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ORION project launched to research Open Science goals

This week a new collaborative European project is being launched that aims to re-invigorate the way that research into life sciences and biomedicine is organised and funded. The project, named ORION, will be coordinated by The Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona, Spain, who is one of nine partners taking part in the project.

ORION cocreation workshop

‘Open Science’ is a core strategy of the European Commission that involves widening participation and collaboration as well as sharing research processes and outcomes with the aim of improving research and innovation.

ORION investigates challenges

The ORION project – carried out over four years with 3.2 million Euros of funding from the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme – will help research and funding organisations to understand the challenges presented by the concept of Open Science. It aims to implement institutional, cultural, and behavioural changes in how they carry out and manage research.
“New models of working require novel cooperative approaches that engage lots of different actors, such as researchers, funders, publishers, patient organisations, citizens, students, teachers, and companies,” explains Michela Bertero, coordinator of the ORION project and responsible for International and Scientific Affairs at the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona, Spain.

“It is often difficult to open up fundamental research in life sciences and biomedicine to different stakeholders, particularly citizens, so the ORION project will be both challenging and interesting,” she adds.

Co-creation explores research frontiers

At the heart of the project will be open “co-creation” experiments that engage multiple stakeholders and explore different ways to make scientific research more participatory and inclusive. The experiments will tackle questions such as: how can research organisations receive input from several stakeholders? How can research funding be made more inclusive? How can public dialogue inform research policy and research content? And how can citizens be involved in fundamental research projects?
The results from the experiments will be developed into good practice and concrete actions that research and funding organisations can implement.

The European Union and the Swiss government have jointly made 6.3 million euros available for the Next-Lab project, which aims to bring about large-scale changes in the way that science, engineering and technology are taught throughout Europe.

Tangible results

Partners are committed to sharing lessons learnt and case studies with other organisations as well as developing a tailored action plan on Open Science and RRI (responsible research and innovation) for their own organisation. The project will result in a wide range of material, training, good practices, reports and publications that will be disseminated freely and widely across Europe.