Europe
The European Union funds and regulates open science through Horizon Europe grant conditions and dedicated regulations such as the EHDS. It also coordinates shared research infrastructure through European Research Infrastructure Consortia (ERICs), which let national facilities, genomics platforms, biobanks, and clinical trial networks operate under common EU-level governance and funding. This EU-level layer is distinct from each country’s own national policies and institutions.
Open science policy
Mandates
Horizon Europe-funded and European researchers must comply with several principal open science mandates.
| Who | What is required | For whom | In force since |
|---|---|---|---|
| ECoC | Research integrity and data management per the European Code of Conduct | All Horizon Europe-funded researchers | 2018 (2023 revision) |
| EC Open Science Policy | Data management plan from month 6, FAIR data deposit in trusted repository, immediate open access to publications | All Horizon Europe grantees | 2021 |
| Plan S | Immediate open access under CC BY, no embargo | Researchers funded by any cOAlition S member funder | 2021 |
| EHDS | Regulation enters into force | EU institutions and Member States | March 2025 |
| EHDS | EHR interoperability requirements apply, HL7 FHIR designated for exchange | EU healthcare providers | March 2027 |
| EHDS | Secondary use rules apply for most data categories, OMOP CDM recommended | EU health data processors | March 2029 |
| EHDS | Secondary use extends to clinical trial and human genetic data | EU health data processors | March 2031 |
Open science coordination
- EOSC (European Open Science Cloud) provides the federated technical infrastructure for data sharing and discovery across European disciplines. The FAIR Principles are its normative foundation. Zenodo and EBRAINS operate within this umbrella.
- cOAlition S coordinates the Plan S open access mandate across European funders.
- Science Europe is the Brussels-based association of major European research funders that co-founded cOAlition S. It also publishes the Practical Guide to the International Alignment of Research Data Management, widely adopted as a model DMP framework.
Health data coordination
The EHDS is a full regulation covering patient access to their own health data, EHR interoperability, and cross-border secondary-use infrastructure. Open science compliance is only one small part of it. It gives EU citizens rights to access and share their own health records across borders. It also requires Member States to make health data available for research through national Health Data Access Bodies and the federated HealthData@EU infrastructure. It designates HL7 FHIR for EHR exchange and recommends OMOP CDM for secondary analytical use. GDI and the TEHDAS joint action implement its technical and policy groundwork. See EHDS for its full scope, and Health or Clinical Trials for how it applies to health and trial data.
Research norms and principles
Alongside binding mandates, several voluntary frameworks set norms for research conduct, integrity, and assessment across European institutions.
- ECoC (ALLEA European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity) is the EC-recognised primary standard for research integrity across Horizon-funded projects. It is increasingly adopted as the basis for national and institutional codes of conduct too.
- DORA (San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment) calls on funders, institutions, and publishers to end reliance on journal-level metrics in research evaluation. It has over 25,000 individual and institutional signatories worldwide as of May 2024.
- CoARA (Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment) operationalises DORA principles across European institutions through a formal commitment mechanism. It has over 700 signatory organisations as of 2024.
- EEG101 (COST Action CA24148) is a COST-funded European network launched in 2025 to standardise EEG methodology and build open-science infrastructure for EEG research across Europe.
- The UNESCO Open Science Recommendation provides the global normative framework to which European policy explicitly aligns.
European Research Infrastructure Consortia
ESFRI (European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures) is the EU body that plans pan-European research infrastructure. Its main output is the ESFRI Roadmap, a periodic strategic prioritisation of infrastructures across six thematic domains, including Health and Food. Roadmap infrastructures are tracked through Project and Landmark status. Only some of them go on to adopt the ERIC (European Research Infrastructure Consortium). ESFRI created this dedicated EU legal status to give a pan-European infrastructure its own governance and funding structure across member states. Five ERICs from the Health and Food domain are directly relevant to open neuroscience.
- ELIXIR federates national bioinformatics nodes across 23 member countries as of 2024, with EMBL-EBI as the hub.
- Euro-BioImaging federates advanced microscopy and bioimage analysis facilities across member states.
- BBMRI-ERIC federates European biobanks and provides the Negotiator platform for cross-biobank data access.
- EATRIS federates translational research infrastructure for biomarker development and early clinical research.
- ECRIN supports multinational academic clinical trials through a network of national partners.
Data platforms
Life-sciences data archives
EMBL-EBI (European Bioinformatics Institute) operates several data archives spanning different areas of life-sciences research.
- EGA holds controlled-access human genomics and phenotype data.
- ENA holds open-access nucleotide sequences.
- EVA holds open-access genomic variant data.
- IDR holds reference bioimaging datasets.
- BioImage Archive holds general biological image data.
- EMPIAR holds raw electron microscopy image data.
Open access infrastructure
OpenAIRE is the EU’s open science aggregation infrastructure. It harvests metadata from open access publications, datasets, and software across hundreds of European repositories. It also monitors Horizon Europe compliance. It operates Zenodo as its flagship deposit destination. Zenodo is a general-purpose repository accepting any discipline or output type. Both sit within the EOSC ecosystem.
Genomic access infrastructure
The GDI project (European Genomic Data Infrastructure, 2022–2026) builds federated access infrastructure connecting genomic data held across 21 EU countries. It is not a central archive of its own. It aligns with the EHDS secondary use framework. GDI implements the 1+MG Framework. This is the normative reference document for a commitment by 24 EU countries to enable secure cross-border access to one million sequenced genomes.
Neuroscience-specific platforms
EBRAINS is the broad, multi-purpose open neuroscience platform created by the Human Brain Project. It hosts brain atlases, computational models, and neuroimaging and neurophysiology datasets.
Clinical research
CTIS (Clinical Trials Information System) is the mandatory EU registration and results-reporting platform for interventional trials of medicinal products under the Clinical Trials Regulation (EU 536/2014). It replaced the previous EudraCT system. It does not cover medical device trials or observational studies. These have no equivalent EU-wide regulation, and are instead governed by national law and GDPR. See Clinical Trials for the exceptions. CTIS registration in turn links clinical trial data to the EHDS secondary-use framework. This creates a pathway from trial registration to controlled analytical access for researchers.
Pan-European alliances
- CURE-ND links Paris Brain Institute, DZNE, Mission Lucidity, and UK DRI for joint neurodegenerative disease research.
- JPND coordinates EU Member States for transnational neurodegenerative disease research funding.