Robert-Jan Smits takes Plan S to the White House and says he is in the United States for ‘business not chit-chat’.

Key findings from European agencies, government authority reports, and local NGO surveys.

In this Perspective, a group of national funders, joined by the European Commission and the European Research Council, announce plans to make Open Access publishing mandatory for recipients of their agencies' research funding.

The 11 national research funding organisations that form cOAlition S have agreed to implement the 10 principles of Plan S in a coordinated way, together with the European Commission including the ERC. Other research funders from across the world, both public and private, are invited to join cOAlition S.

A group of European funders, including the European Commission, will soon require researchers to publish only in open-access outlets that the funders consider high quality, the Commission’s open-access envoy has said.

The European Parliament has paused the progress of controversial EU copyright proposals, which R&D organisations have said would be damaging for innovation, meaning they could now be revised.

Swiss participation in some of the EU’s largest and most prestigious funding programmes is being threatened by rules proposed for 2021-27.

After decades of keeping a low profile in the military arena, the European Union is flexing its muscles.  Proposed European Defence Fund would spend EUR13 billion on R&D.

The United Kingdom wants a part in European science programmes after Brexit, but the European Union could put a high price on it.

MEPs and research lobby groups say 100 billion EUR is good but not enough. Parliament ‘will fight’ for 120 billion EUR.

A Commission factsheet puts the R&I total at €114.8 billion from 2021-2027 – or just about 10 percent of the overall EU budget. But even that number leaves out many other research activities scattered around the Commission.

Overall, the most elite ranks of Europe’s Most Innovative Universities have held steady from last year. The list was compiled in partnership with Clarivate Analytics, and is based on proprietary data and analysis of patent filings and research paper citations.

The European Commission outlined a €100 billion budget for its new research programme, running between 2021 and 2027. The figure includes €97.6 billion for Horizon Europe, that’s an increase of almost 30%.

13 European associations of universities release a statement in which they call upon the EU institutions to double the investment in research, innovation and education, in the next Multi-Annual Financial Framework.

Despite some progress, researchers are still reluctant to switch journals because of fears it could hinder their careers.

The European Commission (EC) is currently working on an implementation plan and a roadmap for the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), which should then be adopted on 28 May. EOSC should offer 1.7 million European researchers and 70 million professionals in science and technology a virtual environment with open seamless services for storage, management, analysis and re-use of research data, across borders and scientific disciplines.

Science Europe and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research have launched an initiative for the voluntary international alignment of research data management policies.

Spending on research projects on blockchain technologies by the European Union is to jump after it announced plans to increase funding from €83 million to as much as €340 million by 2020.

Schiltz takes over the presidency from Michael Matlosz, who was President of the organisation from 2015 to 2017.

A drop in the total number of students from both the UK and the European Union entering higher education this year.

People with doctorates who go on to work in universities are less happy on average than those working elsewhere, a large-scale European survey has found.