ESFRI Landmark Monitoring 2022-2024 - Third Batch Report

ESFRI Landmarks were introduced in the ESFRI Roadmap 2016 as reference Research Infrastructures(RIs) and are pillars in the ERA landscape, offering not only services to academic research but alsosupporting development and innovation.

In order to support the further development of the Landmarks and to achieve further insights into thefunctioning of the European RI ecosystem, the Forum has assigned the Monitoring Committee (MC)with the task of conducting a regular monitoring of all ESFRI Landmarks.

The Monitoring should further enable regular exchange between ESFRI and the Landmarks on theirlong-term development, assess the quality of each individual Landmark, identify possible problemsand support the Landmarks to take appropriate actions. It shall also provide information on theperformance, output and impacts of the Landmarks.

The pilot round of Monitoring started with a Kick-Off Workshop on 16th September 2022 in Brussels,involving interested stakeholders. The pilot Monitoring round consisted of three batches. TheMonitoring rounds will be repeated regularly, maybe around every 5 years, depending to some extenton other ESFRI activities, as this is a time-consuming activity.

Both the first and second batches included 11 ESFRI landmarks and their monitoring was completedwith the first batch report in June 2023 and the second batch report in June 2024, respectively.

The present report summarises the results of the Monitoring of the third and final batch comprising 8Landmarks. The main generic findings are described in chapter two, while the experiences with thethird batch of Monitoring are described in chapter three. While the first batch had already shown thatthe concept worked well in general, experience from this first batch served to optimise someorganisational aspects for the second batch, which proved effective in this third batch. For keeping tothe overall timeline of the monitoring the third batch was started while the second batch was onlyhalfway through. Increasing experience with the monitoring process of all participating parties allowedfinalizing the second batch while the third batch was already running, and finalizing this third batchwhile the Roadmap 2026 process has already begun. The workload on the Working Groups, especiallythe IG and the SWG DIGIT that both participate in all Panels, is challenging, even more so whenconsidering that all other ESFRI activities will typically also require the expertise available in thesegroups.

This report completes the set of three summary reports on three batches of Monitoring. The MC willdiscuss the Lessons Learnt in the first months of 2025 and deliver a final report mid of 2025.The distribution of Landmarks over the three batches is given in the annex.The individual reports will be accessible, only for ESFRI purposes, to delegations via CIRCABC.

The individual reports shall be kept confidential within ESFRI (Forum and Working Groups) and are notmade publicly available.

The Monitoring Committee suggests publishing this summary report on the ESFRI website.