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Overview
EOSC Steering Board representatives
The UK has a strong history of leadership and investment in open research and research infrastructure. The UK was a founding member of EOSC and led the formative EOSC Pilot project (2017-2019).
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the UK’s largest public research funder, is a member of the EOSC Association and represents the UK on the EOSC Steering Board. Juan Bicarregui (Head of Data Division, UKRI-STFC) is the EOSC Association representative. Rachel Bruce (Head of Open Research, UKRI) is the EOSC Steering Board representative.
The UK Research and Development Roadmap (2020) reiterated the UK’s commitment to open access and data sharing. The UK Science and Technology Framework (2025), highlights the UK government support for research and innovation investment, digital infrastructure and skills, including realising the ambitions afforded by AI and establishing a National Data Library.
The UK has made significant investments in infrastructure, services and skills that support open research. Some examples:
- UKRI’s Digital Research Infrastructure Programme – a £129 million initiative to develop a coherent state-of-the-art national digital research infrastructure. It recently commissioned Jisc to explore federation journeys for DRI.
- UKRI’s £47M annual investment to support its aims for open, transparent and sustainable open access publishing. Including grants to research organisations and other investments in infrastructure and strategic collective action.
- Jisc’s development of innovative routes to open access via publisher licensing agreements and other schemes such as Subscribe to Open and the Open access Community Framework.
- Supporting the development of long-standing internationally used services such as Open Policy Finder (formerly Sherpa services), DMPOnline and CORE.
- Development of a strong repository network, and participation in the setting of standards and tools for interoperability, such as registries and deposit interfaces. UKRI is also looking, in partnership with others, at how to improve the open access research information landscape.
- A diversity of programmes and organisations supporting open research practice, skills and capacity building such as Digital Curation Centre, Software Sustainability Institute and UK Reproducibility Network Open Research Programme.
- A focus on better supporting skills, training and career pathways for technicians and other technical roles (e.g. data managers and software engineers) that work with research teams. For example, UKRI is a signatory to the cross-sector UK Technician Commitment and has developed a People and Teams Action Plan.
- In addition to EOSC, the UK has, and continues to support, a range of other international multilateral initiatives and organisations support open research such as the G7 Open Science Working Group and International Science Council’s Committee on Data (CODATA).
- As part of its Public Engagement Strategy, UKRI, in partnership with funders, invests in core national infrastructure that supports public engagement across the UK, for example Sciencewise, STEM Ambassadors and the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement.
EOSC in Practice
Embracing the principles of transparency, reproducibility, and accessibility, these examples highlight the innovative approaches adopted by researchers across various disciplines. From open data sharing and collaborative platforms to pre-registration and open peer review, these practices enhance scientific integrity and contribute to the advancement of knowledge.
Policies
The UK is committed to incentivising and developing open research practices. This is supported by various activities, policies, strategies, rather than a single national strategy.
- The UK is committed to making publicly funded research open access and public research funders, as well as many charitable funders, have strong open access policies. An example is the UKRI Open Access Policy, which was recently updated to require immediate open access for research articles and introduced new expectations for monographs, book chapters and edited collections.
- The UK is also committed to incentivising research data sharing. Public research funders, as well as many charitable funders, have established policies for good data sharing and management. For example, UKRI is developing a new cross-domain research data policy, which builds long-standing research council policies and other national initiatives such as the Concordat on Open Research Data and final recommendations of the Open Research Data Task Force. This work will also be looking at developing stronger expectations for sharing and managing other digital research objects such as software, code and workflows, in line with the OECD recommendation Access to Research Data from Public Funding, which the UK is an adherent to.
- The UK’s national research assessment exercise, the Research Excellence Framework (REF) also has an open access policy and is looking beyond papers to further encourage submission of other outputs, including data and software, for example working with the community-led Hidden REF REF 2029 will also have an increased focus on People, Culture and Environment.
- Expectations for open practices are also supported by other multi-actor concordats such as the Concordat of Engaging the Public with Research and The Concordat to Support Research Integrity.
News from United Kingdom
Members and Observers from United Kingdom
EU Projects
Please find here the EOSC-related projects where members from this country are involved as partners.