In July, Horizon looks at the practicalities and implications of open science - a drive to increase free access to research data and enable more citizens to share their ideas with academics.
The increasing digitisation of research means that there are more and more opportunities for collaboration between researchers, and for publicly funded researchers to share their findings and data.
Open science is a priority for Carlos Moedas, European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, who called for Europe to adopt 'a new strategy that is fit for purpose for a world that is open, digital and global' during A new start for Europe: Opening up to an ERA of Innovation, an event organised on 22-23 June in Brussels.
Nature Editor-in-Chief Philip Campbell explains his belief that academic journals will be free to read eventually, and we hear from a citizen scientist about what they get out of helping researchers gather their data.
We also hear about plans for a European Science Cloud to give researchers access to data and resources, wherever they are.
On 19 September in Salamanca, Spain, the first-ever hybrid European Union Contest for Young Scientists (EUCYS) rewarded and celebrated the best young scientific talent that Europe has to offer.
Covid-19 has changed the way many people live and work. It has also had an impact on the ways many scientists collaborate and carry out their research – and how they release their findings.
The scientific community needs to listen more to people outside academia if it wants to continue to help politicians create good evidence-based policies that will benefit the public, a conference has heard.
A lot of lip service is being paid to making scientific papers free to access but when it comes to action there is a lot of hypocrisy, according to Robert-Jan Smits, the EU's outgoing director-general for research, science and innovation. He has recently been appointed the EU's special envoy on open access, tasked with helping make all publicly funded research in Europe freely available by 2020.
Europe’s researchers have access to super-fast networks, common data storage facilities, and shared computing resources. The challenge now is to link them all together into a single science cloud.