New European Funding Calls Focus on Open Science
Recent calls for proposals from European funders like Luxembourg's FNR and the Netherlands' NWO emphasize support for interdisciplinary, sustainable, and open science projects. The focus on topics like biochemical diversity and international collaboration requires grant platforms to be flexible. These platforms must support complex user journeys for research consortia and meet evolving open access and data transparency mandates.
- The push for open science is heavily influenced by Plan S, an initiative by cOAlition S, a consortium of European research funders. Since 2021, this plan has required that scientific publications from research funded by its members be made immediately available in open access journals or repositories, with authors retaining copyright under an open license. - Horizon Europe, the EU's research and innovation program with a €95.5 billion budget for 2021-2027, legally mandates open science practices. This includes immediate open access to all peer-reviewed publications and requires that research data be managed according to FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) principles. - The core principle for data sharing in these mandates is "as open as possible, as closed as necessary," allowing for the protection of sensitive data related to privacy, security, or commercial interests. Grant applications under Horizon Europe must include a detailed Data Management Plan (DMP) outlining how data will be handled. - To support this, the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) is being developed as a federated infrastructure for research data. The initiative is backed by nearly €500 million from the European Commission, matched by partners, to create a unified virtual environment for Europe's 1.7 million researchers. - National funders are creating dedicated bodies to implement these policies; for instance, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) established Open Science NL in 2023 to accelerate the transition to open science through targeted funding and community support. - This shift aligns with broader EU digital strategy, such as the Digital Europe Programme, which has a budget of over €8.1 billion to fund the adoption of digital technologies like AI and cybersecurity in public administration and industry. - As part of this movement, funders are reforming research assessment to value the intrinsic merit of the work itself, rather than relying on metrics like journal impact factors. Open science practices like sharing data and preprints have been linked to an increase in citations. - A tangible example of these funding priorities is the OSCARS project, which is distributing approximately €16 million through open calls for projects that advance FAIR-data-intensive research, with individual grants ranging from €100,000 to €250,000.
