EUNICoast is launching the 2026 edition of the Open Science Awards, with two competitions recognising those who make openness of knowledge a daily practice: researchers and librarians. Coordinated by the University of the Azores within the EUNICoast Alliance, the Awards recognise Open Science practices developed by members of EUNICoast partner institutions and give visibility to the people advancing these practices across our European community of island, port and coastal universities
The competition for researchers is aimed at the Junior and Senior categories. Eligible open science outputs must have been produced between 1 January and 31 December 2025, including open access publications, preprints, data, software, code or open educational resources, with a public link, supporting documentation and conditions for reuse.
Applications for the EUNICoast Open Science Awards 2026 will be open from 6 July to 25 September 2026.
Across the Alliance, many researchers and librarians are already helping to make science more open, reusable and transparent. Some do so by publishing in open access, sharing datasets, software, code or open educational resources. Others support repositories, advise research teams, improve metadata, deliver training, or help colleagues apply FAIR data, licensing and reproducibility practices.
The EUNICoast Open Science Awards were created to bring this work into view.
Two competitions are open:
Researchers, with Junior and Senior categories
Application form: https://forms.office.com/e/v8e0hft9SJ
Librarians
Application form: https://forms.office.com/e/8UnHCsJPAF
The application process is simple. Candidates are asked to present verifiable Open Science outputs or practices, supported by publicly accessible evidence, as described in the form.
Eligible examples include open access publications, datasets, software, code, FAIR data practices, open educational resources, Open Science training, repository support, researcher guidance, citizen science activities or other publicly available outputs and services.
For researchers, the Awards are an opportunity to show how openness is part of the way knowledge is produced.
For library professionals, they are an opportunity to highlight the expertise, services and daily support that make Open Science possible within our institutions.
The rules for each competition are available in the respective application form.
We encourage eligible researchers and librarians from EUNICoast partner institutions to apply and to share this opportunity with colleagues whose work deserves recognition.
