The 2nd OSCARS Open Call for Open Science projects and services closed on May 14th, with 746 submitted proposals from 67 countries. 25% of coordinating organisations are based outside the European Union. The total funding available in this second call amounts to ~€3 million EUR.
“The extremely high number of applications received in the 2nd OSCARS Open Call has clearly proved the need for funding to support scientists and organisations in the process of getting their data FAIR and Open. We believe this should be taken into account in the planning of the future EU's funding strategy and framework programme for research and innovation” - OSCARS project manager, Friederike Schmidt-Tremmel, stated.
Given the lower budget available in this call, the success rate will be far lower than in the 1st Open Call, in which evaluators selected projects to ensure balance across the Science Clusters, and coverage of the key needs for more Open Science and FAIR data practices in the various domains.
Because of the oversubscription to the 2nd OSCARS Open Call, the evaluation process might take longer than 60 days as originally planned. Therefore, the final funding decision might be slightly postponed and is expected by the end of August 2025.