France

France has one of the most structured national open science ecosystems in Europe, shaped by a series of national plans and a dense network of public research infrastructures. Open neuroscience in France sits at the intersection of national policy mandates, membership in European Research Infrastructure Consortia (ERICs), clinical health data regulation, and strong institutional open science commitments from its major research organisations.

Open Science Policy

The Ouvrir la Science national plan drives French open science mandates, implemented through ANR Open Science Policy, CNRS Open Science, and Inserm Open Science, directing deposits to HAL (publications), Recherche Data Gouv (data), and Software Heritage (code), with OPIDoR providing the DMP infrastructure. These align upward to EOSC and OpenAIRE at the European level, and to the UNESCO Open Science Recommendation and cOAlition S at the global level.

The Ouvrir la Science national plan, first published in 2018 and extended in 2021, sets the policy framework. It mandates open access to publications via HAL, FAIR research data management with deposit in Recherche Data Gouv when no domain-specific repository is available, and open source software preservation via Software Heritage. Implementation is coordinated through CoSO (Comité pour la Science Ouverte) and carried out by the research organisations: ANR Open Science Policy applies to all ANR-funded projects, while CNRS Open Science and Inserm Open Science implement the same principles institutionally. Progress is monitored through the Barometre Science Ouverte. France also co-leads cOAlition S and aligns with EOSC at the European level.

Research Data Infrastructure

France has three dedicated national platforms for research data and open science. Recherche Data Gouv is the national multidisciplinary research data repository, with disciplinary Centres de Référence Thématiques including IFB for life sciences and Huma-Num for humanities. OPIDoR provides the national data management planning infrastructure, with dedicated DMP templates for ANR and other funders. HAL is the national open access publication repository, with institutional portals for each major research organisation.

Trusted repositories and US funding uncertainty

The Collège des Données de la Recherche publishes and maintains a list of trusted thematic repositories endorsed for data deposit under the French open science policy framework. The April 2025 revision of this list (v2) removed OpenNeuro, DANDI Archive, NeMO Archive, and PRIME-DE. All four are NIH-funded, US-based repositories. No reason was given publicly. The removal coincides with a period of severe NIH funding instability, in which the BRAIN Initiative budget fell by more than half between 2023 and 2025 and overall NIH grant award rates dropped sharply. The current list is published on Ouvrir la Science.

National Research Infrastructures (INBS)

France Life Imaging, France BioImaging, IFB, NeurATRIS, and France Génomique are the French national research infrastructures connecting upward to their European counterparts (Euro-BioImaging, ELIXIR, EATRIS, EOSC), which in turn participate in global networks including GA4GH, INCF, and RDA. Individual platforms are labelled and funded through IBiSA, which feeds into the INBS umbrella. At the institute level, European neurodegeneration research alliances including CURE-ND and JPND link institutes such as DZNE, UK DRI, Mission Lucidity, and Paris Brain Institute across borders.

France’s life sciences research infrastructure is organised through the INBS umbrella, which federates five national infrastructures:

• IFB (Institut Français de Bioinformatique) is the French node of ELIXIR and provides bioinformatics computing, training, and FAIR data services.
• France BioImaging is the French node of Euro-BioImaging and federates advanced microscopy platforms.
• France Génomique provides high-throughput sequencing services and deposits data in ENA and NCBI GEO.
• France Life Imaging federates multimodal in vivo imaging platforms including CATI for neuroimaging.
• NeurATRIS is the French node of EATRIS and provides translational neuroscience research infrastructure.

Individual platforms are labelled and funded through IBiSA. French platforms also participate in European ERICs: BBMRI-ERIC (biobanks), EATRIS (translational infrastructure), ECRIN (clinical trials), and Euro-BioImaging (imaging).

Health Data

Health data in France is governed by a distinct regulatory stack. The Code de la Sante Publique establishes the legal framework for clinical research and health data reuse. CNIL is the data protection authority overseeing all health data processing. The Health Data Hub is the national platform for secondary use of health data, jointly controlling the SNDS with CNAM and hosting a broader catalogue of datasets from hospitals, registries, and cohorts. Researchers access data via a secure Datalab environment following CESREES ethical review and CNIL authorisation. The EDS AP-HP is the clinical data warehouse of the AP-HP hospital system, covering 19 million patients across 38 hospitals, with OMOP CDM as the primary data model and HL7 FHIR as the API layer. ANS manages national health interoperability standards including French HL7 FHIR profiles (CI-SIS) and the SNOMED CT national release.

French Research Institutes

• CEA is the French national research organisation for energy, defence, and life sciences. It coordinates NeurATRIS and operates MIRCen (preclinical NHP and gene therapy), SHFJ (PET tracers), and NeuroSpin (ultra-high-field MRI).
• Institut Curie is a Paris-based cancer research and treatment institution hosting the PICT-IBiSA imaging platform, a France BioImaging node that participates in QUAREP-LiMi.
• Institut de Myologie is the international reference centre for neuromuscular diseases, co-located at Pitié-Salpêtrière and a founding node of NeurATRIS.
• Institut Pasteur is a private non-profit research foundation and a founding France BioImaging node, home to the Icy bioimage analysis software.
• Paris Brain Institute is a non-profit neuroscience foundation at Pitié-Salpêtrière, co-governed by Sorbonne Universite, CNRS, Inserm, and AP-HP, combining fundamental research, clinical neurology, and translational science.
• Sorbonne Universite is one of Europe’s oldest research universities, co-governing Paris Brain Institute alongside CNRS, Inserm, and AP-HP.