Switzerland
Switzerland participates in European open science infrastructure primarily through its ELIXIR membership, its substantial historical investment in simulation neuroscience through the Blue Brain Project, and a national health data network aligned with European Health Data Space standards. The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) joined Plan S in 2018 and has required open access to publications since 2020, with an open research data policy dating from 2017. Switzerland was re-associated with Horizon Europe in 2024 after a period of third-country status.
Open Science Policy
The principal open science mandates applicable to Swiss researchers and institutions are summarised below.
| Who | What is required | For whom | In force since |
|---|---|---|---|
| SNSF Open Science Policy | Data management plan and FAIR-aligned deposit, open access to publications, immediate and under CC BY for projects submitted from January 2023 | All SNSF-funded researchers | 2017 (data), 2020 (publications) |
| Swiss National Open Access Strategy | Institutional open access policies, working towards full open access | Swiss higher education institutions | 2017 (revised 2024) |
| EC Open Science Policy | DMP from month 6, FAIR deposit, open access to publications (see Europe) | Swiss institutions in Horizon Europe | 2024 (re-association) |
The national strategy was revised in 2024 after its original target of full open access by 2024 was missed, and now runs to 2032. The FDPIC (Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner) is the Swiss data protection authority, relevant to all Swiss institutions contributing data to EU-funded infrastructure including EBRAINS and the EGA federated network.
Health Data Infrastructure
The SPHN (Swiss Personalized Health Network) is the national initiative making clinical health data from six Swiss university hospitals interoperable and securely accessible for research, with over 700,000 consented patients and alignment with HL7 FHIR and the EHDS. SPHN is governed by the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences in collaboration with SIB and operates BioMedIT, Switzerland’s national Trusted Research Environment for sensitive research data. The Swiss FEGA node, operated by a consortium of SIB, ETH Zurich, SDSC, Switch, and Health 2030 Genome Center, is Switzerland’s national node of the Federated European Genome-phenome Archive and is interoperable with the European GDI infrastructure.
Bioinformatics and Life Science Infrastructure
SIB (Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics) is Switzerland’s national bioinformatics infrastructure and ELIXIR-CH, the Swiss node of ELIXIR. SIB is the largest ELIXIR national node by resource count and operates multiple ELIXIR Core Data Resources of direct relevance to neuroscience, including Bgee (cross-species gene expression including an extensive brain component), UniProt, STRING, and Cellosaurus. SIB is formally separate from any single university and has its own permanent legal identity, distinguishing it structurally from national ELIXIR nodes hosted within a single university.
Simulation Neuroscience
Open Brain Institute (OBI) is the independent Swiss non-profit organisation launched in March 2025 by 43 founding members from the former EPFL Blue Brain Project team, continuing and open-sourcing the simulation neuroscience mission. The Blue Brain Project (BBP) was a CHF 300 million Swiss National Research Infrastructure project hosted at EPFL from 2005 to the end of 2024, which released all its code (over 18 million lines), models, and data openly on closure. OBI provides cloud-based Virtual Labs for building, modifying, and simulating digital brain tissue, using NeuroML as the primary model description standard and integrating with EBRAINS and OpenSourceBrain. The BBP was the Swiss national counterpart to the EU Human Brain Project and its outputs continue to be accessed through EBRAINS.
International Engagement
Switzerland is an ELIXIR full member through SIB, participates in BBMRI-ERIC through the Swiss Biobanking Platform (SBP), and contributes to EOSC services via SIB and the Swiss National Data and Computing Centre (SDSC). OBI’s virtual simulation infrastructure is integrated into EBRAINS, linking Swiss simulation neuroscience to the broader European brain research infrastructure network.