ESF Research Infrastructures
The second ESF Strategic Plan, covering the years 2002-2006, reflected the greatly increased profile and interest in Research Infrastructures (RI) at the time it was written and identified RI as one of its principal “Action Lines”. Whilst the interest and activity in RI has continued to grow greatly since 2001, especially in research domains where the concept of RI was previously weak, so has changed the landscape within Europe for debating and planning for current, upgraded and future RI. The emergences the “European Roadmap for Research Infrastructure" (ESFRI), of RI-centric ERANets, and the Research Infrastructures priority in the joint EUROHORCs and ESF vision and Action Roadmap for the future ERA, are examples of this.
In writing its third Strategic Plan, for the years 2006-2010, ESF and its stakeholders reflected on how best ESF could contribute to debates and strategies in RI and how best to organise itself internally to fit the new Strategic Plan direction. Organisationally, ESF recognised that the creation of a separate Action Line and office unit for RI had had the effect of distancing the scientific committees and boards from RI issues. To reengage the scientific committees and boards, which represent or have contact with the majority of RI-users as well as some RI-provider communities, ESF has returned responsibilities for coordinating scientific debates, reviews and strategies in specific research domains to the scientific committees and boards. Each committee and board has RI actions and activities.
However, certain RI issues span, either in content or strategy, the range of ESF research domains. Such issues are coordinated at the corporate ESF level in the CEO’s Unit, involving the relevant science committees, boards and units as necessary. The current activities at the corporate level are listed below.
The Strategic Plan 2006-2010 increased the emphasis on ESF’s role in scientific foresight, in particular with the Forward Look instrument and in creating foci for Member Organisations to discuss issues and plan actions in the MO Fora instrument. With the addition of ESF’s traditional strengths in reviewing with scientific rigour and at the international level both proposals for new RI and the performance of existing RI, ESF is now able to deploy a “tool-kit” for the majority of MOs and other organisations on RI needs.
Corporate Coordination in Research Infrastructure
The main corporate Research Infrastructure activities during 2008 are
- Preserving Digital Records of Science