Preparatory actions exploring future frameworks for research infrastructures investment plans and funding streams, for integrated and sustained scheme for access and for joint technology development.

Expected Outcome

For all areas: research infrastructures, their stakeholders and funders have more robust knowledge to develop strategies, coordinate and align future actions in support of an effective ecosystem of cutting-edge European research infrastructures. Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes for one of the areas:

Area 1: Strengthening research infrastructures investment plans and diversifying funding streams

• Research infrastructure managers benefit from an overview of funding sources at national, regional and EU level.
• Research infrastructure managers and funders are better prepared to develop synergies among complementary funding instruments that fit their specific needs and objectives.
• Funders have a better picture of the financial impact of the priorities and strategies around research infrastructures, covering both day-to-day operations and long-term investments.

Area 2: Preparatory action to explore a more integrated and sustainable scheme for access to research infrastructures

• Proposal for a new EU access scheme addressed to Research Infrastructure stakeholders (research infrastructures funders, research infrastructures managers, research infrastructures user communities), ensuring effective, flexible and seamless access to world-class scientific services and resources in all science and technology fields, accommodating the diverse nature of research infrastructures and their evolving needs, and overcoming the and disruptive effects of an approach based on short-term projects.
• Analysis of how research infrastructures user communities, including from Widening countries, will benefit from a new EU access scheme that enable wider, simplified and more efficient access so as to boost breakthrough and leading-edge research.
• Better understanding by research infrastructure stakeholders of the governance options, funding and implementation aspects of a future access scheme.

Area 3: Framework for joint research infrastructure technology developments

• Research infrastructures benefit from a more stable framework for joint technology developments avoiding duplication, promoting pooling of resources and appropriate support mechanism.
• Research infrastructure innovation ecosystems are further developed, and their overlaps are identified. They underpin the technology developments needed by research infrastructures including the implementation of research infrastructure technology roadmaps.
• A virtuous circle for early involvement of industry, including SMEs, and development or update of joint research infrastructure technology roadmaps is created.
• Mechanisms to ensure the openness of research infrastructure technology innovation ecosystems, which must be able to integrate new EU players.

Scope

Proposals should address only one of the following areas and should explicitly state which area they address:

Area 1: Strengthening research infrastructures investment plans and diversifying funding streams

The European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI), through successive roadmaps, has identified European priorities to equip researchers and innovators in Europe with infrastructures for groundbreaking research in all science and technology fields, from fundamental research to technological developments, to addressing pressing challenges of our society.

EU funding has been instrumental with recurrent support to the different phases of the research infrastructure life cycle, from concept and design to preparation and implementation, as well as in integrating and interconnecting new research infrastructure capacities in the European landscape and opening for access to them, overcoming the limits of national research programmes. When appropriate, pan-European research infrastructures have also benefitted from complementary EU funding, such as structural and investments funds or the Recovery and Resilience Facility funds.

However, funding an increasing number and size of pan-European research infrastructures weighs on national research budgets, raising the question of their long-term sustainability and of EU programmes’ contribution to the various stages of their life cycle. At the same time, the Pact for R&I in Europe[1] calls for more concerted investments and further synergies between Union, national and regional funding programmes. The Pact also calls for employing a broader range of funding sources for world-leading research infrastructures and exploring novel ways of funding transnational and virtual access.

Yet, recent ESFRI surveys show the difficulty to capture exhaustive information on the funding streams and level of funding. In many countries, the funding landscape is very complex with multiple funding instruments not always tracking research infrastructures along the final beneficiaries. Similarly, details of non-research EU funding benefitting research infrastructures are not always clear. From the research infrastructures’ perspectives, many distributed research infrastructures lack long-term planning and do not have an overview of national funding sources nor expenses of the nodes, including access costs. This lack of visibility is hampering strategic discussions on investments plans and on broader access to research infrastructures.

Taking stock of relevant information sources such as the ESFRI work on funding[2], guides for synergies[3], documented examples from research infrastructures, and funders or financial organisms such as the EIB, the action should cover the following aspects:

• Mapping of main funding sources used for the preparation, construction and operation of ESFRI Projects and Landmarks, ERICs and other world-class European research infrastructures.
• Identification of established or potential synergies across funding sources and different financial instruments (including loans), at national/regional and EU level such as EIB funding instruments, structural and investment funds, Recovery and Resilience Facility funds, and funds under the Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument.
• Better understanding of the specific costs and challenges in financing different phases of the research infrastructures life cycle such as construction, operation and necessary upgrades to address greening and digitalisation challenges.
• Case studies of distributed research infrastructures on different approaches in identifying the nature and level of costs and best practices for long-term planning.

Proposals should foresee possible cooperation with projects selected under Area 2 with regards to funding models for access.

Area 2: Preparatory action to explore a more integrated and sustainable scheme for access to research infrastructures

The support under Horizon Europe and past EU Framework Programmes for transnational and virtual access to research infrastructures has opened up world-class services and resources across Europe to research communities for their scientific activities, in all science and technology fields. It has helped the structuring of research infrastructures and their communities in organised networks, promoting single entry-points for access to facilities and resources including digital ones, and expanding to new pan-European research infrastructures.

Recent Horizon Europe support promoted further integration to better address users’ needs, either around R&I areas to address societal challenges or around large scientific domains, increasing awareness in broader user communities and creating further opportunities for cross-domain R&I. However, the complexity of setting up appropriate project consortia and new access schemes coupled with the short duration projects necessitates a more integrated and sustainable approach.

The action will identify novel approaches and operational steps towards a longer-term, cross-domain integrated access scheme, promoting the vision of a ‘one-stop-shop’ for access to research infrastructures, their services and resources. It will build on the experience of past and ongoing EU supported access projects (notably under Horizon 2020 INFRAIA and Horizon Europe INFRASERV calls), on best practices from national access schemes, considering position papers from research infrastructures and scientific communities, and related ESFRI work.

Funding bodies, research infrastructure managers and user communities, including from Widening countries, should be involved in the design and governance of the proposed new EU access scheme, building up trust and creating opportunity to ensure a smooth implementation.

The proposal should be representative of all large scientific domains. It should involve EU research infrastructures in different fields, including preferably at least one ESFRI infrastructure[4] and/or ERIC[5] in each of the large ESFRI scientific domains as beneficiary. The action should also ensure a role for representatives of national research infrastructure funders (e.g. as a project consultative committee or advisory board) and appropriate consultation of scientific communities and potential users including from industry and public authorities.

The action will identify all necessary aspects to be addressed and possible options towards implementation. This should notably include options for:

• Governance of the access scheme, advisory bodies (such as scientific boards and users’ representatives);
• Funding models, underpinned by an initial core EU funding complemented by other funding streams (institutional, national);
• Access policies including mechanisms ensuring appropriate balance among large domains, scientific fields and techniques best addressing key scientific challenges and the needs of users.

While the access scheme should be driven mainly by the excellence criterion, consideration should be given to incorporating services customised or developed in other projects to address specific EU priorities and societal challenges, as well as offering specific access conditions to targeted user groups, including fast track access e.g. for emergency cases.

The proposed action is expected to deliver on all the following points:

• Concept for a new EU access scheme aiming at wider, simplified, seamless and more efficient access for researchers, including from Widening countries, to the best research infrastructures available.
• Scenarios for governance, co-funding and implementation of the access scheme.
• Promoting breakthrough and leading-edge research enabled by advanced research infrastructure services made available to a wider user community, while ensuring sustainability of the research infrastructures themselves (including by increasing their visibility and attractiveness, and creating incentives for expanding their membership).
• Recommendations on access policies, adopting the principles of the European Charter on Access to Research Infrastructures.
• Good practices on access call conditions, agreements between research infrastructures and selected users, access modalities, selection of users, support to users.
• Proposals for design of possible pilot(s) to be implemented under Horizon Europe calls for improved and harmonised RI services and broader use of RI resources, e.g. in specific domains.
• Outline of a communication plan and key components for a single-entry point portal including opportunities under complementary national or institutional access schemes.

Proposals should foresee possible cooperation with projects selected under Area 1 with regards to funding models for access.

Proposals could consider the inclusion of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) Support Services Directorate in their research infrastructure portfolio. The JRC offers its experience in assessing, setting the strategy, maintaining, operating and providing access to external researchers to its research infrastructures in various fields of science. The JRC runs a specific programme that opens its research infrastructure for access to external users and has developed a framework for access to its research infrastructures based on the European charter of access to research infrastructures. In this regard, the JRC will consider collaborating with any successful proposal.

Area 3: Framework for joint research infrastructure technology developments

Europe's long term scientific ambitions rely on the availability of world-class research infrastructures. These infrastructures require a continuous effort of optimisation and upgrading. Identifying and developing technology building blocks that can be used by a multitude of research infrastructure communities and across different domains can help increasing the efficiency of public investments in upgrades and optimisations of research infrastructures. Such efficiency gains can be further increased with standardisation and interoperability efforts and the identification of overlaps between different domain-specific ecosystems. Further development efforts rely on functioning innovation ecosystems for research infrastructure technologies, involving infrastructure operators, users, and industry, including SMEs and key other relevant stakeholders. Ensuring the functional capacity of such ecosystems as well as its resilience against disruptions require the creation of a more integrated and long-term planning and implementation of joint technology research.

Research infrastructure technologies are also understood to cover, where applicable, areas such as sample environments, support facilities, and software.

To ensure consolidation and evolution of the European research infrastructure landscape, considering notably the development of pan-European research infrastructures prioritised by ESFRI and the ERICs, proposals should include at least two different research infrastructures as beneficiaries[6] each of them being an ESFRI Landmark[7] a European Research Infrastructure Consortium[8] (ERIC) or another research infrastructure that is an international European research organisation[9] . Such research infrastructures, and where applicable the beneficiaries that own/operate them, must be explicitly identified in the proposals. In case of a distributed[10] ERIC, as an alternative to the ERIC participating as a beneficiary, a legal entity that is hosting ERIC facilities, resources or related services may participate as a beneficiary. A declaration signed by the legal representative of the ERIC should confirm that the ERIC is supporting this participation, explain the relevance for the ERIC and describe any further cooperation with the ERIC.

To ensure buy-in of the different scientific communities, the action will involve research infrastructures, covering a maximum of ESFRI domains, and, where relevant, user organisations and key industry and SME players. The consortium itself should consist of key research infrastructures that are representative of at least two ESFRI domains. While it is expected that the consortium includes research infrastructures representative of the different ESFRI domains covered, involvement of additional research infrastructures can be shown via engagement letters or other forms of endorsement.

The project should build on previous roadmapping and synergy efforts made by scientific communities and on projects such as the ones funded under Horizon 2020 INFRAINNOV-04-2020.

The project should address all of the following aspects:

• Identification of technology overlaps or building blocks relevant for multiple domains and infrastructure types.
• Identification of further technology roadmapping needs, covering both transversal needs and domain-specific needs.
• Identification of standardisation and interoperability needs.
• Identification of possible training and coordination needs, from technical to management staff.
• Exploration of funding mechanisms, best adapted to the needs of different research infrastructure technology innovation ecosystems.
• Identification of optimal interaction modes between research infrastructures and industry, including SMEs, depending on the research infrastructure technology innovation ecosystem.

[1] Council Recommendation (EU) 2021/2122 of 26 November 2021 on a Pact for Research and Innovation in Europe

[2] ESFRI Report: Funding of Research Infrastructures https://www.esfri.eu/esfri-report-funding-research-infrastructures.

[3] E.g. COMMISSION NOTICE Synergies between Horizon Europe and ERDF programmes 2022/C 421/03 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52022XC1104(02)

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

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

[6] The participation of two nodes of the same ESFRI infrastructure or ERIC does not count as two different research infrastructures.

[7] See the list of ESFRI 'Landmarks' in the 2021 ESFRI Roadmap: https://roadmap2021.esfri.eu/

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

[9] An ‘international European research organisation' means an international organisation, the majority of whose members are Member States or associated countries, whose principal objective is to promote scientific and technological cooperation in Europe.

[10] The term ‘distributed’ research infrastructure typically refers to one or a few central hubs and several interlinked (national or institutional) nodes where many components of the research infrastructure may not be part of the same legal entity, the ERIC.