Blog post by Stephen Wyber
Just ahead of the 2025 Research and Innovation Days in Brussels earlier this autumn, the European Commission launched its European Strategy for Research and Technology Infrastructures.
This delivers on an early commitment from this Commission for action on key infrastructures, seen as a key pillar of work to support research, innovation and competitiveness. The logic is that by working at a European scale, it is possible to be both more coordinated and more ambitious in creating such infrastructures than would otherwise be possible at the national level alone.
What Is Research Infrastructure?
The Commission defines research infrastructures as ‘facilities that provide resources and services for research communities to conduct research and foster innovation’. They do not need to be only for research purposes. They can be based on a single site, multiple ones, or be virtual, and can include scientific equipment, collections, computing systems and communication networks, and any other unique research and innovation infrastructure open to external users. Crucially, they also include information infrastructures such as archives of scientific data.
Europe already has a law in place for its research infrastructures – the 2009 European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) Regulation, which establishes the rules for setting up and operating such consortia. The goal was to offer a type of status that could facilitate cross-border collaboration.
The new Strategy both explores how to boost the impact of, and access to, research infrastructures, and extends the focus to technology infrastructures, which support innovations that are closer to market.
What the Strategy Promises
In its introduction, the new Strategy draws a line between stronger and more accessible research infrastructures and the policy goals of scientific progress, innovation and competitiveness. They are also seen as an asset in the ‘Choose Europe for Science’ plan, aimed at attracting global researchers to Europe, and a manifestation of the fifth freedom – the freedom of movement of researchers and knowledge.
The Strategy offers an assessment of the weaknesses of the status quo: insufficient and fragmented funding, limited cooperation between infrastructures, difficulties for many actors in accessing them, gaps in skills within infrastructures, an insufficient embrace of AI and digitalisation, and restrictions on access to and use of data.
It then lays out a set of actions for the Commission on its own, for the Commission and Member States together, and for research stakeholders. These include:
- better mapping of investment and training needs (and resources to respond)
- support for coordination mechanisms
- one-stop-shops for access; and,
- potential reforms through the ERIC Regulation (to enable access to infrastructures) and the European Research Area (ERA) Act (to facilitate access to data).
What’s the Library Stake?
The definition of infrastructures makes clear that collections of data and information can indeed count as infrastructures. Some are very much active in areas which are closely aligned with the work of libraries, such as CLARIN (working on common language resources) and DARIAH (working on the arts and humanities). The recently created European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) is explicitly about federating archives and sources located in different places, with tools on top to enable engagement with the collections.
While there is no question of combining research libraries together into a single entity (not least given that they are embedded within other institutions), the logic applied to how Europe can support, and get the most out of, its research infrastructures is worth reflecting on. This is all the more so because, given the intangible nature of information, information infrastructures risk going unnoticed, at least until they fail.
Four Areas Where The Strategy Maps to Libraries
First of all, while they are not legally connected, there is nonetheless a long-standing tradition of cooperation between libraries through tools such as inter-library loan and other types of cooperation. In particular, if European Degrees take off as an idea, library collaborations will only need to intensify.
Secondly, there are already examples of coordinated collections policies, where major libraries within one city, for example, will choose areas of collections specialisation that complement each other. Through this, it is possible to make the best use of resources to support users.
Thirdly, the topic of supporting access and accessibility is also relevant. Research libraries are increasingly looking at how they can serve wider communities. There are plenty of institutions which serve both a research community and a broader local population, such as the Cantonal and University Library of Lausanne, or State Libraries in Germany.
Just as with research infrastructures, these libraries can face challenges in providing access, for example, due to licences that only allow access to named individuals, exclude ‘walk-in’ users, or any commercial-related use (such as an SME owner coming in to do basic research).
Fourth, they share many of the same needs as those identified for research infrastructures and would certainly benefit from efforts to identify gaps in provision and skills, and ways to respond, such as on questions like the application of AI and digitalisation.
Extending the Infrastructure Approach to Libraries?
As underlined, there is no need to turn Europe’s research libraries into a single federated interface and service like an ERIC. At the same time, libraries face similar issues and share the same mission to provide a connected (and ideally coordinated) means of enabling scientific progress across Europe, while maintaining their ability to respond to local needs.
As things stand, libraries are part of their host institutions and work to support their goals. However, this also means that they do not necessarily have a framework for sharing resources and collaborating in a way that would meet the ambition of the European Research Area.
It would therefore seem logical to ensure that libraries are integrated into wider EU work on research infrastructures where possible. Without seeking to compete for resources with existing ERICs (some of which indeed already work strongly with libraries of course), it could be valuable to include libraries in exercises to assess gaps and needs, as well as to ensure that libraries benefit from any relevant reforms in this space.
A particular focus should be on ensuring accessibility, in the context of a wider look at access to research infrastructures in general. This could be facilitated by a clear legislated solution to allow for cross-border access to collections, for example through document supply. This would complement a drive to expand open access publishing as well as to harmonise rules around what libraries and their users can do with owned or licensed content.
If libraries engage with this agenda—mapping their services, articulating skills needs, participating in access pilots and aligning governance—the sector will evolve organically toward a connected, pan‑European research infrastructure that still respects local missions and contexts.
17 November 2025
