From fledgling idea to European success story
Isn’t it true that to appreciate the present and look to the future, one has to understand the past? That’s why it is timely to take a stroll down memory lane, as the European Research Council marks its fifteenth anniversary. After years of demands…
Innovation - Editorial from ERC Scientific Council
Max Planck once stated: "Insight must precede application". It is from basic insight that new knowledge is generated; and it is by building upon this new knowledge that novel successful applications can be created. It is by raising the overall…
Frontier research – its role in innovation and barriers to successful commercialisation
Impact beyond Science of ERC funded research
More than one in ten ERC funded researchers who responded to a survey say they had either created companies, transferred the results of their research to pre-existing companies, or both. Among the recipients of ERC Proof of Concept Grants, this…
Open Science - Editorial from ERC Scientific Council
Open Science aims to transform current scientific practices into a fully transparent and open system, in which all scientific advances are made available not only to the entire scientific community, but also to society at large. A significant bulk…
Rights retention and open access
Enabling researchers to retain key rights to their publications helps the authors and fosters open access (OA). Policies at funders and universities can make rights retention automatic, and far easier than it would be for authors acting on their own…
Open science in practice - for new ERC grant recipients
You have just been awarded an ERC research grant as part of the Horizon Europe funding programme. As soon as your research results start to become available, you want to ensure they are properly shared. How do you get them published in the right…
Open science needs no martyrs, but we must recognize the need for reform
You’ve been a vocal advocate of the open access movement already in your home country Finland and in various European fora. What’s so great about open science? Why is it supposed to be overall good for society? I think we should first admit that the…
Biting into ancient DNA
Argentinian biologist Nicolás Rascovan sheds light on how he grew his research idea to a concrete proposal and then a ERC funded project. Nicolás Rascovan is an Argentine biologist and the group leader of the Microbial paleogenomics unit at the…
