Apply for the Open Science Awards and highlight your projects

As part of the second French Plan for Open Science, and organised by the French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Space in conjunction with the French Committee for Open Science, the Open Science Awards recognise research projects that are exemplary in this area.

There are Open Science Awards for doctoral theses, research data, and free and open research software. 

Timeline

• Applications open: 27 April 2026
• Applications close: 22 June 2026, 12 noon, Paris time
• Awards ceremony: in November, during the Assises nationales des données de la recherche (national conference on research data), which will take place at the University of Montpellier.

Open Science Award for doctoral theses 

The Open Science Award for doctoral theses has been created in addition to the Open Science Award for research data and the Open Science Award for free and open research software. The Open Science Awards are part of the second French Plan for Open Science and aim to recognise and promote open science practices.

The Open Science Award for doctoral theses aims to highlight open science skills among early-career researchers and to recognise their contribution to the quality of their theses. It encourages PhD students to learn about open science and to apply its principles in their research. The aim is for the award to be recognised as part of the winners’ academic careers.

The award has three categories in order to take into account the specific characteristics of each discipline: 

• "Medicine and biology/healthcare" category
• "Science and technology" category
• "Humanities and social sciences" category

The jury reserves the right to determine the number of awards per category, and to add a “multi-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary” category if necessary.

The multidisciplinary jury will be chaired by Raphaël Porcher, president of the National Network of Doctoral Colleges (RNCD, France PhD) and professor of biostatistics at Paris Cité University.

The winners will receive a trophy and a cash prize of €2,500.

Find out more (French only)

Open Science Award for research data

The Open Science Award for research data aims to recognise both projects that demonstrate best practices in the management and sharing of research data, and research projects that draw on data produced by others. The award comprises several categories that recognise the ability to establish the conditions for reusing data from other projects, as well as innovative projects in the field of open data and data sharing. 

• The "Creating a missing data set" award aims to recognise the creation and sharing of a new dataset that addresses a scientific need on a particular theme. Candidates have carried out an audit of existing and available data, identified a gap, and then implemented a strategy to acquire new data with a view to sharing it. 
• The ‘Creating the Conditions for Reuse’ award aims to recognise, amongst other things, projects that have specifically implemented one or more of the following (non-exhaustive list):
  • • "FAIR by design": application of the FAIR principles from the data collection stage and throughout its lifecycle; 
    • Enriching/preparing/cleaning reference datasets or AI training data; 
    • Data visibility: ensuring that datasets are understandable outside the community that produced them.
• The "Promoting transdisciplinarity" award aims to recognise projects that have compiled or prepared a collection of datasets from various scientific disciplines and made them available for use or reuse.
• The "Special mention from the jury" award is a very open-ended category, giving the jury complete freedom to recognise projects that set an example in terms of data openness or sharing. The jury gives applicants free rein to present the projects they wish to highlight.

Find out more (French only)

Open Science Award for free and open research software

The Open Science Award for free and open research software recognises projects that work to develop and disseminate free and open software, and which contribute to the creation of a public good of the utmost importance. Software plays a key role in scientific research, where it can be simultaneously a tool, a product, and a topic of study. Many free and open software programmes developed in higher education and research have gained international renown, with scientific, societal, cultural and/or industrial impact.

The design, development, dissemination, maintenance and support of free and open software are activities that draw on a range of expertise, including scientific and technical knowledge, software engineering, the ability to train and engage an active community, as well as the essential work of providing and maintaining documentation that facilitates the use and adoption of the software. The award therefore comprises four categories to recognise exemplary projects:

• "Scientific and technical" category
• "Community" category
• "Documentation" category
• Jury's "Coup de coeur (favourite)" category, for an exemplary project that brings together several of these aspects.

In addition to these scientific, technical, community and documentary aspects, the jury will be sure to:

• Differentiate the various stages of software's lifecycle, recognising not only established and mature software—the result of several years of development and use—but also ‘promising’ software, which may be only a few months or years old (typically having been started less than five years ago), such as that arising from a recent doctoral thesis. In each category, the jury may thus award one prize and one ‘promising’ award;
• Highlight the diversity of the national output of research software, both in terms of scientific fields and in terms of the roles and positions of the people who contribute to the design, development and maintenance of software.

Find out more (French only)

Do you need help with putting together and submitting your application? Your open science advisors can assist you, in English or in French