Access to research infrastructures, their resources and services: large-scale pilots for more integrated scheme across (sub)domains

Expected Outcome:

Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

• More efficient access to the best research infrastructures available to researchers and innovators to conduct basic and applied research and foster innovation, irrespective of location. A single-entry point access portal, integrated or interoperable catalogues of services and converging access conditions and selection procedures;
• A step towards a longer-term sustainable access programme harmonised across different ESFRI domains;
• Breakthrough and leading-edge research enabled by advanced research infrastructure services, including from emerging facilities, made available to a wider user community, including in emerging areas of research;
• A new generation of researchers trained to optimally exploit all the essential tools for their research with due attention to early-stage career researchers and researchers from widening countries and candidate countries;
• Interdisciplinarity and sharing of information, knowledge and technologies across scientific fields with due attention to research security; better management, including implementing FAIR data principles, of the continuous flow of data collected or produced by research infrastructures.

Scope:

This topic aims at testing ‘access programme like’ projects providing trans-national access (on-site or remote) and/or virtual access to integrated and customised research infrastructure installations and services for excellent research, from frontier and curiosity-driven to applied research, offered by a wide range of complementary and interdisciplinary research infrastructures with experience in transnational access. Access is provided by a core of state-of-the-art research infrastructures as beneficiaries/affiliated entities and by third party access providers on demand. Proposals should adhere to the guidelines and principles of the European Charter for Access to Research Infrastructures^[1]. Proposals are expected to address one of the following areas, based on ‘ESFRI scientific domains^[2], and must explicitly state which area they address:

Area 1, covering the following domains: Physical Sciences and Engineering; Data, Computing and Digital Research Infrastructures

Area 2, covering the following domains: Health & Food; Social Sciences and Humanities

Area 3, covering the following domains: Environment; Energy.

These areas define in which pilot project a research infrastructure identified as a core access provider should be a beneficiary/affiliated entity. On demand third party access providers should expand access opportunities within the area or across-areas for interdisciplinary research.

Proposals should make available to researchers and innovators a wide, inclusive and comprehensive portfolio of complementary research infrastructure services of European interest^[3], including data services. Proposals should include at least two ESFRI Landmark^[4] and/or European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC)^[5] as beneficiary. Access could also be open, in accordance with the ‘Specific Features for Research Infrastructure’ section of this Work Programme, to third countries’ researchers. Research infrastructures from third countries may be involved as beneficiaries or affiliated entities^[6] when appropriate, if the proposal can demonstrate they offer complementary or more advanced services than those available in the EU Member States and Associated Countries.

Access includes ad hoc users’ training and scientific and technical support (see Specific Features for Research Infrastructures). Additional training courses, including skills for data stewardship, may also be supported. In addition, proposals should better exploit the training potential of successful transnational access user projects by inviting researchers, notably early-stage career researchers, or research infrastructure technicians from widening and candidate countries to team up with selected user groups. Proposals should reserve sufficient resources for this purpose and should proactively advertise these opportunities. (which should be arranged after the selection of user projects and have no impact on their evaluation).

Access provision to existing services should be clear in the proposed activities and reflected in the allocated resources.

The improvement and development of services can also be supported, provided that the resulting services are offered already under the actions (short-term R&D) and that the long-term sustainability of such services is ensured.

Data management (and related ethics issues), interoperability, as well as the connection of digital services (e.g. data services) to the European Open Science Cloud, should be addressed where relevant. Proposals should take due account of major European or international initiatives relevant in the domain. When appropriate, they should foster the use and deployment of (open) global standards.

Proposals should include an outreach and engagement plan to actively advertise their services to the research communities, notably from widening countries and candidate countries and to relevant industries, including SMEs and, if applicable, provide dedicated support for the development of research partnerships and collaborations with researchers from widening countries and candidate countries. Proposals are expected to exploit synergies and to ensure complementarity and coherence with other EU grants supporting access provision.

Proposals should include the list of core services/installations^[7]opened by research infrastructures for transnational or virtual access and the amounts of units of access made available for users. Further conditions and requirements relating to access provisions that applicants should fulfil when drafting a proposal are given in the “Specific features for Research Infrastructures” section of this work programme part. Compliance with these provisions will be taken into account during evaluation.

Proposals should also present an indicative list of complementary services/installations opened by third party research infrastructures for transnational or virtual access. Proposals should reserve sufficient resources for access notably to these services/installations and allocate budget according to the demand after peer-review evaluation of the user-groups and users’ research and innovation projects, the ‘user projects’. This complementary part of the access to research infrastructures may be implemented through the mechanism of financial support to third parties (FSTP), provided that the beneficiaries ensure that the conditions and requirements relating to access provisions as given in the “Specific features for Research Infrastructures” are fulfilled. In such case, the relevant conditions and requirements should be included in the FSTP calls and the applicants to the FSTP open calls should be the third party research infrastructures demanded by user-group(s). In the case of transnational access, the beneficiaries select the user-groups according to the conditions and requirements of the “specific features for research infrastructures” section of this work programme. The beneficiaries ensure that the access provider selected through the FSTP calls is a state-of-the-art research infrastructure, and that it will provide appropriate documentation to support and justify the amount of access provided and the information on the users as specified in the “specific features for research infrastructures” section of this work programme. To simplify the selection process, proposals under this topic may combine the calls inviting researchers to apply for transnational access and the FSTP calls so that a one stage selection procedure can be implemented based on a joint application from the user group submitting the ‘user project’ and the needed third party access provider. The recipient of the financial support is the third party research infrastructure that is providing access to the selected user-group(s). The financial support should cover the costs incurred by the third party to provide access (actual costs, unit costs, or a combination of the two) plus any work for service customisation as well as the travel and subsistence of users if visits are needed to use the infrastructures. Alternatively, proposals may opt for centrally managed travel and or subsistence costs for all or part of the selected user projects. In such case, these costs are excluded from the concerned FSTP.

Access opportunities should be presented in a single-entry point portal for each pilot, building on the experience of past EU projects supporting access in the respective areas. The interoperability and capacity to converge into a common portal should be considered when designing or upgrading the portals as well as the possible connection to EOSC.

To ensure a holistic view from design to implementation of possible access schemes, proposals should ensure strong and continuous collaboration with the cross-domain preparatory action on access HORIZON-INFRA-2025-01-DEV-05^[8], with the pilots under topic HORIZON-INFRA-2026-01-DEV-02, e.g. making use of the catalogues of services, navigation tool and links to key EU initiatives, and with the actions supported under topic HORIZON-INFRA-2027-01-SERV-02. This collaboration should ensure a common front page to all above actions, set up by one of the pilots, providing at the minimum basic information such as highlighting the common objectives of EU supported access, the main conditions and requirements, providing preliminary guidance on access opportunities and directing to the single-entry point portal of each pilot. The collaboration should also promote simplified access pathways, good practices on call conditions, converging access modalities and selection process, as well as effective governance of the set of projects acting as an access programme with appropriate advisory bodies.

Proposals could consider the inclusion of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) in any of the three areas identified in the call. The JRC is running the “open access to JRC research infrastructures” programme, providing since 2017 access and training and capacity building to a portfolio of 18 different facilities to more than 650 users from 250 institutions in Europe. In this respect, the experience of the JRC in transnational access can be very valuable for exploring new ways of creating large thematic clusters of pan-European research infrastructures. In that respect, the JRC will consider collaborating with any successful proposal and this collaboration, when relevant, should be established after the proposal’s approval.

The integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement. However, where applicable, proposals should promote in their calls for access the integration of the gender dimension in the research and innovation content of the users applying to these calls.

[1] https://op.europa.eu/publication-detail/-/publication/ec4692ae-ac6f-11ef-acb1-01aa75ed71a1

[2] ESFRI domains: 1. Data, Computing and Digital Research Infrastructures; 2. Energy; 3. Environment; 4. Health & Food; 5. Physical Sciences and Engineering; 6. Social Sciences & Humanities. See ESFRI Landscape Analysis 2024 https://landscape2024.esfri.eu/.

[3] A research infrastructure is of European interest when is able to attract users from EU or associated countries other than the country where the infrastructure is located. This includes ESFRI and ERIC infrastructures.

[4] See lists of ESFRI 'Landmarks‘ in the 2021 ESFRI Roadmap on https://roadmap2021.esfri.eu/

[5] European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) | European Commission (europa.eu)

[6] See the Eligibility conditions for this topic.

[7] “Installation” means a part or a service of a research infrastructure that can be used independently from the rest. A research infrastructure consists of one or more installations.

[8] https://cordis.europa.eu/programme/id/HORIZON_HORIZON-INFRA-2025-01-DEV-05