France

France has a dense national open science infrastructure: mandatory data management plans and open access under the ANR Open Science Policy, a network of national research infrastructures coordinated through INBS, and CNIL-regulated health data access frameworks. Open neuroscience in France sits at the intersection of these policy mandates, membership in European Research Infrastructure Consortia (ERICs), and strong institutional open science commitments from its major research organisations.

Open Science Policy

The principal open science mandates applicable to French researchers and institutions are summarised below.

Who	What is required	For whom	In force since
Ouvrir la Science	Open access to publications via HAL, FAIR data deposit in domain repository or Recherche Data Gouv, source code preservation via Software Heritage	All French public research organisations	2018 (extended 2021)
ANR Open Science Policy	Data management plan required, open access to publications, FAIR data deposit	All ANR-funded projects	2019 (strengthened 2022)
CNRS Open Science	Open access to publications, FAIR data management, software preservation	All CNRS researchers	2019
Inserm Open Science	Open access to publications, FAIR data management	All Inserm researchers	2019
CNIL	CESREES ethical review and CNIL authorisation required before accessing identifiable health data	All researchers using SNDS or Health Data Hub datasets	2019
EC Open Science Policy	DMP from month 6, FAIR deposit, open access to publications	French institutions in Horizon Europe (see Europe)	2021

The Ouvrir la Science national plan, first published in 2018 and extended in 2021, 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. Data management plans are supported through OPIDoR. Progress is monitored through the Barometre Science Ouverte. France co-leads cOAlition S and aligns with EOSC and OpenAIRE at the European level, and with the UNESCO Open Science Recommendation globally. The Sorbonne Declaration on Research Data Rights (January 2020), signed at an international summit hosted by Sorbonne Universite, committed eight global university networks, including CURIF (the Coordination of French Research-Intensive Universities), to open data sharing and called on governments to adopt legal frameworks and institutional incentives enabling responsible data reuse.

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’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. Its platform staff contribute to FAIR data management guidelines and DMP templates for microscopy, implementing QUAREP-LiMi guidelines.
• 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 (the national health research ethics committee) 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. IHE France, operating under ANS oversight, aligns these French profiles with IHE integration profiles, serving as the primary vehicle for clinical system interoperability standards in the French health IT ecosystem.

The EHDS (Regulation (EU) 2025/327), in force from March 2025, directly transforms the legal context for French health data access. Under EHDS, France must designate a national Health Data Access Body (HDAB), referred to nationally as the ORAD, to manage secondary use requests from researchers and innovators. The Health Data Hub is the primary candidate for this designation, building on its existing role managing SNDS access and operating the national secure Datalab. The CESREES ethical review and CNIL authorisation pathway already in place aligns with the EHDS access framework rather than being replaced by it. Full secondary use obligations under EHDS apply from March 2029.

Open science and data protection

French open science mandates require FAIR data deposit and open access, while GDPR and the Code de la Sante Publique restrict sharing personal data, including most data involving human research participants. These frameworks operate in parallel and create a genuine tension for neuroscience researchers, whose data typically includes imaging, electrophysiology, or genomic data derived from individuals.

The research community navigates this through a combination of approaches. Structural MRI and many task-based datasets can be de-faced and stripped of direct identifiers before open deposit in publicly accessible repositories. Data that cannot be fully anonymised, including SEEG recordings, genomic data, and clinical health data, is deposited in controlled-access repositories (Health Data Hub, EGA, dbGaP) where access requires ethical review and a data use agreement. The Open Brain Consent framework provides pre-approved participant consent language explicitly permitting open data sharing within a defined ethical framework, reducing legal ambiguity for studies targeting open deposit. CNIL also issues reference methodologies specifying the conditions under which different categories of health data can be processed for research without individual CNIL authorisation, providing a compliance pathway for studies within standard research practice.

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. It is a member of the CURE-ND alliance for joint neurodegenerative disease research alongside DZNE, Mission Lucidity, and UK DRI.
• Sorbonne Universite is one of Europe’s oldest research universities, co-governing Paris Brain Institute alongside CNRS, Inserm, and AP-HP.

Clinical Translation

France has produced notable examples of translational neuroscience research operating through national open science infrastructure. The EPINOV project (2018–2023) was an ANR/PIA3-funded multicentre RCT in which personalised whole-brain simulation models, built from individual patients’ SEEG (stereoelectroencephalography) data, were tested as a guide to epilepsy surgery planning across 12 French hospitals. Its open dataset of 30 personalised virtual brain models was deposited on EBRAINS following trial completion. The successor project, Virtual Brain Twin, is an active Horizon Europe initiative expanding the same approach to psychiatric conditions through EBRAINS infrastructure.

For the open data repositories and standards used by French neuroimaging infrastructure, including CATI and Public-nEUro, see Neuroimaging.