"Danish Roadmap for Research Infrastructures 2020" was published by the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science early 2021. The roadmap consists of two key components: the strategic objectives for the research infrastructure policy area over the coming years and a catalogue of 16 specific proposals for national infrastructures, which in the short term are recommended as investment prospects. A national strategy – this roadmap – is important in addressing some of the structural challenges currently shaping research infrastructure policy, and which are causing key decisions on research infrastructure to tend in favour of national-level coordination.
Research infrastructure is the collective term for a wide variety of equipment, measuring instruments, test facilities, databases, laboratory facilities, test plants, supercomputers and other tools and resources employed in research processes and in generating new knowledge. Danish researchers need access to state-of-the-art facilities in order to sustain their ranking among the global elite in the future. Equally, access to up-to-date research infrastructure is a competitive parameter in the retention and recruitment of top students and researchers, while research infrastructures also serve as hubs for knowledge, innovation and technology transfer between research and industry.
The Roadmap and its catalogue were compiled on the basis of active involvement by and dialogue with Danish universities and other national research institutions, and replace the previous Danish Roadmap for Research Infrastructure from 2015.
Danish Roadmap for Research Infrastructure 2020
- The 16 proposals in the roadmap catalogue were chosen on the basis of proposals from Danish universities and national research institutions.
- The Minister for Higher Education and Science allocates the National Fund for Research Infrastructure on annual appropriations in the National Budget, and the expectation is that the catalogue will serve as a priority-setting tool for decisions on funding allocations until 2023.
- With the National Budget of 2021 around DKK 300 million are available from the National Fund for Research Infrastructure in 2020-2023.
Danish Roadmap for Research Infrastructures 2020 replaces the previous Danish Roadmap for Research Infrastructure from 2015.