This network brings together an exceptionally strong team of world-leading experts from a wide set of beneficiaries and partners in order to achieve breakthroughs in understanding how the transition towards a Circular Economy (CE) can be realised in a successful way in the European context, both within existing organisations and industries as well as through innovative and sustainable business models. The proposed approach is inherently multi-disciplinary, drawing upon research that will advance significantly the state-of-the-art in terms of the current understanding of the applicability of the CE paradigm from Economic, Environmental and Social points of view, providing policy insights and implications for practice. The consortium of 10 beneficiaries (including 7 academic and 3 non-academic groups) will design and deliver world class multidisciplinary training to 15 Early Stage Researchers (ESRs), offering them an extended and valuable program of international exchanges and secondments through the wide network of partner organisations involved in the proposal. The network builds on the success of previous projects in which beneficiaries have successfully delivered high impact research and knowledge exchange. ReTraCE is specifically designed to train a cohort of new thought leaders capable of driving the transition towards a more sustainable mode of production and consumption in Europe in the next decades, who will directly facilitate the implementation of the recently adopted ambitious Circular Economy strategy of the European Commission, which is closely linked to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Indeed, it is envisaged that ESRs will be employable not only by research institutions, but also by public sector bodies and within a wide range of manufacturing and service industries which will require new professional profiles for realising the transition towards the CE.

The Open and Universal Science (OPUS) project will develop coordination and support measures to reform the assessment of research and researchers at Research Performing Organisations (RPOs) and Research Funding Organisations (RFOs) towards a system that incentivises and rewards researchers to practise Open Science. We understand the term ‘Open Science’ to refer to practices providing open access to research outputs, early and open sharing of research, participation in open peer-review, measures to ensure reproducibility of results, involving all stakeholders in cocreation. We henceforth in this proposal employ this interpretation of Open Science with a specific focus on reforming the research(er) assessment system to incentivise and reward researchers to take up these practices. OPUS employs a three-tiered approach to ensure representation and consensus building of key stakeholder groups in the Open Science ecosystem: (1) our large project consortium consists of researcher organisations, RPOs, RFOs, industry organisations, and experts in project management, public relations, and Open Science (2) a series of stakeholder engagement sessions will be held with the broader community to gather input and validate key project deliverables (3) an Advisory Board of key representatives will ensure expert oversight and links to the community. • Objective 1: Conduct a comprehensive state-of-the-art on existing literature and initiatives for Open Science • Objective 2: Develop a comprehensive set of interventions to implement Open Science at RPOs and RFOs • Objective 3: Develop realistic indicators and metrics to monitor and drive Open Science at RPOs and RFOs • Objective 4: Test the interventions and indicators and metrics via action plans in pilots at RPOs and RFOs • Objective 5: Utilise a stakeholder-driven feed-back loop to develop, monitor, refine, and validate actions • Objective 6: Synthesise outcomes into policy briefs and a revised OS-CAM2 for research(er) assessment