“Historic” agreement clears the path for association to EU science programmes, says European Commission president

The European Commission’s president Ursula von der Leyen has said that work can start “immediately” on securing UK association to EU R&D programmes once the agreed Northern Ireland deal is implemented.

Her comments came at a joint press conference with UK prime minister Rishi Sunak, where the leaders hailed a “decisive breakthrough” in talks over trade in Northern Ireland.

UK participation in the R&D programme has been held up owing to a dispute over the Northern Ireland protocol, leaving UK grant winners from the EU’s Horizon Europe programme unable to directly access any funding they win.

Participation in the EU’s nuclear research initiative Euratom and the Earth-observation programme Copernicus has also been put on hold as a result.

But speaking at the press conference on 27 February, the two leaders confirmed an agreement on the protocol had been reached.

‘Free-flowing trade in the UK’

The deal has been described as “a breakthrough” by Sunak and as “historic” by von der Leyen. Agreed in principle by the two leaders, it includes issues such as medicines approval, taxes on goods, and a Stormont “brake” for changes to EU goods rules.

“Together we have changed the original protocol and today are announcing the new Windsor Framework,” Sunak said.

“Today’s agreement delivers free-flowing trade within the whole of the United Kingdom, protects Northern Ireland’s place in our union and safeguard’s sovereignty for the people of Northern Ireland.”

Sunak said on Twitter: “We’re also delivering a landmark settlement on medicines. From now on, drugs approved for use by the UK’s medicines regulator will be automatically available in every pharmacy and hospital in Northern Ireland.”

‘Good news for scientists’

Von der Leyen said: “We knew we had to work hard with clear minds and determination but we also both knew that we could do it because we were both generally committed to find a practical solution for people and for all communities in Northern Ireland.”

Asked what the deal would mean for UK participation in Horizon Europe, she said it was “good news for scientists and researchers in the EU and in the UK”.

“The moment we have finished this agreement—so it’s an agreement in principle—the moment it is implemented I’m happy to start immediately right now the work on an association agreement which is the pre-condition to join Horizon Europe. So [it’s] good news for all those working in research and science.”

Her comments will likely be widely welcomed by the sector, but also mean the sector will have to wait for the deal to be approved by both sides and implemented before there is EU approval of the UK’s association to EU R&D programmes.

Details of the deal are yet to be published and Sunak has promised to give the House of Commons a vote on it.

Adrian Smith, president of the Royal Society,  welcomed von der Leyen’s “commitment to progressing association as soon as the Windsor Framework is implemented”.

“With the Northern Ireland protocol impasse resolved, we need to swiftly secure access to the EU’s international research programmes,” Smith said.

He added: “It is more than two years since the government agreed association to Horizon Europe, Euratom and Copernicus—two years of delays that have damaged science across Europe. These schemes support outstanding international collaboration, and the sooner we join them, the better for everyone.”

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Agreements across Africa, America, Asia and Europe will support open access, publisher says

Academic publishing company Springer Nature has announced a spate of deals it said will expand the global reach and international momentum of open access to research papers.  

The deals struck this year include several transformative agreements (contracts between institutions and publishers that shift the publishing model from a subscription towards open access), the company announced on 27 February.

“The latest transformative agreements are expected to further accelerate the global transition to open access by ensuring affiliated researchers benefit from the higher usage, reach and impact that open access has been proven to achieve, and that the high-quality research is reusable, shareable and discoverable to the world’s scholarly community immediately upon publication,” said Carrie Webster, vice-president of open access at Springer Nature.

The publisher said the deals include its first transformative agreement in southern Africa, with the South African National Library and Information Consortium, a transformative agreement with the Swiss Universities consortium and deals with organisations in the Czech Republic, Portugal and Slovenia.

Another deal announced was Springer Nature’s first open-access book agreement involving an Asian institution: the Universiti Brunei Darussalam.

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Call comes ahead of planned EU pharmaceutical strategy

Representatives of European drug companies have called on the EU to streamline its regulation of the sector, ahead of the European Commission’s much-anticipated proposal for a pharmaceutical strategy in the coming weeks.

“EU-level legislation should aim to simplify and streamline processes” around drug development and approval, authors including a regulatory strategy director at the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations wrote in a blog post published by Efpia on 23 February.

The authors said the revision of EU pharma regulation resulting from the Commission proposal provides “a chance to create a predictable, clear and consistent environment” for the drugs industry.

In recent months, Efpia representatives have repeatedly warned that the EU could push pharma R&D to other parts of the world if they introduce regulations that industry finds too burdensome.

“Complying with multiple layers of governance at EU and national level can add time and costs to the process” of drug development, the authors said in the blog post, which was based on a longer article published earlier this month in the journal Drug Discovery Today.

“There is a clear need for regulatory convergence between jurisdictions to avoid inefficiencies,” they stressed.

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Sector awaiting next steps after von der Leyen and Sunak agree on Northern Ireland protocol

A UK-EU deal on the Northern Ireland protocol reportedly reached today will elicit a “sigh of relief” from researchers, as it paves the way for the UK to associate to the bloc’s R&D schemes, a research policy expert has said.

Prime minister Rishi Sunak held a summit on 27 February with the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, at which they reached an agreement on the protocol.

The long-running spat over post-Brexit trade in Northern Ireland has been a major barrier to the UK joining the EU’s €95.5bn (£84.2bn) R&D programme, Horizon Europe, as well as the nuclear research initiative Euratom and the Earth-observation programme Copernicus.

With a deal to resolve the dispute, hopes have been raised across the R&D sector that the EU will now allow the UK to take part in the schemes.

“We welcome the meeting between Ursula von der Leyen and Prime Minister Sunak this afternoon,” said Diana Beech, chief executive of London Higher and a former adviser to three universities ministers. “We hope that this will finally unlock access for the UK to participate in Horizon Europe, giving our world-class universities and researchers the funding that they need to ensure that the UK remains a science superpower.”

She added that it is hoped this new Brexit deal will give research-performing organisations the “certainty and stability needed to continue powering the engine of UK innovation” and that the newly formed Department of Science, Innovation and Technology should now commit to “funding association to Horizon”.

But, speaking ahead of the official announcement today, some experts have also warned that hurdles remain.

“The long-awaited deal on the Northern Ireland protocol will be greeted with a sigh of relief by the research community, who remain strongly supportive of continued association to Horizon Europe,” said James Wilsdon, a professor of research policy at UCL.

“But we aren’t out of the woods yet. Three further hurdles will now need to be jumped.”

Sunak will firstly need to get the deal over the line without hardline Conservative Brexiters and Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party “sabotaging it”, Wilsdon said.

Secondly, there will need to be “fresh haggling” between London and Brussels on the costs of the UK’s association to EU programmes. “I’m sure [this] will be resolved but [it] could slow things down,” Wilsdon explained.

The final hurdle will be the time it will take to “undo all the damage of the past few years, as collaborative networks need to be rebuilt and repaired”, Wilsdon said.

“I would expect it to take two to three years for levels of UK participation to return to where we would want and expect them to be.”

Flexibility urged

Kurt Deketelaere, secretary-general of the League of European Research Universities, also said news of a deal raised hope for UK association to EU programmes, but warned that revisions to the earlier association deal might take some time.

The terms of the UK’s Horizon association were set out in a trade and cooperation agreement between the UK and EU signed in 2020, and would have to be updated.

“Let’s hope that revisions and updates of the earlier association deal can be kept to a minimum, and both sides act with flexibility and goodwill so that we can welcome all UK-based researchers as soon as possible back at full strength in EU-funded research proposals and projects,” Deketelaere said.

Martin Smith, head of policy at health research funder Wellcome, echoed this sentiment, saying he hoped for “swift progress” to finalise a Horizon agreement given the groundwork for UK association was laid in 2020.

“If a deal on the Northern Ireland protocol can be made to stick, it would remove the biggest political barrier to the UK joining Horizon Europe,” he said. “Unlocking easy research collaboration would be a great result for researchers and businesses across the UK and EU.”

Jan Palmowski, secretary-general of the Guild of European Research Intensive Universities, described the dispute around Northern Ireland as “the big stumbling block for the EU’s finalising the accession of the UK” and said that with this resolved “association must happen without delay.”

But he warned that further talks on the revised costs of the UK’s delayed association should be done swiftly to avoid further harm to the sector.

He said: “The UK has now asked to reconsider the agreement around the cost of participation as an associated country, but all sides must understand that too much time has been lost; if new technical issues are raised, these must be resolved urgently.”

UPDATED AFTER PUBLICATION—This story was updated after publication to reflect that a deal has now been announced.

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Expert says Swedish presidency’s push to abolish article-processing charges shows concerns about controversial model

A proposal to make immediate open access to research papers “the default” without authors having to pay article-processing charges “reflects growing disquiet” in the EU about such fees, an expert has said.

The proposal came from the Swedish presidency of the Council of the EU member state governments in a draft set of conclusions that the governments will discuss—and probably amend—ahead of their planned adoption in the summer.

Research consultant Rob Johnson told Research Europe that the proposal put the “emphasis on ensuring quality and avoiding fees to authors, both of which reflect growing disquiet about the article publication charge”.

Published on 8 February, the draft proposed that “unrestricted open access should be the default mode in publishing, with no fees for authors”. 

On the same day, the Swedish presidency also said that other issues in scholarly publishing need to be dealt with too, such as some journals not having good enough processes for ensuring the papers they publish are of sufficient quality.

The widespread pay-to-publish model of open-access publishing relies on charging authors. Johnson says this “risks incentivising publishers to pursue quantity over quality while preventing researchers from underresourced countries or institutions from participating in the global scholarly discourse”.

But he also warned that the proposal could be “good news” for large publishers, while leaving small and learned society publishers “out in the cold” by leading to more ‘read and publish’ agreements—where research organisations pay the open-access publishing costs. Organisations often prioritise big publishers in seeking such deals.

Science Europe, which has research funder members, and Coalition S, a group of funders requiring immediate open access, both welcomed that the presidency’s proposal stressed “the importance of non-profit…publishing models that do not charge fees to authors”. The two have set out an action plan for ‘diamond’ open access with no fees for authors or readers.

But Coalition S warned: “Moving the burden of payment away from the author is, in our view, indeed a necessary but by no means sufficient condition for moving towards greater equity in academic publishing.”

The International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers said that ensuring the quality of research papers requires investment and that publishing models “will need to allow for the necessary investments and resources required to ensure excellence”. 

This article also appeared in Research Europe

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Researchers from Ukraine reflect on 12 months of conflict and their hopes for the future

It has been one year since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. As the death toll mounted and the devastation reached appalling levels, researchers joined their fellow citizens in fleeing to other parts of Europe and across the world to try to continue their work. Others stayed behind to work in Ukraine or join the fighting.

The international research community has scrambled to support those who stayed in the country with grants, equipment and access to academic resources.
Researchers who left have been offered placements at universities and help with resettling.

There is no sign that the need for support will end any time soon.

Here four researchers from Ukraine reflect on the past 12 months, how their lives have changed and their hopes for the future.

Opportunity for change

Sergey Kolotilov is acting deputy director at the LV Pisarzhevsky Institute of Physical Chemistry in Kyiv

I was in Kyiv when the war began. Many people, including myself, were shocked. They couldn’t believe it was true. On that day, I woke up at about 5am. A student called me and said: “It’s begun.”

I was lying in bed and was listening for the sound of explosions—I think there was an attack on the Ukrainian military air base about 20 kilometres away from Kyiv to the south. Then, there were several hours of silence.

Despite this, at about 10am I went to the institute because it was a working day. Many people came to the institute that day. After the first day of the invasion, I lived in the institute for two and a half months, day and night.

There were about 10 people living in the institute. We observed the territory and looked for mines or bright colour indicators—we read that Russian agents put markings on the roofs or on the ground in bright paint to mark out buildings for attack. We repaired the windows, which were broken by explosions, and checked the passports of people who went down to our shelters.

My wife and children went to Budapest, Hungary, at the beginning of March. In the first weeks of the invasion we expected that there could be military action directly on the streets of Kyiv, but then we understood that the city escaped this danger. My family returned in the middle of June, and since then I have lived at home and I go to the institute every working day. Almost as usual.

It is my impression that the international scientific community has supported everybody who wanted to find a position outside Ukraine after 24 February. I don’t know anybody who looked for a position abroad and could not find one in a short period of time. Scientists who stayed in Ukraine, like myself, have also been supported. I got a lot of letters from researchers I know from France, Germany and the US. All these scientists asked what they could do for me.

After a year of war, it is very important to finish the conflict, but the changes needed in Ukraine are of no less importance. It would be one of the worst things to win in the war but leave the country as it was some years ago. We need to tackle our country’s efficiency of administration and its corruption, and get a feeling of freedom similar to the most advanced countries in the world.

I hope that the pressure of the EU and the US in the fight against corruption and in the implementation of reforms will give good results, after long years of hoping and waiting. It is important for us to join the EU, but it is even more important to get European laws working in Ukraine.

The hardest journey

Alona Klochko is professor of international relations and law faculty chair at Sumy National Agrarian University in Ukraine. She is now a research professor in the faculty of law at the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland

In Ukraine, I built a fairly successful academic career over more than 15 years. I teach legal disciplines in English and supervise the scientific work of graduate students, and I have more than 120 works published in Ukrainian and English, including in highly rated publications. Before 24 February 2022, everything was good.

Our city, Sumy, was one of the first to feel the impact of the invasion as we are located about 30km from the border with Russia. The following weeks were more terrible than a nightmare.

When the ‘green corridor’ for evacuation opened in the Sumy region in March 2022, I made the decision to leave Ukraine and go to another country. After quickly gathering our documents, a laptop and some basic things, my nine-year-old daughter and I set off to nowhere. There was no plan at all.

I thought we could stay with friends and within two or three weeks, everything would be finished and we could return to normal life in Ukraine. First, we stayed for a few days with a colleague from Chernivtsi National University in a different part of Ukraine, then we stayed for a week in Romania. During that week, we agreed with distant relatives from Switzerland that we would stay with them.

It was probably one of the most difficult journeys of my life—to travel about 3,000km from Sumy, across the border into Romania and on to Switzerland, alone except for my daughter.

When we arrived in Switzerland, I decided to look for the nearest universities, out of curiosity. The nearest, at a distance of 40km, from our small Swiss village turned out to be the University of Neuchâtel. I found out that the university was helping students and scientists from Ukraine through the international Scholars at Risk programme, which supports at-risk academics.

After receiving my S status—which gives temporary protection in Switzerland—I was contracted to work for a year in the faculty of law of the University of Neuchâtel. I also continue to work with my students from Ukraine online.

I feel sincerely grateful to all of my colleagues at the University of Neuchâtel who helped me and other Ukrainian academics, which has contributed to the fact that Ukrainian researchers will be able to bring their experiences back to the Ukrainian educational and scientific environment in the future.

Polar challenges

Evgen Dykyi is director of the National Antarctic Scientific Center of Ukraine, and Olena Marushevska is the centre’s press secretary

Ukraine has a strong scientific interest in the polar regions, and we currently chair the international Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources. Through the National Antarctic Scientific Center of Ukraine, we have a research station in western Antarctica called the Vernadsky Research Base, which operates all year round.

Even there, the war has had an impact. Last February, our polar scientists in Ukraine had plane tickets booked to go out to the station and take over from the existing research team, who would then fly back home to Ukraine. But when the war broke out, Ukrainian air space was closed and they were unable to fly there. The centre had to quickly find ways to make sure the research continued and that the yearly staff rotation took place.

By early March, it had managed to gather some members of the team who had fled Ukraine to Poland, where the Polish Antarctic programme hosted them before they left for the Vernadsky Research Base. Our research vessel, an icebreaker called Noosfera, was also able to reach the station and bring supplies and help with the rotation.

For those who were returning to Ukraine, there was a hard choice: become a soldier or emigrate to continue their research. Some already knew that their research institutions’ buildings were ruined and they had nowhere to continue their scientific studies. Some joined the armed forces of Ukraine, exchanging a microscope for a rifle.

In this time of war, the National Antarctic Scientific Center of Ukraine lives in two parallel worlds. In one world, we need to think about climate change, the conservation of vulnerable Antarctic nature and our international obligations; in the other, we need to deal with the harsh realities of war. In October, a Russian ballistic rocket hit our office, which was partly destroyed. Luckily, nobody was hurt as the shelling happened in the early morning. Now all our staff have to work online, through the blackouts and sirens.

We are grateful to the international community for both its scientific and its military support. Together we are working towards a time where there can be peaceful science instead of war. 

Developing Ukrainian science

Larysa Zasiekina is professor of clinical psychology at Lesya Ukrainka Volyn National University and director of the Ukrainian Psychotrauma Center. She won a Researchers at Risk Fellowship through the British Academy and is currently a visiting scholar in the department of psychology at the University of Cambridge in the UK

My research field covers post-traumatic stress disorder, moral injury, continuous traumatic stress and cultural aspects of the memory of trauma. My focus is on the psychological intergenerational impact of genocide in Ukraine and eastern Europe, including studies of survivors of the Holocaust and the Holodomor (the artificial famine in the Soviet Union targeting ethnic Ukrainians) and their children.

This experience has been central to my current project—Exposure to Continuous Traumatic Stress and Its Consequences Among At-Risk Adolescents and Young Adults in Ukraine—which is being carried out at the University of Cambridge.

Since the war began, as a country we have strengthened our Ukrainian identity and our preparedness to fight for our independence and the freedom of Ukraine. Now, Ukrainians intentionally avoid everything aligned with Russia: language, history, culture and literature.

In the past 12 months, there has been excellent support for Ukrainian scholars in the international academic world, and many research centres have announced calls to support Ukrainian scholars. I came to the University of Cambridge through the Researchers at Risk Fellowship programme, which is run by the British Academy and the Council for At-Risk Academics.

Through this international support, Ukrainian scholars now have an unprecedented opportunity to be integrated into the global research arena and to develop the best international academic practices for Ukraine.

The war has definitely shaped my own research. In January 2022, I started coordinating my research on moral trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder in army veterans, which was funded by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine. But after the invasion, we shifted our focus to active-duty soldiers, their families and displaced people within Ukraine who required immediate psychological support. Our research data indicate a high prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, depression and anxiety in civilians, who need urgent support through evidence-based interventions.

Russia aims to exhaust the Ukrainian people physically and morally; therefore, we are developing community resilience and trying to resist continuous traumatic stress. The Ukrainians are demonstrating incredible courage and strength. I believe that Ukraine will win the war in the next 12 months, and we will start rebuilding our country.

EU dreams

On the first anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen offered the country’s president Volodymyr Zelensky more support.

In a speech on 9 February, von der Leyen said that Ukraine, which wants to join the EU, was “advancing on its European path in an impressive manner”.

She stressed that accession to the union was “a merits-based process”, but she praised Ukraine’s ability to “deliver fast and with high quality—even as you fight an aggressor, even as you are at war”.

“I hear Ukrainian people so often speak about their hopes. They want their children to grow up in the EU,” she said. “Let us turn their Ukrainian dreams into reality, into the European way of life.”

This article also appeared in Research Europe

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This week: academic publishing, sexual harassment, university alliances and more

New Horizon

EU representatives have begun planning the bloc’s next research and innovation programme, which is scheduled to start in 2028. Austria’s science ministry said an ad hoc taskforce of the EU’s European Research Area and Innovation Committee “dedicated to elaborating early advice” on the programme met for the first time in February, agreeing “on an ambitious agenda for the coming months”. It will work with a high-level expert group, to be set up in the near future, to advise the Commission on the programme. Its findings are expected to be published next year.

Full story

Academic publishing

Coalition S, the group of research funders requiring immediate open access to papers reporting work that they have supported, is commissioning a study to explore a “fair” global pricing system for academic publishing. It said current dominant systems do not reflect geographical differences in purchasing power, while waivers for some researchers are perceived as “patronising and neocolonial”. The group is asking consultants to apply to carry out the study, for which it has budgeted up to €60,000. Applications are sought by 13 March, and the final report is expected by the end of October.

Full story 

University collaboration

The European University Association has opened a consultation on the future of collaboration among higher education institutions. Collaboration is being hit by ongoing crises and uncertainty from geopolitical, economic, social, environmental and technological change, the EUA said. Under the Universities and the Future of Europe project, it is planning workshops, interviews with academic experts and discussions with national rectors’ conferences to develop “concrete ideas” about what universities want from collaboration and what they need for it to take place. An online workshop is scheduled for 28 March and in-person workshops at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, for 22-23 May. 

Full story

Picture of the week

Image: Airbus DS

This article also appeared in Research Europe

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Experts welcome Commission’s new engagement with China topics but warn of potential downsides

EU-based politics researchers have praised European Commission efforts to learn more about China with the launch of fellowships on relations between the powers, but they warn that the move could actually reduce academic cooperation. 

The fellowships will place academics in a Brussels-based service called Inspire, Debate, Engage and Accelerate Action, which will advise the Commission president. The aim is “to foster strategic cooperation with think tanks and universities…to tap into deep expertise on China”. 

Lasting 6 to 12 months, the paid fellowships will be for social science, environmental or digital topics involving China, with up to 15 offered in each period.

Nana de Graaff, a political scientist at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands, said this suggested the Commission, whose officials have described China as a “strategic competitor”, “is serious about upgrading its knowledge” of the country.

But she also warned: “There is a tendency towards Western-centric thinking in today’s policy advice and think tanks in Europe, and there may be a risk towards a similar bias in the composition of these fellowships.” Depending on who is selected, the result may be “that Europe distances itself even more from China, which then will not be beneficial for EU-China research collaboration”. 

Matthias Stepan, a political scientist at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany, said the fellowships addressed the EU’s “knowledge gap on China”, but he added: “Better-informed policies might result in the discontinuation of some cooperation projects, they might also help to identify new areas for mutually beneficial cooperation with China.”

This article also appeared in Research Europe

Update 23/2 – This article was updated to expand Stepan’s comments.

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European Research Area and Innovation Committee will discuss science for policymaking and international cooperation

The body that advises the EU on research and innovation policy, the European Research Area and Innovation Committee, has adopted new priorities for the next 18 months, including science for policymaking and international cooperation.

Erac, which comprises representatives from the EU member state governments and the European Commission, agreed the new priorities in a 2023-24 work programme it adopted at a meeting last week, with details published on 20 February.

Horizon Europe successor

The priorities will be discussed at meetings throughout the period, with a meeting in June set to cover five topics, including guidance on the EU R&I programme that will succeed the 2021-27 Horizon Europe programme.

The other four topics proposed for discussion in June are: national implementation of the European Research Area policy package, international R&I cooperation, the science-for-policy ecosystem, and advanced materials in the context of global developments. 

Another Erac meeting is planned for October, when topics for discussion will include 2025-27 priorities for the ERA policy package and governance for the bloc’s R&I-based missions.

Diversity in research

Other proposed topics for discussion that have not yet been assigned to a specific meeting include R&D investments, supporting a diverse and inclusive research community, the role of research in society, and research infrastructures.

“Erac’s work programmes will take a flexible and proactive approach to ensure that Erac can contribute in a speedy and timely manner, as appropriate, to emerging and evolving issues,” the update said.

“It is important that Erac considers carefully what outcomes and effects it aims to achieve. Every topic discussed in Erac shall have a clear perspective on the pursued impact and the concrete follow-up.”

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2036 Earth Explorer mission could cost up to €550m

The European Space Agency is seeking ideas from industry and academia for a future Earth-observation mission, which could cost it up to €550m in 2022 prices.

Esa said the call launched on 20 February would accept suggestions and proposals for the 12th iteration of its Earth Explorer satellite research missions until 29 September, with a 28 April deadline for letters of intent.

The mission is scheduled to launch around 2036.

Mission vision

Begun in 2009, Esa’s Earth Explorer missions are aimed at better understanding the Earth and the effects of human activity. They can carry out work in areas such as climate systems, food security and managing natural resources. Ten missions have been selected so far, with four currently in operation.

Esa’s director of Earth-observation programmes, Simonetta Cheli, said the agency was “very eager to kickstart” preparations for the future mission, which would “help retain Esa’s leadership in innovation”.

Cheli added that the missions were “strongly supported” at a meeting of Esa member state ministers in November.

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Company’s science arm reports “pay-to-publish open-access articles growing particularly strongly”

Relx, the parent company of academic publishing giant Elsevier, has reported adjusted profit growth of almost 20 per cent for its 2022 financial year.

The publicly listed company reported on 16 February that its adjusted profit before tax rose to £2.49 billion (€2.80bn) in 2022, up from £2.08bn in 2021.

This was based on revenue of £8.55bn, giving an adjusted profit before tax margin of 29.1 per cent. Relx said its profit growth was 13 per cent factoring in currency fluctuations.

In the scientific, technical and medical division of the company, revenue grew by 10 per cent to £2.91bn. Adjusted operating profit in this division was £1.1bn, up 10 per cent on the previous year. This gave an adjusted operating profit margin for the division of 37.8 per cent. 

In this division, 45 per cent of the revenue came from the primary research academic and government section, which includes academic publishing activity.

Driven by pay-to-publish

Relx said growth in this section was “driven by higher volumes of articles submitted and published, with pay-to-publish open-access articles growing particularly strongly, and by increasingly sophisticated analytics and evolving technology platforms”.

Pay-to-publish open access has been criticised by some in academia for shifting the burden of paying for scholarly publishing from the reader to the author.

Relx chief executive Erik Engstrom was upbeat about the results, saying: “Relx delivered strong revenue and profit growth in 2022. The improving long-term growth trajectory is being driven by the ongoing shift in our business mix towards higher growth analytics and decision tools that deliver enhanced value to our customers across market segments.”

For 2023, the company said it expected growth in revenue and adjusted operating profit to remain above historical trends.

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Research organisations push Commission for roadmap and task force to deliver “concrete” initiatives

A group of learned societies and research organisations has urged the EU research commissioner Mariya Gabriel to act quickly on initiatives to support research careers.

The European Commission is developing a proposal to create a European framework for research careers, against a backdrop of growing concern over working conditions—especially for early career researchers.

On 10 February, the Initiative for Science in Europe wrote to Gabriel (pictured) saying there is “an urgent need to act with concrete and reasonable initiatives”.

“It is essential to draw up a roadmap in a short time with a clear goal and a tight timetable to achieve it,” the ISE said in the letter seen by Research Professional News, pushing for this to happen in 2023.

The letter adds that the Commission’s 2025-27 strategic plan for the EU’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme should introduce “issues and needs concerning researchers’ careers and the prospect of a dedicated programme and budget” to address them.

Research Professional News has asked the Commission for comment.

Taskforce sought

ISE was founded in 2004 to rally support from the scientific community for creating the European Research Council funder, which launched in 2007.

The group has encouraged Gabriel to “set up without delay a joint European Commission [and] Stakeholders task force” for research careers, mirroring what was done during the development of the ERC.

This taskforce should include “top-level leaders” such as university presidents and the heads of research organisations and companies, ISE said, and could lead to the establishment of a partnership for fostering research careers.

In January, Portugal’s former science minister Manuel Heitor told Research Professional News he had been working with the Commission on plans to develop and test such a public-private partnership under Horizon Europe, which would channel funding to research institutions with good practices.

Heitor said the partnership would be piloted with a provisional budget of €10 million for 2024-25 with the goal of establishing a new programme with much greater funding in the successor to Horizon Europe starting in 2028.

Gabriel told MEPs on 24 January that the proposed partnership “will be a part of our strategic plan” for 2025-27.

Governmental meeting

Plans for a European framework for research careers were discussed by EU member state representatives at a 14 January meeting of the European Research Area and Innovation Committee policy advice body, which comprises representatives of the Commission and EU member state governments.

A document prepared by the Commission for the meeting said that “improving researchers’ working conditions should be at the core of the EU policy framework for research careers”.

One measure outlined in the document was limiting the number of fixed-term appointments that employers can offer, to improve the precarious conditions of many researchers.

The Commission suggested “a maximum threshold of one third of fixed-term contracts in the overall researchers’ human resources of a given employer” as well as “a limited maximum total duration of fixed-term appointments”.

A report from the meeting said that although ministers recognised the importance of improving research careers, “they also highlighted the differences between national systems and the autonomy of institutions” and said that more work was needed on the Commission’s plans.

Careers observatory

One Commission initiative that looks set to launch soon is a ‘Research Careers Observatory’ that is being developed with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The observatory would monitor skills and training, research jobs, and mobility and exchange, and has a budget of €3.7m for 2023-24. It is expected to launch in the spring.

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Belgium, Bulgaria, Latvia and the Netherlands referred to court over “failure” to implement EU rules

The European Commission has referred four EU member states to the bloc’s top court, saying they have “failed” to implement rules on opening up public sector data.

Belgium, Bulgaria, Latvia and the Netherlands have been referred to the Court of Justice of the EU because they missed a July 2021 deadline to transpose new EU rules into national legislation, the Commission announced on 15 February.

The situation relates to a 2019 update of the EU Public Sector Information Directive. The Commission said the update “aims to unlock the benefits of data and helps to make more of the vast and valuable pool of data resources produced by the public sector available for reuse”.

It said the four countries “still have not communicated all their national measures”, despite multiple prompts.

Research Professional News has contacted the countries’ EU representatives for comment.

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Danuta Hübner thinks Marc Lemaître will help countries lagging on their research and innovation performance

Marc Lemaître, the incoming head of the European Commission’s research and innovation department, can be relied upon to get things done, his former boss has told Research Professional News.

Lemaître (pictured right), who has held the top position for an official at the Commission’s regional and urban policy department since 2016, will take up the equivalent post in the R&I department from 16 February.

From 2007 to 2009, he was head of cabinet for Danuta Hübner (pictured left) when she was the EU commissioner for regional policy, with political ownership of the department Lemaître would later run.

“He was absolutely the person difficult to forget, because he was so capable and so well prepared to do whatever you wanted him to do and not only organise in the sense of management but also intellectually,” Hübner, now an MEP with Poland’s Civic Platform party, recalled this month. “You could rely on him.”

According to Hübner, Lemaître “understood very well from day one practically” the complexity of the EU budget, and was “very tough” on his collaborators when it came to respecting rules or working together.

Lemaître has experience working with local stakeholders, she pointed out, adding that he has the ability to judge whether an issue is important and to implement and enforce policy. “He’s, I think, the right person in the right place,” she said.

One of the issues Hübner hopes Lemaître will be able to help resolve is the impasse on the EU’s scientific ties with the UK. Political disputes have prevented the country from joining the bloc’s Horizon Europe R&I programme.

Other areas she thinks he can make a mark on include bringing people in the research sector together to work on the bloc’s green industry plan, and helping countries that are underdeveloped in R&I catch up to the leaders.

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Agreement between agencies aims to support Earth observation and education projects

The European Space Agency has signed a deal with Mexico’s space agency to support new joint activities in areas such as Earth observation, in a strengthening of ties.

Past joint projects between Esa and the Agencia Espacial Mexicana (AEM) have included monitoring harmful algae around Mexico’s coast and using space-based technologies to enforce the “value and credibility” of certified seafood products.

Esa announced on 15 February that the new agreement would allow the agencies to “create a framework for more intensive cooperation”.

It said Esa representatives have identified potential collaborative projects in education, Earth observation and “integrated applications”.

“Mexico and AEM are playing an important role for the development of space activities in the region,” Esa said.

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Drug company trade body suggests concerns around intellectual property will push R&D investment elsewhere

Plans to change EU rules on drug development would be “extremely damaging” to the bloc’s pharmaceutical industry, according to a trade body.

The European Commission is expected to publish its plans in the coming weeks, with expressed aims that include supporting innovation and ensuring medicines are accessible and affordable.

However, based on what it said was a leaked draft of the plans, the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations said on 10 February that “there should be no doubt that in its current form, this proposed legislation will be extremely damaging to the competitiveness of Europe’s industry and to our region’s strategic autonomy”.

Efpia added: “Despite member state calls for the Commission to support European competitiveness and strategic autonomy, the current text of the revised pharmaceutical legislation would irretrievably sabotage [the] industry.”

Asked for details of the group’s concerns, a spokesperson referred Research Professional News to a November press release it put out, as well as articles written by Efpia leaders this month and last October.

The articles, published by the news organisation Politico, warned against changes to intellectual property rules that industry figures said could negatively affect drug companies. The press release included complaints that the EU spreads its public R&D funding too thinly.

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Statement from Swedish presidency of Council of EU follows discussion among research ministers

Research papers should be made freely available immediately under open licences as standard in the EU, the Swedish presidency of the Council of the EU member state governments has said.

“Making scholarly publications rapidly accessible to all contributes to high-quality research,” the Swedish presidency said on 8 February. “Therefore, providing immediate open access to peer-reviewed research publications under open licences should be the default.”

At a meeting on the same day, EU research ministers discussed challenges to meeting this goal.

Sweden’s education minister Mats Persson (pictured) said afterwards: “There are issues [that need] to be dealt with—for example, the high costs of publishing and of reading articles. Another issue is the fact that some journals don’t have good enough processes for securing the quality of the publications.”

National policies urged

Also on the same day, the Swedish presidency published a set of draft Council conclusions on scholarly publishing for EU governments to consider and ultimately adopt, albeit probably in amended form.

This text echoes the presidency statement but goes further in saying that authors should not have to pay fees when publishing their research papers open access.

The draft text “stresses that research results should be as open as possible and as closed as necessary, and that immediate and unrestricted open access should be the default mode in publishing, with no fees for authors”.

It invites EU member states to update national policies “as soon as possible” to bring about this situation.

Several EU governments have already adopted policies that are broadly in line with this stance, with many aligning with the Plan S initiative for bringing about immediate open access to publicly funded research results.

However, for other countries and public funders, adopting such policies would be a dramatic change.

Avoiding inequality

The draft text expresses “concern that the increasing costs for scholarly publishing associated with certain business models may cause inequality in scientific communities and may also become unsustainable for public research funders and institutions”.

In that vein, it “highlights the importance of non-profit, scholarly open-access publishing models that do not charge fees to authors”, adding that various such models exist.

It says it is “essential” to avoid researchers being “limited” in their publication options by an inability to pay fees, and to avoid researchers and the public being unable to read research due to subscription charges.

However, the text says that the current mix of for-profit and not-for-profit scholarly publishing organisations “should be maintained”.

Other priorities

The draft text encourages EU member states to continue to support the development of Open Research Europe, the EU’s open-access publishing platform, which for now remains limited to use by researchers funded by the bloc’s R&I programme.

Open Research Europe should morph to become “a collective, non-profit, large-scale publishing service for the public good”, the text says, in support of previously reported moves to open the platform up for use by other research funders and the researchers they have supported.

It says that much of scholarly publishing is still based on business and operational models from before digitalisation, adding that the “potential for digitalisation has not yet been fully realised”, in particular for datasets and software.

Research representatives from the EU member states are set to meet on 16 February to discuss the text.

In their meeting on 8 February, ministers also discussed research infrastructures and how to open up their data to help tackle societal challenges.

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After years in development, the European Open Science Cloud is starting to take shape

When the EU published a list of information it was making freely available for researchers last month, EU internal market commissioner Thierry Breton said Europe was “unlocking a large amount of public data for the benefit of all”.

This data ranges from meteorological observations of real clouds far above researchers’ heads to measurements of contamination in the soil beneath their feet. But finding and accessing data like this can be a problem. This is what the European Open Science Cloud hopes to solve.

Not ready to burst

The desire to open up datasets was given a boost during the Covid-19 pandemic, when lightning-quick development of vaccines was facilitated thanks to data-sharing and collaboration. This was good news for the EOSC, the EU’s premier project for doing more with data.

Strictly speaking, the EOSC is not really a cloud at all. Rather than holding researchers’ data, its backers hope it will eventually function as a gigantic, internet-style data-sharing system that will let researchers share their results and link up to other scientists’ work. Researchers will host their own data and others will be able to access it using the EOSC.

While the EOSC is limited to Europe, in future, several similar services could even join together to create a global data-sharing service, allowing scientists access to the data they need to produce the best research possible in a global web of data that is findable, accessible, interoperable and reuseable (Fair).

But to date, this cloud remains nebulous. Work originally started in 2014. Since 2018, a limited amount of data has been available through a ‘portal’ and this year work will begin on rolling out the Minimum Viable EOSC, an early version of the finished cloud.

Some would like the whole cloud to be up and running by 2025, but a more realistic date is likely to be in the 2030s or even 2040s. The project is not cheap: €250 million was invested in it in the EU’s 2014-20 Horizon 2020 R&I programme and €1 billion is budgeted for the current seven-year budget period. And while the technical problems of the EOSC are daunting, the real challenge could lie in changing researchers’ hearts and minds.

Stormy beginning

The project got off to a somewhat rocky start. Having been in development since 2014, concerns emerged at the start of this decade about the shape it was taking.

In early 2021, an executive board—created in 2018 to oversee the implementation of the EOSC—complained that the early stages of development were hampered by confusion over mandates and frustration over governance arrangements.

Those early concerns have died down, and a member-led organisation called the EOSC Association has governed the programme since 2020. This year, it is aiming to work on the rollout of the Minimum Viable EOSC—a blueprint to demonstrate what a fully fledged operation could do and how it could help researchers. This would allow researchers to access some data, but would fall short of the main ambition for the EOSC to link all appropriate research data in Europe.

Others want to see quicker progress. Jean-Claude Burgelman, professor of open-science policy at the Free University of Brussels and a former European Commission official who oversaw the initial development of the project, believes that change should come sooner, saying “2040 is much too slow”.

“Twenty years to make data-driven science interoperable is ridiculously long,” he adds.

Burgelman points to developments in the US, where the Office of Science and Technology Policy has made 2023 the year of open science, which he believes could give developments in Europe a push. “They [the US] have the private providers to make it happen…They have all the websites, the web companies, so it can go very fast there,” he says.

He also feels that, post-Covid, Europe could skip the prototype stage, as it risks blowing the full cloud further away. “A Minimum Viable EOSC would have been fantastic five years ago because we faced a lot of scepticism,” he says. “But now, no one is doubting that all science is data science, no one is questioning whether all science is multidisciplinary, collaborative, bringing together datasets which we never had before. We should just do it.”

Even if the cloud becomes reality, questions remain over whether researchers would embrace it. Those close to the EOSC worry that despite the praise heaped on data-sharing during the pandemic, many researchers are reluctant to make their data openly available, partly because they are protective of their results. Being first to publish a new finding is still the best way to build a reputation. Putting out all your data for anyone to use risks undermining a researcher’s ability to claim the discoveries that may hide within it.

“We do have technical challenges, of course, to create this and to build this…but the non-technical challenges are much bigger,” Karel Luyben, president of the EOSC Association, tells Research Europe. “My prediction: it will simply take time for people to get used to it and adopt it.”

Foggy conditions

Questions remain around what data researchers would be asked to share, how they would share it and how they could trust others’ data. Despite the benefits of sharing data, researchers may also be reluctant to share it across countries and disciplines before they are finished with it.

Luyben feels that developing a worldwide system of openly accessible data will take decades—even if some politicians would like to see progress sooner. 

“If, in 2040, 50 per cent of all the relevant research data from publicly funded research would be as Fair as possible, great. That gives you an idea for the timeframe I have in mind,” he says. “I can offer you something in 2025, but not 50 per cent of the research data worldwide.”

Paul Ayris, chair of the EU research library group Liber’s Citizen Science Working Group, and a representative for the League of European Research Universities (Leru) in the EOSC Association, agrees that while there are technical challenges involved in creating the EOSC, the bigger challenge is in persuading researchers and universities to make the changes needed for it to work.

“You can solve technical challenges in months or a year or two, depending on the scale of the challenge. Changing culture takes a generation,” he says. “That is why the provision and the buy-in are lagging behind the ambition and the technical developments, in my view.” 

Off the ground

Ayris highlights the “scale of the challenge” involved in getting the EOSC up and running. In the UK, for example, there is no central national research-data repository that the EOSC could use to link up with other countries; instead, there are separate systems in each university. “The EOSC would need to talk to each university in turn…in order to get all the relevant material. And that’s virtually impossible to do on that one-to-one basis—the scale is just too great,” he says.

But other countries have more centralised or regional systems, which would make it easier to interact with the data. To make culture changes more widespread, Ayris believes that university associations such as Leru and the Coimbra Group need to become more involved.

“We’re all signed up to the idea of open data where data can be made Fair and open; it’s not that universities are unwilling to do that. But there’s a gap between the universities on the ground and the EOSC in the centre trying to pull it all together,” he says.

With the development of the EOSC Association, however, he believes that “we’re in a better position than we were [a year or two] ago to start on that journey at an increased speed”.

“I think it will succeed. But we’re not close to succeeding yet because there is so much still to do—infrastructure to be developed, culture to change, stakeholders to bring in—and that’s going to take time,” Ayris says. “If you were to ask me, is the wind set fair? Is EOSC going to be successful? My answer would be yes.” 

When, though, is a different question.

“When will it be viable? When is the minimum? How long is a piece of string?”   

Cloud formation

The European Open Science Cloud has been in development for almost 10 years. Here is a timeline of its progress so far, alongside future plans.

2014: Work starts.

2020: EOSC Association formed.

2023: Minimum Viable EOSC begins rollout.

2026-27: Minimum Viable EOSC up and running (planned).

Undetermined: Completion.

This article also appeared in Research Europe

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Agreements with Canada, Faroe Islands and New Zealand could all be blocked by European Parliament

A leading MEP has said the European Commission needs to provide a solution to a “major issue” preventing some non-EU nations from becoming associate members of the bloc’s Horizon Europe R&D programme.

Christian Ehler, a senior member of the European Parlia-ment’s research committee, told Research Europe that the Parliament has concerns about how the deals have been structured for the Faroe Islands and New Zealand.

The deals would apply indefinitely to future EU R&D programmes, he said, scrapping a role for the Parliament to sign off association to each programme. Association gives non-EU countries access to program-mes on almost equal terms to EU member states, in exchange for a budget contribution.

During a January committee session, Ehler (pictured) said the deal for the Faroe Islands was being “blocked” by the Parliament. He told Research Europe that the New Zealand deal was heading the same way. A planned deal with Canada is also understood to face the same issue.

“It is for the Commission to come forward with a proposal on how to solve that,” Ehler said.

The deals would involve joint committees deciding on the nations’ participation in EU programmes without parliamentary involvement. The Parliament laid out its opposition to such a process in 2021.

“Parliament’s opposition to consenting to the agreements is a major issue,” Ehler said, calling for an agreement between the EU institutions that would set out a role for the Parliament.

According to a parliamentary insider, the body representing the various political groups of MEPs has asked the president of the Parliament to discuss the issue with the Commission.

Ehler said the agreements were “too political” for the Parliament not to have a say for each programme.

“The Commission has created very difficult situations regarding Faroe Islands and New Zealand because it has concluded agreements for which it knew it would not get Parliamentary consent,” he said.

The Commission declined to comment but Research Europe understands that the structure of the deals was directed by
the Council of EU member state governments.

For now, the Faroe Islands can take part in Horizon Europe while the ratification of its deal is pending, and the same will be true for New Zealand.

But a parliamentary insider said that if no solution is found, the Parliament could vote down the agreements.

Loveday Kempthorne, from New Zealand’s Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, said that “discussion around this approval is a natural and welcome part of the democratic process”.

A Canadian government spokesperson said the country was “monitoring developments regarding Horizon Europe”.  

This article also appeared in Research Europe and a version appeared in Research Fortnight

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This week: space ‘battlefield’, cancer data, quantum technologies and more

Academic freedom

The European Parliament research committee has written to its sister Committee on Constitutional Affairs, which is in charge of dealing with the EU’s treaties, calling for academic freedom to be “clearly” enshrined in them. It said this should be done by inserting a phrase setting out that the EU “shall respect and promote academic freedom and the freedom to conduct research as an individual and institutional right”. The constitutional affairs committee is set to propose a motion for a resolution to amend the treaties, but lengthy debate is expected with the European Commission and EU governments.

Full story

Hungarian universities

The Hungarian government has downplayed the effects of the EU’s decision to freeze new funding for 21 of the country’s universities, saying it should not affect involvement in the bloc’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme and Erasmus+ academic mobility programme. The decision relates to universities operated as ‘public interest trusts’, whose governing bodies include members with links to government, and is intended to protect the EU budget. Following a meeting with EU commissioners, Hungary’s minister for regional development, Tibor Navracsics, said legislative amendments due to be adopted in March would address the EU’s concerns.

Full story 

R&D ecosystem

Europe needs to improve “many things” to become a leader in breakthrough technologies, according to a pioneer behind one of the first successful Covid-19 vaccines. Özlem Türeci, the co-founder and chief medical officer of German biotechnology company BioNTech, said at a European Parliament event that she had problems getting her science funded because of reviewers “not believing” in it, as well as problems with publishing papers and spinning off a company. “Our environment was not used to it, and no one really knew what to do with us,” she said, adding that the most difficult challenge was getting venture capital support.

Full story

Picture of the week

Image: European Union

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European Commission’s new research head Marc Lemaître faces pressure to prioritise the future R&D programme

Research groups have urged the European Commission’s new top R&D official to focus on planning the next iteration of the EU’s multibillion-euro research and innovation programme when he starts the role this month.

Although the current €95.5bn Horizon Europe funding programme is less than halfway through its seven-year lifespan, the EU is already evaluating its performance as it makes plans for a successor programme in 2028.

This will be one of the key jobs for Marc Lemaître, a Luxembourgish national, who is being transferred to run the research and innovation department from the top spot in the Commission’s regional policy department. 

Lemaître (pictured) must “defend the Horizon Europe budget and prepare the ground for an increased R&I budget for [the next programme] based on the important role of scientific knowledge for our societies” said Lidia Borrell-Damián, secretary-general of the group of research funding and performing organisations, Science Europe.

University representatives expressed similar wishes.

Kurt Deketelaere, secretary general of the League of European Research Universities, urged Lemaître to consult with stakeholders on planning for the next programme and to ensure funding is sufficiently balanced across its various instruments.

He also stressed the need for “safeguarding and ringfencing the R&I budget [from] continued attempts to plunder it for new policy priorities”.

“[Lemaître] needs to build coalitions across the Com-mission for investing in R&I—in relation to so many other demands on the EU’s budget,” agreed Jan Palmowski, secretary general of the Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities.

A new ERA?

Other priorities that the research community raised for Lemaître included promoting the European Research Area agenda, which aims to make the EU a single zone for R&I. 

“I hope [Lemaître] will continue the constructive dialogue with the member states on the ERA, because this trust between the Commission and the member states will also translate in mutual support—I hope—for the next R&I programme,” said Palmowski.

Silvia Gómez Recio, secretary general of the Young European Universities Network, warned that new ideas should not come at the cost of delivering outcomes on existing initiatives including the ERA. “There are always high expectations when new roles come into force, but there are also risks,” she said. “In the past year, we have been planning on many areas for advancing the ERA. Now, it is not time for new ideas but for taking action on what matters most.”

Edward Ricketts, a senior adviser for research at the Cesaer group of science and technology universities, agreed. “It’s crucial for science in Europe that the actions and activities already underway can have a tangible impact,” he said, “and that the ERA can be even stronger beyond 2024.” 

Lemaître will take over from Signe Ratso, who has been serving as interim director general since September, when
Jean-Eric Paquet became the EU ambassador to Japan.

The sector has welcomed his appointment, as did former colleague Robert-Jan Smits, who was leading the R&I department when Lemaître began leading on regional policy.

Lemaître has previously served as head of cabinet for former budget commissioner Janusz Lewandowski, which Smits said means he will “know the EU budget inside and out”. This will be handy for discussions on the EU’s next seven-year budget period, according to Smits.

Other focus areas

Sector representatives have expressed further hopes for Lemaître’s reign, which include the Commission continuing to take a global approach to R&I; articulating the benefits of the EU’s European Research Council and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions funders of basic research; revamping the EU’s new missions on topics including climate change and cancer to make R&I more central to their work; and increasing funding for new industrial policies.

Muriel Attané, secretary general of the European Association of Research and Technology Organisations, said Earto would like Lemaître to look at “further linking R&I policy with industrial polices”, specifically new climate change and raw materials policies “that would need research arms” to succeed.

Many also hoped that Lemaître’s experience in heading up the regional department will enable him to further drive links between the EU’s various sources of R&I funding.  

This article also appeared in Research Europe

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Europe’s disease-control agency boss Andrea Ammon on learning lessons from the pandemic

In 2003 an outbreak of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) virus sparked fears of a serious health threat ripping through Europe. Although leaders’ worst fears did not come to pass—according to the World Health Organization, by July that year there were only 31 probable cases in the EU—the European Commission warned that the outbreak had exposed “major weaknesses in health infrastructures”.

To better prepare for such an outbreak in the future, two years later the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control was created.

But when Sars-Cov-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, surfaced in 2019, much of Europe was still not prepared. “We learned that one cannot be complacent when it comes to pandemic preparedness and health-systems capacity,” ECDC director Andrea Ammon, who joined the agency 18 years ago, tells Research Europe.

Filling the gaps

The ECDC was designed to coordinate EU member state responses to disease outbreaks. It gives countries advice and helps them identify gaps and vulnerabilities in their preparedness.

It also provides practical help: during the West Nile virus outbreak in Greece in 2010, the ECDC sent a team of virologists, epidemiologists and entomologists to help the authorities. But its role is purely advisory, with member states free to decide policy for themselves. For example, not all member states followed its recent advice that it was unnecessary to screen all travellers arriving from China for Covid-19.

But the emergence of Covid-19, caused by a virus similar to the one that causes Sars, has changed how the ECDC approaches its responsibilities. Ammon says Covid-19 taught the organisation that Europe had to improve its public health systems and disease surveillance.

“Major investments are needed in infrastructure and improved technology, where we should embrace the enormous potential of health digitalisation, and agree on key surveillance objectives and suitable methods to achieve them,” she says.

The ECDC also learnt the importance of a multidisciplinary response to pathogens of all kinds. “Medical countermeasures need to be embedded in a wider public health approach and preparedness should be flexible, scalable and pathogen-independent, covering a broad range of technical areas and pandemic drivers,” Ammon says.

In October last year, EU member state governments agreed laws setting out increased responsibilities and powers for the bloc’s health agencies. The ECDC was given enhanced powers to coordinate the EU’s response to outbreaks, as well as more responsibility for surveillance, giving an early warning on disease outbreaks and improving the bloc’s preparedness.

New mandate 

With its new mandate, the ECDC plans to digitalise integrated surveillance systems and improve its awareness of epidemics using artificial intelligence. It also wants to develop prevention and response plans for member states and will make recommendations for risk management.

As part of these efforts, the ECDC will provide enhanced support to member states in the form of a ready-to-be-deployed taskforce. The taskforce is designed to contribute to global health security and, according to Ammon, its function is about “ensuring [a] timely emergency response” during outbreaks and health crises. 

When asked, Ammon does not say whether the agency has already received any requests for scientific advice. But she does say the new mandate “will require us to develop much closer relationships with our member states and other stakeholders”, and that she is “very much looking forward to this”.

Had the ECDC wielded these newly acquired powers during the Covid-19 outbreak, could things have turned out differently? In April 2022, EU health commissioner Stella Kyriakides said 60-80 per cent of the EU population had been infected with Covid-19.

Ammon is clear that, in future, her agency is hoping for better outcomes. She says “it is high time to draw some lessons” from the Covid-19 pandemic “and face what I hope is our past, in order to prepare for a better future”.

The next pandemic will reveal whether Europe has learned those lessons. 

This article also appeared in Research Europe

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Industry group warns proposal could restrict uses that are “critical to society”

EU regulators are mulling legislative restrictions on thousands of chemicals that they warn could otherwise cause increasing harm to health and the environment, but which industry says are crucial for the production of many products.

The European Chemicals Agency on 7 February released details of the proposed restriction of about 10,000 per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, which are sometimes described as ‘forever chemicals’ because they are, in the regulator’s words, “very persistent in the environment”.

The proposal was brought to the agency by authorities in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, and will now be evaluated by its scientific committees.

Peter van der Zandt, the agency’s director for risk assessment, said: “While the evaluation of such a broad proposal with thousands of substances, and many uses, will be challenging, we are ready.”

A six-month consultation is expected to start on 22 March, but industry groups have already raised concerns.

“The restriction proposal may still lead to disruptions of certain value chains and eventually eliminate some key applications,” said Jonathan Crozier, advocacy chair of the industry group FluoroProducts and PFAS for Europe. 

Marleen Pauwels, executive director on halogens at the European Chemical Industry Council, said the proposal “not only covers an unprecedented number of diverse substances, but also has a huge impact on many downstream products we use in our daily lives [and] may still restrict some applications that have been flagged to us as critical to society”.

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Organic certifier says citizens need “right to decide” on processes many researchers think are outdated

Organisations including seed producers and organic-food certifiers have petitioned the EU not to change decades-old regulations on plants produced by genetic modification, which many researchers think are no longer fit for purpose.

The move comes as the European Commission consults with industry, academia and other stakeholders on whether EU laws should be updated to regulate the use and products of modern genetic manipulation techniques differently from older methods.

Organisations that handed over the petition on 7 February, including German organic certifier Biodynamic Federation Demeter International and Greek seed producer Sino Seeds, said it had attracted about 420,000 signatures from members of the public.

The petition says that “All genetically modified organisms must undergo a strict safety evaluation and be labelled as genetically modified, to ensure transparency throughout the whole supply chain for citizens and farmers.” It adds: “More research must be carried out on the environmental, biodiversity and health risks of new GMOs, on their socioeconomic impacts for farmers and the food system, and on the development of detection methods.”

Clara Behr, head of policy and public relations for the Biodynamic Federation Demeter International, said: “Excluding new GMOs [from EU regulations] would prevent farmers, food producers, retailers and citizens from opting for GM-free choices. We have the right to decide what we eat and grow in our fields.”

Research has found that the new genetic manipulation techniques referred to can produce crops that are indistinguishable from the products of traditional agricultural methods. 

Research organisations including the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities have said that these techniques should not be subject to the same controls as older manipulation methods, and the Commission has suggested that updating EU rules could support food security. 

A Commission spokesperson told Research Professional News in October that an “ongoing impact assessment” of potential changes to EU laws is considering “a broad range of policy options” that “reflect the full range of views” received as feedback, including some urging that the rules should remain unchanged.

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Current system for covering publishing costs is regionally and globally inequitable, says funder group

Coalition S, a group of research funders that require immediate open access to papers reporting work they have supported, is commissioning a study to explore a “fair” global pricing system for academic publishing.

Announcing its plans on 6 February, the group said the current dominant systems for covering the costs of academic publishing are regionally and globally inequitable because they do not reflect geographical differences in purchasing power—an argument that Coalition S executive director Johan Rooryck set out previously in Research Professional News, together with co-author Faranah Osman.

Coalition S is therefore seeking to commission a study into alternative pricing models that enable global participation in academic publishing with an equitable cost distribution.

The funder group said the transition from subscription models to open access has shifted the responsibility for paying for academic publishing services from readers to producers of knowledge, including authors, universities and funders.

It noted that article-processing charges for publishing with open access are priced at “an identical level” for customers irrespective of their location, unlike other global products and services that are often priced in accordance with what the local market can afford.

Some publishers offer APC waivers to researchers, but there is no globally agreed method and waivers are perceived as “patronising and neocolonial”, according to Coalition S.

A new system should be developed that is fair in guaranteeing reasonable prices, equitable in taking into account local purchasing abilities and transparent, Coalition S said.

The group is asking consultants to apply to carry out the study, for which it has budgeted up to €60,000. Applications are sought by 13 March, and the final report is expected by the end of October.

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Comments sought on priorities for stakeholder platform

The EU is holding a consultation on plans to improve the ways in which clinical trials are conducted in the bloc.

On 3 February, the European Medicines Agency announced it was launching the consultation together with the European Commission and the heads of national medicines agencies, seeking views on the creation of a “multi-stakeholder platform” for improvements.

“The creation of a common platform will encourage interactions between stakeholders at EU level, promoting a shared understanding and enabling concerted action to improve the clinical trials landscape for the benefit of innovation and all European citizens,” the EMA said.

Participating stakeholders will meet regularly, starting in the second quarter of 2023, to discuss priorities, according to the agency. It said members of the public could provide comments on a concept paper for the group and input on the priorities.

“Experience with the Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated the need to accelerate change and innovation in the way that clinical trials are designed, regulated and conducted,” the EMA said.

It added that the group would “facilitate the evolution of clinical trial methods and approaches, help identify areas for progress, and find practical solutions to enable and drive change”.

The group is part of a wider push on changing how trials are initiated, designed and run in the EU. Comments are being sought via an online form until 3 March.

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European Parliament research committee formally calls for change to EU treaties

MEPs with responsibility for research have formally called for the EU’s legal treaties to be changed to better protect academic freedom.

At the end of last year, MEP Christian Ehler, who chairs the European Parliament’s Panel for the Future of Science and Technology, revealed plans to amend the EU’s underpinning legal treaties, as they currently make limited reference to academic freedom, which is perceived as being under threat in Europe and around the world.

The Parliament’s research committee has now sent a letter to the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, which is in charge of dealing with the EU’s treaties, calling for academic freedom to be “clearly” enshrined in them.

The letter, sent on 24 January by research committee chair Cristian-Silviu Buşoi, demands that “the protection of and respect for academic freedom, including institutional autonomy, be clearly enshrined in the treaties, strengthening their legal protection throughout the EU”.

It adds that this should be done by inserting a phrase setting out that the EU “shall respect and promote academic freedom and the freedom to conduct research as an individual and institutional right”.

The constitutional affairs committee is set to propose a motion for a resolution to amend the treaties, but Ehler warned last year that doing so to protect academic freedom would require discussions with the European Commission and Council of EU that would be “painful [and] complicated, [and] it’s hard to tell what we’re going to achieve”. 

In November, the Parliament launched an annual monitoring report on academic freedom to better safeguard it against erosion.

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Implementation of open-data principles and costs of open access on agenda for 8 February

EU research ministers are set to meet next week to debate policy around infrastructures and scholarly publishing.

Ministers will gather in Stockholm on 8 February for the ‘informal’ meeting of the Competitiveness Council, at which no formal positions are expected to be adopted.

The meetings are organised by the Swedish presidency of the Council of the EU, which has made research infrastructures and open science two of the research and innovation priorities for its January-June term hosting member state governments.

Details of what ministers, including the Netherlands’ Robbert Dijkgraaf (pictured with EU research commissioner Mariya Gabriel), will be asked to debate around the topics have been set out ahead of the meeting.

Research infrastructures

On research infrastructures, ministers have been asked by the presidency to consider three questions for the debate.

These include which investments and policies are needed to ensure that research data could be reused. “The share of high-quality research data that can be reused and have scientific, economic and social impact needs to increase,” the presidency said.

Another question is whether the EU should act to speed up making all research outputs findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (Fair).

“Implementing Fair principles to all research outputs and across disciplines is a significant undertaking for Europe, and requires changes in terms of research culture and infrastructure,” the presidency said, adding that such changes would require “alignment” with international partners.

Finally, the presidency has asked ministers to consider which extra steps should be taken to make research data as open as possible, while ensuring it remains as closed as necessary to safeguard security.

Scholarly publishing

For a debate on scholarly publishing, ministers have also been asked to ponder three questions.

First, they have been asked what they see as the main challenges to providing immediate open access to research papers.

“Making scholarly publications rapidly accessible to all contributes to high-quality research,” the presidency said, adding that it “strengthens the use and impact of research in society at large, increases competitiveness and supports innovation in the public and private sectors”.

Ministers have also been asked about the challenges to more broadly establishing a norm of open science—the opening-up of research methods and outputs for scrutiny and reuse—and which actions should be taken at EU and national level to support this.

Third, the presidency wants to know what measures have been taken and could further be taken to ensure that researchers and the public are not prevented from publishing or reading research results due to the “increasing costs for scholarly publishing associated with certain business models”.

Aside from these debates, ministers will hear a keynote speech on knowledge being a basis for democracy, from Åsa Wikforss, a professor of theoretical philosophy.

As part of the same informal meeting, industry and market ministers will meet on 6-7 February to discuss various topics, including how to enhance EU competitiveness while mitigating climate change.

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High-level EU visit to Kyiv includes cooperation on R&I and progress towards Ukraine joining bloc

Ukraine needs a strategy to prevent the loss of its researchers, the European Commission has warned, as talks on the country’s path towards EU membership took a step forward.

On 2 February, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen (pictured with Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky) and 15 other EU commissioners travelled to Kyiv for a meeting with Ukraine’s government; the agenda included EU accession for the country, as well as closer cooperation on research and innovation.

“Essential steps to preserve and nurture Ukraine’s R&I ecosystem are being taken,” said information about the visit published by the Commission.

Energy, financial support and humanitarian assistance against the backdrop of the ongoing war with Russia were also to be discussed, it said.

Talent pool in decline

A Commission document analysing Ukraine’s readiness to join the EU, published on 1 February, found that the country is “moderately prepared” for membership with respect to R&I But it highlighted that the number of researchers in Ukraine is falling.

Many researchers fled the country after Russia invaded nearly a year ago, with schemes set up across Europe to absorb those who were displaced.

“There is a need for a strategy to retain and attract R&I talent, in particular from the diaspora, support researchers’ careers and invest in research infrastructure,” the document says.

It also notes that Ukraine has “taken significant steps to modernise R&I policy and align it with EU policies and best practices”, but says the implementation of legislation to improve its R&I system “has yet to provide tangible results”.

Moldova and Georgia

The Commission also published analyses of the readiness of Moldova and Georgia to join the EU. It said both countries were also “moderately prepared” for EU membership with regards to their R&I.

Like with Ukraine, the Commission said Moldova needs a “clear strategy” to keep researchers in the country and to support their careers.

“Further integration of the gender dimension in research is needed, and the career of researchers [needs to be] made more attractive, in order to reverse the brain drain,” the country’s document says.

For Georgia, the Commission said a national roadmap for joining the European Research Area is “urgently required” and that it should include a “well-defined approach on open science but also on researcher mobility”.

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Marc Lemaître’s background expected to be beneficial for designing and linking new Commission programmes

The research and innovation sector has welcomed the news that the head of the European Commission’s regional and urban policy department is switching roles to run its R&I department.

The Commission announced on 1 February that Marc Lemaître (pictured) from Luxembourg would become director-general of the R&I department on 16 February.

He will take over from Signe Ratso, who has been serving as interim director-general since September, when Jean-Eric Paquet departed to become EU ambassador to Japan.

Lemaître’s selection comes as the EU is in the midst of evaluating its 2021-27 R&I programme Horizon Europe, and ahead of planning for the successor programme.

Continuing a theme

Robert-Jan Smits, who preceded Paquet in the role and is now president of Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, told Research Professional News that the Commission was continuing the approach it adopted with Paquet of appointing “a senior and experienced Commission official who has worked in different directorates-general as well as in cabinets [of several commissioners]”.

Lemaître joined the Commission in 2007 and has been heading up the regional policy department since 2016. Before that, he served as head of cabinet for budget commissioner Janusz Lewandowski and two regional policy commissioners: Paweł Samecki and Danuta Hübner.

Smits said this experience of working with Lewandowski meant Lemaître would “know the EU budget inside and out”, and that this would be useful for discussions on the midterm review of the EU’s 2021-27 budget period, expected this year, and on the next seven-year period.

The former R&I chief held the post for some of the time that Lemaître headed up the equivalent post in the regional policy department, and he said that the two of them worked together on creating synergies between their two policy areas. For many, Lemaître’s move raises the prospect of more synergies being created.

Experience welcomed

Other commentators similarly focused on potential benefits for R&I of Lemaître’s background and experience, including his knowledge of Europe’s geographical strengths and weaknesses.

Lidia Borrell-Damián, secretary-general of the Science Europe association of research funding and performing organisations, says her group hopes that Lemaître’s “experience on regional and cohesion policy…will serve to improve access to excellence and brain circulation around Europe”.

Efforts to reduce regional inequalities in R&I performance and access to funding through ‘widening’ policies, and to reduce obstacles to researcher mobility while managing a ‘brain drain’ of researchers from some countries, have long been a concern for EU politicians.

Kurt Deketelaere, secretary-general of the League of European Research Universities, also hopes Lemaître’s budget expertise will mean R&I gets a strong showing in the upcoming reviews of the EU budget framework. He said he was sure Lemaître would be familiar with widening policy, which “remains a key issue” for R&I.

Synergies in focus

Others expressed hope that Lemaître would build on the synergies referred to by Smits to improve how various EU funding sources work together.

Silvia Gómez Recio, secretary-general of the Young European Research Universities Network, says she hopes for “better work on synergies between research and innovation funding at European and regional level, and that we can align priorities more clearly to strengthening research capacities in EU member states”.

Lemaître’s “deep understanding of European regional and urban policy” should “help unlock the area around funding synergies”, agreed Mattias Björnmalm, secretary-general of the Cesaer group of science and technology universities. He said such synergies could be put at the heart of new EU funding programmes and of specific schemes such as the bloc’s R&I-based missions on topics including climate change.

The incoming chief’s experience of the EU budget and programme management will also be useful heading into next year’s European Parliament elections, Björnmalm added.

Looking forward

Others were just grateful that a new leader has been appointed after five months of the R&I department having an interim head.

Muriel Attané, secretary-general of the European Association of Research and Technology Organisations, said her group was “very glad to have a new head, just in time” for work on the next EU R&I programme.

Stephane Berghmans, director of research at the European University Association, said: “We had an excellent relationship with Marc Lemaître’s predecessor and look forward to continuing a constructive dialogue in a spirit of co-creation.”

Smits described Lemaître as a “great person to work with”, who “does not beat around the bush and gets straight to the point”.

But in taking on the new role, Smits said, his former colleague will have to realise “that the objective of EU science and innovation policy is first and foremost to boost excellence and not to foster cohesion”, meaning Lemaître will “have to adapt himself to a new reality”.

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