In the Netherlands (NL), Open Science has taken another major step forward. Open Science NL has announced €35 million in funding for 45 projects aimed at strengthening Open Science infrastructure, supporting the tools, services, and platforms that researchers rely on to share and reuse knowledge.

To learn more about the goals behind this investment, its expected impact, and what it means for the wider European Open Science ecosystem, we spoke with Hans de Jonge, Director of Open Science NL. In this interview, he reflects on the strong response from the research community, the importance of sustainability, and how this programme aims to accelerate the transition to Open Science as the standard way of working in the country.

Could you briefly describe the core goals of the Open Science NL programme and how this latest funding round fits into your broader vision for Open Science in the Netherlands?

Open Science NL is the national initiative for Open Science in the Netherlands. It is a ten-year programme – funded by the Ministry of Science and Education – with the aim of accelerating the transition to Open Science and making it the standard practice within the country. To that effect we run a variety of funding instruments to stimulate various aspects of Open Science. In doing so we continue to be inspired by Brian Nosek’s famous pyramid of Culture Change. And with our funding we actively try to cover all dimensions of that pyramid. Open Science infrastructure plays an important role in that model. If you don’t provide the digital tools, platforms and services that make Open Science possible, you can’t expect researchers to do Open Science. The key role of Open Science Infrastructure is also highlighted in the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science where these are seen as the essential backbone for a more open, accessible and equitable research system. Rightfully UNESCO calls on governments to invest in these infrastructures and therefore we have decided to reserve a substantial part of our budget for it.

What were the main motivations behind choosing to invest €35 million in strengthening Open Science infrastructure at this scale?

Basically, this was due to the great interest shown by the community in this call. Our initial budget was €17.5 million, but we received 174 applications. These included 111 smaller, more experimental projects up to €250,000 and 63 large projects aimed at improving existing infrastructure. We were fortunate to be able to increase the budget during the process thanks to an additional contribution from the Dutch Research Council Board of Directors, which wanted to emphasise the importance it attaches to Open Science.

When do you anticipate seeing the first visible results from these projects?

Projects still need some time to get started. I expect to see the first concrete results in a year or two. And actually, you can already see some very tentative signs of this happening. Various projects have already begun coordinating with each other during the application phase in order to coordinate and seek opportunities for collaboration. We hope that this will continue in the coming period and will try to support it.

What are the most exciting potential impacts of this investment for researchers, research communities, and Open Science practices?

We hope that this funding round will really give Open Science a boost. In that regard, we are also pleased with the mix of proposals that have been approved: some focus on the more generic digital infrastructure for sharing data and software, but a large number of proposals also focus on discipline-specific solutions. I believe both are essential.

How do you see this initiative affecting the European research community as a whole?

We see international collaboration and the integration of research infrastructures as absolutely paramount not only for the Dutch, but also for the European research community. From the outset, this initiative was designed with a strong awareness of the wider international landscape. In particular, applicants for the larger proposals were explicitly asked to reflect on how their infrastructure relates to the international ecosystem of relevant infrastructures, how the proposed work adds value to that ecosystem, and what their strategy is for integration within it. In this way, the initiative encourages alignment rather than fragmentation, and supports a more coherent and interconnected European research infrastructure landscape.

What lessons from this call might be useful for other national or regional Open Science strategies across Europe?

One important lesson concerns the long-term sustainability of research infrastructures. While short-term funding can be relatively generous, ensuring sustainability over the longer term remains a significant challenge for Open Science infrastructures - a challenge that has been brought into sharper focus by recent geopolitical crises. To underline the importance of addressing this from the very beginning, applicants were required to describe their plans for long-term sustainability, which were assessed under a dedicated evaluation criterion.

Building on this, the new Open Science NL Work Programme 2026 - 2027 includes a dedicated initiative (2.1. Training for Open Science infrastructure sustainability) aimed at equipping those responsible for infrastructures with the skills needed to secure long-term viability, for example by developing and implementing sustainable funding models. More broadly, we believe that applying Open Science principles - such as the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI) - can play an important role in strengthening the resilience of research infrastructures overall.

At the same time, we are very aware that these challenges are not unique to the Netherlands. Addressing sustainability in a meaningful and lasting way will require closer international collaboration and a more holistic, coordinated approach across borders.