRS4R strategy adopted by all WBC partner universities- System of Awards created for research boosting- Guidebook for Young Researchers publishedFinally, since the background for the foreseen activities is provided by the EU standards and specifically European Charter and Code, it is expected that all partner universities will be awarded with HR Excellence in Research label by the European Commission as key evidence that the WBC region institutional strategies for HR management reached the highest standards.