As Horizon Europe issues its first call for grants, Nature reviews
some big changes — from open science to goal-oriented ‘missions’.
Horizon
Europe, the world’s largest multinational research and innovation programme,
has issued its first call for grant applications.
Over the
next seven years, the European Union’s giant research-spending scheme will
distribute a record €95.5 billion (US$116 billion) — including €5.4 billion
from a COVID-19 recovery fund — to basic-science projects and cross-border
research collaborations to be carried out by tens of thousands of researchers
across 27 member states and more than a dozen other countries.
Horizon
Europe is an evolution, rather than a reinvention, of the EU’s previous
research programmes. Like its predecessor Horizon 2020, which ran from 2014 to 2020, it is a mixed bag of funding schemes.
It includes grants for individual scientists in all fields, and for large
multinational collaborations covering grand societal challenges such as health,
climate change and the digital revolution.
But Horizon Europe also includes new elements that reflect increasing attention
to open science, equality, interdisciplinary research and practical
applications. Here, Nature takes a look at some of the major
changes.
Funding
reserved for priority areas
The most
anticipated change in Horizon Europe is the introduction of heavily financed,
high-priority ‘missions’. About €4.5 billion is earmarked for five areas:
climate change; cancer; oceans and other bodies of water; smart cities; and
soil and food.
In both
scope and ambition, the missions go far beyond ‘normal’ research collaboration,
and will incorporate tools and resources from flanking EU programmes such as
the Common Agricultural Policy, which administers farming subsidies, and EU
initiatives for developing infrastructure in poorer regions. The idea, first
proposed by University College London economist Mariana Mazzucato, is to get
researchers, businesses and governments to pool their skills towards a common
goal, selected with input from the public.
The missions
replace the European Flagships, sometimes-controversial €1-billion programmes
that focused on particular areas of research, such as graphene or the human
brain. The European Commission says that missions will mirror the spirit of the
European Green Deal plan for a sustainable economy, Europe’s Beating Cancer
Plan or the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. But many of the
details remain to be determined. Over the next few months, mission boards
appointed by the commission must lay out specific goals, research needs and indicators
for measuring impact. First calls for proposals are expected by the end of this
year.
A boost
for basic research
Although
much attention has been focused on the introduction of missions, they are only
a relatively small part of the new programme, points out Torsten Fischer, head
of the Brussels-based European liaison office of Germany’s research
organizations. Basic science will continue to be a centrepiece of European
research. Between 2021 and 2027, the EU’s premier funding agency for basic
research, the European Research Council (ERC), will divide €16 billion among
researchers at various career levels, an increase of more than 20% compared to
Horizon 2020. Non-EU countries associated to Horizon Europe are expected to
contribute an extra roughly €4 billion, depending on their level of
participation. Associates include research-intensive nations such as Israel,
Switzerland and the United Kingdom — which left the bloc at the beginning of
2021, but has signed a deal to allow its scientists, research organizations and
companies to participate in Horizon Europe.
The ERC
issued its first round of calls for starting grants under Horizon Europe on 25
February, and more are expected in the coming months. However, some types of
grant have been delayed owing to a last-minute political agreement on the EU’s multiyear budget in
December. There will be no calls in 2021 for ‘synergy’ grants — those involving
several teams of scientists. Calls for proof-of-concept grants to develop ideas
generated in the course of ERC-funded research will also be delayed until 2022,
says Waldemar Kütt, head of the ERC’s administrative arm in Brussels.
Competition
for ERC grants — which assign up to €2.5 million for 5 years to an individual
investigator — has historically been tough, with an acceptance rate of around
12%, but the larger pot of money could mean that more scientists get funded.
Another
important change is that researchers at international organizations
headquartered in the European Union — such as the UN-chartered Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical
Physics in Trieste, Italy — will now be able to apply for these
grants. Around 80 such organizations were previously excluded from the scheme.
From
lab to market
Horizon
Europe will also aim to strengthen support for applied research with economic
benefits. To this end, the European Commission has established the European
Innovation Council (EIC), a new funding agency aimed at facilitating the
transfer of inventions and research into goods and services.
Around €10
billion is earmarked for the EIC, to be divided between three types of grant.
In an early ‘pathfinder’ phase, researchers can get support to develop ideas
that have commercial potential. A second, ‘fast track to innovation’ phase will
support the transition of promising results to market.
Finally,
after market launch, entrepreneurs will be able to request EIC ‘accelerator’
support — including grants, loans and coaching services — to expand their
businesses. (The accelerator programme was excluded from the UK–EU trade deal,
so UK-based researchers will not be eligible.)
The idea is
that recipients of ERC proof-of-concept grants will also be able to apply for
EIC support. “Combining support from the two agencies is a wonderful
opportunity to unlock commercial potential of basic science,” says Fischer.
Opening
up
Horizon
Europe is expected to mandate that grant recipients publish their results
according to the principles of open science.
In
particular, immediate open-access publishing will become mandatory for all
recipients of Horizon Europe research grants, including those from the ERC,
says Kütt. Scientists will be required to post an accepted, peer-reviewed
version of their papers online at a ‘trusted repository’, according to a draft
of the instructions for applicants, but it is unclear at this time which repositories will
be acceptable. Grants will cover publishing costs for pure open-access
journals, but not for hybrid publications. Authors must also retain
intellectual-property rights for their papers.
The
commission will encourage EU-funded scientists to post their papers on Open
Research Europe, an open-access platform that will formally launch in March.
Works submitted on the platform, run by the London-based open-science publisher
F1000 Research, will be posted immediately and cannot be published elsewhere.
Articles will be subject to open peer review, meaning that the reviews and
reviewers’ names will be openly available, and the commission will cover
publication costs.
Scientists
will also need to make sure that any research data they generate are preserved
and made available for reuse by others. Horizon Europe will require
participants to submit a data-management plan, in line with the FAIR principles
(findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability), within six
months of completing a research project, although exceptions may be granted
where business secrets or sensitive personal data are involved. A partnership
of research and data-service organizations across Europe is developing the
European Open Science Cloud, a freely accessible virtual repository for data
from all research that is publicly funded, whether by a participating state or
by the EU.
The rules
have raised some concerns. Meeting data-management requirements might be
technically challenging, in particular for scientists and research
organizations in poorer countries, says David Smith, director of Croatia’s
largest public research institute, the multidisciplinary Ruđer Bošković
Institute in Zagreb.
“We are
ready for open-access publishing, but we are not quite prepared for open data,”
he says. “Frankly speaking, the whole region is behind in that respect.”
Equality
EU
policymakers and the European Commission have agreed to spend more than 3% of
Horizon Europe money — around €3 billion — on widening the participation of
member states that tend to win fewer grants. The scheme will continue to use
tried-and-tested tactics, such as teaming leading research institutions with
ones that are less well-established, providing special grants for top
researchers in countries that joined the EU only recently, and training
researchers to improve their grant-writing and project-management skills.
However, it
is unclear whether the headline Horizon Europe ‘missions’ will make fair
allowance for scientists in poorer countries. “I do hope that the missions will
not be geared for established players in rich countries,” says Smith. “Smaller
countries like Croatia have a lot to offer too. If implemented reasonably, the
new concept has potential to narrow the East–West gap.”
Organizations
participating in Horizon Europe will also have to submit plans to improve
gender equality — another change from Horizon 2020. Starting in 2022, all
Horizon Europe-funded research institutions will be expected to aim for gender
balance among their research staff, enact recruitment and anti-harassment
policies, and start to offer gender-equality training opportunities.
Nature 591, 20-21 (2021)
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00496-z
