Research infrastructure services advancing frontier knowledge

Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

• Wider, simplified, and more efficient access to the best research infrastructures available to researchers to conduct curiosity-driven research, irrespective of location;
• Breakthrough and leading-edge research enabled by advanced research infrastructure services, including from emerging facilities, made available to a wider user community, including in emerging areas of research;
• Improved and harmonised research infrastructure services and broader and more balanced use of research infrastructure resources across the EU and Associated Countries deriving from the exploitation of synergies and complementarities;
• A new generation of researchers trained to optimally exploit all the essential tools for their research;
• Cross-disciplinary fertilisations and a wider sharing of information, knowledge and technologies across scientific fields fostered by closer interactions between researchers active in and around research infrastructures;
• Better management, including implementing FAIR data principle, of the continuous flow of data collected or produced by research infrastructures.

This topic aims at providing trans-national access (on-site or remote) and/or virtual access to integrated and customised research infrastructure services for curiosity-driven research in wide scientific domains, offered by a wide range of complementary and interdisciplinary top level research infrastructures. Given the funding rate, the topic also aims at fostering the sustainability of the access scheme. Proposals are expected to address one domain area and must explicitly state which area they address.

The scientific domains covered under this topic are:

• Area 1: Environment: atmospheric chemistry and dynamics.
• Area 2: Physical sciences and engineering: hadron physics.

For Area 2, proposers should fully exploit transversal links to and identify common developments with neighbouring communities within the field of particle and nuclear physics building on the work of recent Horizon projects where applicable.

Access also includes ad hoc users’ training and scientific and technical support. Training courses for using the infrastructures may also be supported. Training courses and ad hoc users’ training will prepare the new generations of researchers to properly exploit leading-edge research infrastructures, and should provide them with appropriate skills for data stewardship.

Activities to facilitate and integrate the access procedures, to further develop the remote or virtual provision of services and to improve, customise and harmonise the services the infrastructures will also be supported.

The main goal of this topic is access provision to existing services: this should be clearly reflected by the proposed activities and the allocated resources. The improvement and optimisation of the offered services and the development of new services, relevant to specific scientific challenges in the identified domains, can also be supported, including joint/cross-research infrastructure services, provided that the resulting services are opened and offered already under the actions (short-term R&D) and that the long-term sustainability of such services is ensured by the participant research infrastructures. This topic will not support longer-term R&D for new instrumentation, tools, methods and advanced digital solutions.

Proposals should adhere to the guidelines and principles of the European Charter for Access to Research Infrastructures^[1].

Data management (and related ethics issues), interoperability, as well as the connection of digital services (e.g. data services) to the European Open Science Cloud, should be addressed where relevant.

Proposals should take due account of major European or international initiatives relevant in the domain. When appropriate, they should foster the use and deployment of (open) global standards.

Proposals should make available to researchers a very wide, inclusive and comprehensive portfolio of complementary research infrastructure services, including data services, which are relevant for frontier research in the domain. To this extent, they should involve, as beneficiaries, affiliated entities, third parties, or external providers of purchased services, the necessary interdisciplinary set of research infrastructures of European interest^[2] that provide such services, including, if applicable, from emerging facilities.

Proposed actions should ensure that they are strongly linked to research infrastructures of pan-European relevance, as prioritised by ESFRI and the ERICs. Therefore, proposals should include at least one ESFRI Landmark^[3] or European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC)^[4] as beneficiary. In case of a distributed^[5] ERIC, as an alternative to the ERIC participating as a beneficiary, a legal entity that is hosting ERIC facilities, resources or related services may participate as a beneficiary. A declaration signed by the legal representative of the ERIC should confirm that the ERIC is supporting this participation, explain the relevance for the ERIC and describe any further cooperation with the ERIC.

Access could also be open, in accordance with the ‘Specific Features for Research Infrastructure’ section of this Work Programme, to third countries’ researchers to work on global scientific challenges. Research infrastructures from third countries^[6] may be involved when appropriate. However, such research infrastructures should only be involved, as beneficiaries or affiliated entities, if they offer complementary or more advanced services than those available in the EU Member States and Associated Countries.

Proposals should include an outreach and engagement plan to actively advertise their services to the research communities, notably from Widening countries in the specific domains.

Proposals are expected to exploit synergies and to ensure complementarity and coherence with other EU grants supporting access provision.

Proposals should include the list of services/installations^[7] opened by research infrastructures for trans-national or virtual access and the amounts of units of access made available for users. Further conditions and requirements relating to access provisions that applicants should fulfil when drafting a proposal are given in the “Specific features for Research Infrastructures” section of this work programme part. Compliance with these provisions will be taken into account during evaluation. In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.

[1] https://op.europa.eu/publication-detail/-/publication/ec4692ae-ac6f-11ef-acb1-01aa75ed71a1

[2] A research infrastructure is of European interest when is able to attract users from EU or associated countries other than the country where the infrastructure is located. This includes ESFRI and ERIC infrastructures.

[3] See lists of ESFRI 'Landmarks‘ in the 2021 ESFRI Roadmap on https://roadmap2021.esfri.eu/

[4] European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) | European Commission (europa.eu)

[5] The term ‘distributed’ research infrastructure typically refers to one or a few central hubs and several interlinked (national or institutional) nodes where many components of the research infrastructure may not be part of the same legal entity, the ERIC.

[6] See the Eligibility conditions for this topic.

[7] “Installation” means a part or a service of a research infrastructure that can be used independently from the rest. A research infrastructure consists of one or more installations.