Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic scientific research has played a crucial role in how countries across Europe have worked to prevent, treat and manage the spread of the virus. In an effort to maximise the accessibility of research results in the fight against covid-19 the European Commission have launched a manifesto on EU COVID-19 Research.
EASPD has joined hundreds of other organisations in supporting the European Commission’s Manifesto, which provides guiding principles for beneficiaries of EU research grants for coronavirus prevention, testing, treatment and vaccination, to ensure that their research results will be accessible for all and guarantee a return on public investment.
In line with the manifest EASPD agrees and endorses the principles below when dealing with research results stemming from EU funded research grants related to COVID-19 on prevention (including vaccines), testing and treatment:
- Make the generated results, whether tangible or intangible, public and accessible without delay, for instance on the Horizon Results Platform, on an existing IP sharing platform, or through an existing patent pool.
- Make scientific papers and research data available in open access without delay and following the FAIR principles via preprint servers or public repositories, with rights for others to build upon the publications and data and with access to the tools needed for their validation. In particular, make COVID-19 research data available through the European COVID-19 Data Platform.
- Where possible, grant for a limited time3, non-exclusive royalty free licences on the intellectual property resulting from EU-funded research. These non-exclusive royalty free licenses shall be given in exchange for the licensees’ commitment to rapidly and broadly distribute the resulting products and services under fair and reasonable conditions to prevent, diagnose, treat and contain COVID-19.
