European Commission invests 8.5 billion EUR in research and innovation – and data sharing becomes default

Yesterday, the European Commission (EC) announced an investment of 8.5 billion Euros into research and innovation in 2017.

This investment follows an update to the work programme of the 8th research framework program of the European Union (better known as “Horizon 2020”).

From the perspective of the research data management, this update incorporates some important changes: The current Open Research Data Pilot will be extended so that research data sharing by default will apply to all Horizon 2020 calls covered by the 2017 Work Programme. This means that grant beneficiaries must take measures to enable third parties to access, mine, exploit, reproduce and disseminate research data underlying their scientific peer reviewed publications free of charge. Horizon 2020 beneficiaries are encouraged to also share datasets beyond these publications. Projects can “opt-out” of these provisions in case of conflicts with IPR, personal data protection, national security or other concerns. Read the rest of this entry »

European Commission launches pilot to open up publicly funded research data

Currently, Europe’s eighth Framework Programme takes form: On December 2013 the European Council has adopted Horizon 2020 programme for research and innovation for the years 2014 to 2020.

Horizon 2020, which has a budget of around 77 billion euros, will underpin the objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy for growth and jobs, as well as the goal of strengthening the scientific and technological bases by contributing to achieving a European Research Area in which researchers, scientific knowledge and technology circulate freely. Read the rest of this entry »