Through participation in Open Research Europe and the Swiss EOSC Node, Switzerland strengthens alignment with EU Open Science policy and research cooperation.
Open Science is the modus operandi of publicly funded research in Europe and remains a priority of the European Commission (EC). Open Science was introduced and embedded across Horizon Europe, and in the FP10 Regulation, too, the European Commission presented Open Science as one of the programme’s core principles. This understanding is shared across EU institutions: the European Parliament confirmed this in its ITRE draft reports on FP10 and it is also the position of the Council. In addition, Open Science remains a key in the European Research Area (ERA), as reflected in the ERA Policy Agenda 2025–2027.
In line with Horizon Europe, openness remains the default approach, while proportionate limitations are foreseen in justified cases such as the protection of intellectual property, confidentiality obligations, security, ethical or public-interest constraints, as defined in the Annotated Grant Agreement. In this sense, Open Science is not opposed to Research Security; it is aligned with it.
At the same time, Open Science objectives are supported by key enablers such as research assessment reform, continued investment in open research infrastructures and skills including the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), Open Research Europe (ORE), the EU Open Research Repository and targeted support for skills and education for practising Open Science.
In this context, the ORE platform was officially launched on 16 and 17 of March 2026, at the headquarters of CERN in Geneva. ORE, operated by CERN and supported by sixteen organisations from eleven countries including the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), provides a shared platform with an open peer‑review model. The participation of SNSF in ORE represents a concrete contribution to advancing Open Science in close alignment with EU developments.
Moreover, on 23 April 2026, the EOSC Tripartite Governance approved fourteen new second‑wave candidate EOSC Nodes from national, thematic and e-infrastructure communities. These new candidate nodes are adding to the 14 EOSC Nodes already contributing to the build-up phase of the EOSC Federation. The second wave of candidates will expand the geographic and thematic coverage of the EOSC Federation. For researchers and innovators it means a broader access to trusted data, tools and services, enabling them to work more efficiently across borders and disciplines.
The 14 new second wave nodes also include the Swiss national EOSC Node, building on the Swiss EOSC Node Prototype (SENPro) consortium, funded by swissuniversities under the Open Science Programme II. It was launched in September 2025 and brings together a multidisciplinary consortium of leading institutions, including the ETH Zürich, the Swiss Centre for Expertise in Social Sciences, the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, SNSF, Switch, University of Basel, University of Lausanne and University of Zürich. With this approval, the Swiss Node enters the EOSC Federation’s integration phase and will contribute with Swiss research data, services and infrastructures to the federated European Open Science Cloud.
Through its participation in ORE and the Swiss EOSC Node, Switzerland reinforces its close integration with EU Open Science initiatives, strengthening Swiss–EU cooperation in research, infrastructures and data while contributing to a more open, interoperable and competitive European Research Area.