Research Infrastructures (RIs) have attracted increasing attention from policy makers in recent years. This is due, among other factors, to the increasing number and diversity of RIs, which now play a key role in all scientific disciplines.

The GSF has carried out extensive work on RI policy. Indeed, facilitating co-operation on large-scale RIs was the original reason for the creation of the Megascience Forum, the precursor of the GSF.

The GSF published a report on very large research infrastructures (VLRIs) in July 2023. VLRIs are major long-term investments that serve the international research community and play a critical role in many scientific domains, from particle physics to ecology, and present unique challenges in terms of governance, sustainability and management. This report looks at how these challenges are being addressed throughout the lifecycle of such facilities and how policies might need to be adapted to deliver both scientific and socio-economic goals.

A new activity on RI ecosystems started in May 2023. RIs are most often embedded in complex networks with other RIs, research centres, universities and businesses. These ecosystems increase the impact and user-base of RIs. Synergistic collaboration and partnerships can empower RIs to better address complex scientific and societal challenges. However, there are also practical challenges that have to be overcome for these ecosystems to flourish. These challenges, from collaborative governance and integrated operation to funding and resource issues are being explored in this project.

The new generation of scientists will be critical for developing the knowledge and technologies that are necessary for sustainable transitions. GSF has recently completed a number of projects that relate to future research workforce, including work on precarity in research careers (2021) and career pathways for doctoral and post-doctoral researchers (2023).

One of the overall conclusions of these activities is that academic structures and hyper-competitive selection processes that mainly focus on ‘research excellence’ are not adequate to meet the future needs of science and of society. Underpinning this is the observation that the academic research workforce is poorly representative of the diversity in society as a whole.

A new GSF project that started in June 2023 is focusing specifically on how equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) can be promoted in academic research. The project will analyse and compare practices, and see whether there are any common structural and systematic barriers to EDI, and if so, how different countries are addressing these.

Citizen science can have a number of aims, both scientific and societal and is often touted as a mechanism to promote trust in science. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of citizens in both identifying urgent research needs (e.g. ‘Long-COVID’ was identified by patient groups) and in collecting and providing critical research data. Citizen science can provide a mechanism to incorporate local and traditional knowledge into scientific research. However, there are concerns in some fields about the distortion of research through the active engagement of citizen groups, whose agendas and interests are not necessarily consistent with good scientific practice.

GSF has done previous work on citizen engagement through projects for open research agenda setting (2017), open and inclusive collaboration (2018) and transdisciplinary research to address societal challenges (2020), and began a new project on citizen science in June 2023. This project builds on existing initiatives and expands the learning across different countries and regions, with a focus on the policy actions that are necessary to facilitate citizen science.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the value of international scientific collaboration as well as the challenges that can arise when countries have divergent, economic, security and political interests. This project explored policy initiatives and actions to safeguard national and economic security whilst protecting freedom of enquiry, promoting international research cooperation, and ensuring openness and non-discrimination.

The GSF policy report on integrity and security in the global research ecosystem was published in June 2022. Good practice examples/policy initiatives collected during the project can be accessed via the OECD-STIP Compass database, which is continuously updated. The project attracted growing interest from countries and the theme is being taken up in discussions within other multinational bodies. Progress will be reviewed by GSF in 2024.