In March 2024, the EU and CERN officially launched the EU Open Research Repository on Zenodo in a pilot phase, and since then, it has rapidly gained momentum. Over the past several months, we have successfully onboarded 130 EU-funded projects as EU projects communities - a feature that provides projects an easy go-to solution for sharing and preserving the research outputs from their projects. About 23% of all EU-funded projects (FP7, Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe) during the past 10 years have a research output on Zenodo amounting to 11.000 different grants.

As we now move from the pilot to the production phase, the EU Open Research Repository is set to become an essential tool for EU projects, offering an easy, accessible platform to support the broader implementation of EU open science policies.

Supporting EU Open Science policy

The EU has long been a driving force behind open science, progressively supporting its adoption through successive Research and Innovation Framework Programmes. This effort began with the Open Access pilot in FP7, followed by the addition of Open Data provisions in Horizon 2020, and now, in Horizon Europe, through a strong commitment to comprehensive open science practices. These practices include open access to scientific publications, responsible management of research data, and a clear focus on FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles.

The establishment of the EU Open Research Repository represents a continuation of these efforts. Built upon the foundation of Zenodo — a general-purpose open repository operated by CERN — the new repository enables researchers to deposit a wide range of outputs, including papers, datasets, software, posters, presentations, and more. This platform provides an easy, go-to solution for EU programme beneficiaries to comply with open science requirements, helping them make their research outputs FAIR in practice.

Managed by CERN on behalf of the European Commission, the EU Open Research Repository helps EU-funded projects streamline the management and dissemination of their research outputs, supporting the continued growth of the open science ecosystem in Europe.

New Features During the Pilot

Today, we are also excited to announce the launch of our new browse feature, which offers users an overview of the content within the EU Open Research Repository. This feature allows users to browse research outputs by funding programme, subject, or project, providing an intuitive, user-friendly experience. All of this is made possible thanks to the integration of high-quality open data from CORDIS, the EU’s project database, which provides funding programme details and subject classifications using EuroSciVoc.

The pilot phase introduced several new features designed to make it easier for EU-funded projects to manage their research outputs. One of the key additions was a workflow for projects to request a project community, which allows them to either create a new community or integrate an existing Zenodo community into the EU Open Research Repository.

What's next?

As we transition into the production phase, we have several key objectives. First and foremost, we will continue to integrate feedback from the early adopters who participated in the pilot phase. Their insights have been invaluable in shaping the platform, and we are committed to ensuring that their needs and suggestions are addressed as we move forward.

In addition to this, we plan to onboard approximately 2,700 project communities that we have already identified on Zenodo. These projects will benefit from the new features and improved workflows that have been developed during the pilot.

Another important focus for the future is the automatic integration of EU-funded submissions made to Zenodo that fall outside of dedicated project communities. This will further streamline the process of depositing research outputs and ensure that all relevant submissions are included in the EU Open Research Repository.

Lastly, we are committed to enhancing the FAIRness of Zenodo by implementing improvements that will better support domain-specific features. This will also involve harmonizing curation efforts across different projects to ensure the high quality of metadata associated with deposited research outputs.

Funding

The EU Open Research Repository is funded by the European Union under grant agreement no. 101122956 (HORIZON-ZEN).

You can learn more about the HORIZON-ZEN project on https://about.zenodo.org/projects/horizon-zen/

Announcing the 2024 DataWorks! Prize!

The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) invite you to submit your data reuse project proposal that demonstrates the power of data reuse to advance human health.

The 2024 DataWorks! Prize is a collaboration with the seven generalist repositories participating in the NIH-funded Generalist Repositories Ecosystem Initiative (GREI) and will focus on best practices in data reuse and secondary analysis that advance human health. Participants will participate in a two-phase challenge.

• Phase 1: Research teams will submit a proposal for a secondary analysis research project that can be completed within a 6 month period and incorporates data from one or more generalist repositories participating in the GREI (more information on GREI); data from other repositories can be combined.
• Phase 2: Selected teams will complete their reuse/secondary analysis research projects and share their findings publicly.

Awards and Prizes

The NIH Office of Data Science Strategy will award up to $500,000 total in cash prizes to the Challenge winners. NIH will award the prize purse in the following amounts:

• Phase 1: $25,000 per winner, up to ten (10) winners
• Phase 2: Grand Prize: $100,000 for one (1) winner; Distinguished Achievement Awards: $75,000 per winner, up to two (2) winners

Successful submissions must:

• Address a pivotal health research question via data reuse and secondary data analysis
• Include data from at least one GREI repository, including Zenodo.
• Share results with the broader community
• Be submitted by October 24, 2024

Reusing data in Zenodo:

As a cross-domain repository, Zenodo enables researchers to share and preserve a wide range of interdisciplinary research outputs, including research papers, data sets, research software, reports, presentations, and any other research related digital outputs.

How can I find Zenodo data for reuse?

Search for data by simply typing keywords of interest in the search box at the top of the Zenodo home page. Facet search results by using the menu on the left side of the page by resource type (e.g., dataset), access status (e.g., open), subject area, and file type (for example, hypertension, pathogen, comparative genomics, precision medicine). You can order the search results based on date, best match, most viewed, etc. Use the Zenodo Search Guide to further craft your search.

You can also try your search in Zenodo Communities, A Zenodo community provides a space for domains, projects, and institutions to curate and manage a collection of their research outputs and share with members of the community and beyond (for example, some Communities funded by NIH).

Full details about the challenge can be found here.

We encourage you and your team to submit your project proposals. Your ideas could shape the future of healthcare.

The European Commission and CERN are today launching a pilot of the new EU Open Research Repository that welcomes research outputs (data, software, posters, presentation, project deliverables) stemming from one of EU’s research and innovation funding programmes such as Horizon Europe and Euratom.

Supporting EU Open Science policy

The EU has increasingly supported the implementation of the Open Science policy in successive Research and Innovation Framework Programmes, starting from the Open Access pilot in FP7, adding Open Data provisions in Horizon 2020, and laying down in Horizon Europe a set of provisions for open science practices such as open access to scientific publications, open access to research data and responsible management of research data, notably through the mainstreaming of data management plans and in line with the FAIR principles. This evolution has been accompanied by several EU-funded actions to support beneficiaries to better manage their research outputs and to facilitate the implementation of the programme provisions. This has notably included support to the creation of Zenodo, a general-purpose open repository operated by CERN, allowing researchers to deposit research papers, data sets, research software, reports, and any other research related digital outputs.

The new EU Open Research Repository, a Zenodo-community, capitalizes on past investments made in Zenodo and helps EU programme beneficiaries comply with the new FAIR and open science requirements, by implementing an easy go-to solution in Zenodo for beneficiaries to make data FAIR in practice. The repository is managed by CERN on behalf of the European Commission.

Pilot

Currently in its pilot phase and set to be fully operational during autumn 2024, the EU Open Research Repository is constantly evolving. Efforts are committed to integrating cutting-edge features, including assisted curation and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) assistance, to further support the research community. The goal is to provide researchers with a simple goto solution for making their publicly funded research open and as FAIR as possible.

Supporting EU research projects

Today, more than 500 EU-funded research projects already have a Zenodo-community where they share their research outputs. The EU Open Research Repository will index all these and future project communities under a single umbrella and provide them with enhanced features to enable all project partners to easily share the project’s research outputs. Zenodo has since its launch more than 10 years ago supported linking research outputs with the EU grant that funded the work, which means that Zenodo today hosts more than 100,000 research outputs from more than 11,000 different grants.

Several early adopter projects from different domains (BY-COVID, FAIR-IMPACT, FAIRplus, GDI, iMagine, interTwin, RESILIENCE, SERPENTINE) are collaborating to help provide feedback on the features developed for the new repository. Other projects interested in adopting the new features can sign up for free and will be onboarded as soon as possible through out the pilot phase.

Open Research Europe (ORE)

The EU Open Research Repository serves as a complementary platform to the Open Research Europe (ORE) publishing platform. Open Research Europe focuses on providing a publishing venue for peer-reviewed articles, ensuring that research meets rigorous academic standards. The EU Open Research Repository provides a space for all the other research outputs including data sets, software, posters, and presentations that are out of scope for ORE. This holistic approach enables researchers to not only publish their findings but also share the underlying data and materials that support their work, fostering transparency and reproducibility in the scientific process.

Funding

The EU Open Research Repository is funded by the European Union under grant agreement no. 101122956 (HORIZON-ZEN).

You can learn more about the HORIZON-ZEN project on https://about.zenodo.org/projects/horizon-zen/