Funders ‘should engage civil society’ in strategic R&D

Workshop calls on EU and national funders to overhaul policies for including civil-society organisations

The policies of the European Commission and national funders need “significant reconfiguration” to include more non-industry partners in strategic research and innovation, according to a report, so they can achieve their aims around opening up research and engaging with society.

The report, published by the Commission on 29 November, summarises a workshop the Commission convened in July to look at how European universities and other research organisations can do more to engage society with R&D and encourage open science—the move to make research processes more open to scrutiny and research outputs more open for reuse.