ESFRI Landmark Monitoring 2022-2024 - Second 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 also supporting development and innovation.

In order to support the further development of the Landmarks and to achieve further insights into the functioning 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 their long-term development, assess the quality of each individual Landmark, identify possible problems and support the Landmarks to take appropriate actions. It shall also provide information on the performance, output and impacts of the Landmarks.

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

The monitoring of the first batch of 11 ESFRI landmarks was completed with the first batch report in June 2023.

The present report summarises the results of the Monitoring of the second batch comprising 11 Landmarks. The main generic findings are described in chapter two, while the experiences with the second batch of Monitoring are described in chapter three. While the first batch had already shown that the concept worked well in general, experience from this first batch served to optimise some organisational aspects from the second batch onwards. For keeping to the overall timeline of the monitoring the third batch was started while the second batch was only halfway through. Increasing experience with the monitoring process of all participating parties allowed running two batches in parallel although the workload on the Working Groups, especially the IG and the SWG DIGIT that both participate to all Panels was challenging, even more so when considering that other important activities involving these groups, such as the Landscape Analysis or the ESFRI roadmap were running in parallel.

The MC will also report about the Monitoring of the third batch of Landmarks, presumably in December 2024. A final report shall be delivered in the first half of 2025, after the completion of the Monitoring of all the Landmarks included in this round of Monitoring. 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 not made publicly available.

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

The schedule for the Monitoring of the third batch is annexed.