Supporting an ambitious nationwide goal
Luxembourg is powering up its research ecosystem.Back in 2020, the government launched the National Research and Innovation Strategy, and in the years since, public funding of research has increased consistently. In the 2022-2025 period it hit €1.7 billion. With this surge in funding, it was of national importance that the resulting research was made freely available to everyone.
FNR is Luxembourg’s main funder of research activities. It’s required its grantees to publish open access (OA) since 2017. But as the national strategy came into view, it was clear that the admin around OA needed to be drastically simplified. For both authors and the fund’s teams.
Funding checks after the fact
Highlighted quote: “Very often publication proved to be ineligible due to formal errors and it was too late to change anything.”
What did the funding process used to look like? Researchers and institutions would pay the article processing charges (APCs) for their work directly to publishers, before requesting refunds of these costs from FNR.
These requests were collected on a mammoth Excel spreadsheet. “We had an annual call to cover open-access publications” recalls Tom Jakobs, FNR’s Head of Data Management and Digital Transformation. During the call, each request was assessed against the fund’s policies.
“As it was only done once a year, very often publications proved to be ineligible due to formal errors and it was too late to change anything.”
A dramatic impact
Highlighted quote: “The funding of open-access publications has more than doubled since the introduction of ChronosHub, since it’s much easier to use and process than the previous workflow.”
To address these challenges, FNR, alongside the Luxembourg National Library (BnL), turned to ChronosHub.
Beginning as a pilot program, ChronosHub built a custom environment where authors can clearly see which journals comply with the fund’s policy before they submit. Upon acceptance, APC payments are paid automatically by ChronosHub to the publisher. That means there’s no upfront costs for the authors. And a much lighter admin load for FNR.
The pilot proved such a success that ChronosHub was subsequently rolled out across the country. “The workflow has been widely adapted and accepted by the Luxembourg research community,” says Tom. And the results have been dramatic.
“The funding of open-access publications has more than doubled since the introduction of ChronosHub, since it’s much easier to use and process than the previous workflow.”
This momentum points to a bright future for Luxembourg’s national strategy, and the transformative role of publicly funded research.
