Abstract This article traces the progress of the open method of co-ordination in research policy, and examines one of its strands, the Mobility Strategy, as a best practice OMC. Despite the critical analyses it has received to date, we argue that the OMC has shown the potential to impact on national systems and achieve convergence, albeit not necessarily of a quantitative kind. Under the Ljubljana Process, the OMC has been confirmed as the central method of governance to further develop the European research area and here we put forward several recommendations for its future application.