The aim of the project is to develop a model describing the socio-economic impact of research infrastructures and of their related financial investments. The model will be developed in a modular manner adapting it to a broad range of scientific domains and types of infrastructures. The project outcomes are expected to contribute to a common approach at international level and facilitate investments in research infrastructures by funding agencies and other stakeholders. The project activities will take into account the work of the Research Infrastructure Socio-Economic Impact Working group, being established by the OECD Global Science Forum, and involve major key international players in this domain. More specifically RI Impact Pathways project plans to carry out a comprehensive stocktaking exercise on the existing approaches for impact assessment of research infrastructures and map the current and future data gathering needs of the key stakeholder groups. The goal is to identify the strengths and limitations of the existing approaches, detect existing gaps and overlaps, as well as to assess the level of complexity of the developed conceptual advances. Further, a set of activities will be devoted to map the needs of various stakeholders associated with IA of RIs. Employing participatory and systems thinking approaches the project will develop a modular impact assessment model that represents all major impact pathways of distinct types of research infrastructures. The IA model will be put to practice by defining a set of reference indicators, providing guidance on the most appropriate monitoring and evaluation approaches and testing its feasibility with pilot research infrastructures. The outcomes of the project will be a methodological handbook and an interactive web-based tool that will facilitate more user-friendly navigation in the prepared guidance material.

PathOS aims to identify and quantify the Key Impact Pathways of Open Science relating to the research system and its interrelations with economic and societal actors. PathOS will enable a new understanding of OS impacts and their causal mechanisms through its workplan encompassing actions to synthesise and structure current evidence, development of new methods and tools for measuring impact, iterative pilot-testing via in-depth case studies, innovative dissemination and networking, and co-creation synthesis activities culminating in policy recommendations. This is pivotal in order to develop effective OS policy in the EU. It will do so by collecting concrete evidence of the causal effects of OS by studying the pathways of OS practices, from input to output, outcome and impact, including the consideration of enabling factors and key barriers. Impacts and pathways will be developed in particular in the three areas of science, society and economy. By investigating, measuring and comparing its costs and benefits together with its pathways, PathOS will (i) bring a better understanding of the implications of open science for science, economy and society, (ii) provide recommendations to policy makers and other actors in the R&I ecosystem as to how and to what extent open science should be promoted in a balanced way, and (iii) develop innovative tools and methods using a big data to augment traditional ones for studying the causal effects of open science. This will enable evidence-based Open Science policy prioritisation, maximum OS impact, and increased R&I capacity in EU research systems.

Innovation in the genomics field is extremely intense and requires high up-front investments. The toolbox of sequencing platforms with unique features that require specialized training and leverage extensive cross-functional expertise, is rapidly expanding. The EASIGEN-DS project evolves from two EU infrastructure projects that have proven to be very successful in providing access to cutting-edge DNA sequencing technologies to hundreds of researchers. Here, we propose to carry out a design study for establishing a new European Research Infrastructure on Advanced Genomics Technologies, EASIGEN. In order to develop an excellent scientific, technological and operational design, we will conduct landscape studies, stakeholder consultations, and community surveying. In parallel, we will seek for the support and commitment of several national and EU stakeholders and user communities through a multi‐faceted dissemination plan. We envision that EASIGEN will encompass: 1) a Technology Platform that will offer state-of-the-art genomic analysis methods, such as single-cell genomics, spatial genomics and long-read sequencing, as well as population-scale genomics capacity; and 2) a Support Platform that will provide standardization tools, training, co-innovation with industry, and consulting for smaller facilities, including those in widening countries. Both platforms will serve a vast community of users from the health, biomedical and life science fields. The consortium brings together 1) a network of eleven genomics facilities with distinct application specialities. and an aggregated sequencing capacity of >450,000 human genomes per year; 2) four partners with specific and crucial expertise: data stewardship, ethical, legal and social implications, socio-economic impact and innovation. The new infrastructure will strengthen the European Research Area, promote interconnections within the ESFRI landscape, and boost an innovative biotechnology-based industry.

What is the Origin of Everything? The Standard Model of Particle Physics explains everything except for the parts that it does not cover. This limitation calls for a science mission to gain a deeper understanding of matter, energy and the fundamental laws of nature. The first step is to elucidate the mysteries that revolve around the Higgs boson. Is it point like? Does it interact with itself? The best way to answer these such questions is to create a clean experimental environment with a highest luminosity particle collider. The Future Circular Collider Innovation Study (FCCIS) will deliver a conceptual design and an implementation plan for a new research infrastructure, consisting of a 100 km long, circular tunnel and a dozen surface sites. It will initially host an electron-positron particle collider. With an energy frontier hadron collider as a second step, it can serve a world-wide community through the end of the 21st century. This project will validate the key performance enablers at particle accelerators. Extreme luminosities, a factory producing a million Higgs bosons, luminosities up to 100 times the present world record with parts-per-million energy precision will strengthen Europe’s leadership in excellent science for many decades. This project will attract academic and industrial leaders to develop a feasible and affordable project that incorporates ecodesign and resource efficiency from an early stage onwards. The project includes work with the host states France and Switzerland to ensure that the infrastructure blends in with the territorial boundary conditions. A socio-economic impact analysis will reveal the added value that this infrastructure will generate during its first phase and serve as the basis for developing a funding and implementation plan. This project emphasizes the user capacity building process with theoretical and experimental physicists at an international scale to ensure an exploitation of the facility from the start.