The levels of funding and support in research programmes is low for the SSH domain across most Member States and Associated Countries, given the great number of disciplines it covers. This has two consequences: SSH research, especially at national level, is often characterised by small size projects, which can generate scattered data collections, and a variety of methods and scientific approaches. In some cases, scientific collections – but usually not basic research – are funded and supported by donations, small local authorities, and foundations. In the field of SSH, researchers have often been trained as individual single scholars rather than team scientists, although the impact of technology and the opportunities offered by large datasets are profoundly changing the methods and practice of these disciplines, especially in the last 15-20 years. However, this trend mainly focuses on the employment of those technologies rather than on genuine collaboration. The importance of RIs to contribute to these changes, for instance through harmonisation and support of the creation and sharing of FAIR resources and the development of new methodologies and tools, is evident; but support to RIs from the various national funding policies is not always adequate. This is true especially if considering the new technological requirements imposed by very large data and models. This includes access to high performance computing to researchers and students.

There is then a fundamental hurdle about how to finance such efforts if they lack large national investment. A separate analysis of existing datasets with such characteristics could indicate how pressing this issue may be. The aim will be to make timely provisions to support the emergence of scattered, local, and differently funded infrastructures.

EU level programmes, in particular Framework Programmes, and COST actions have had a significant influence on shaping some areas of research within the European SSH research domain. Even so, the current R&I landscape is rather fragmented and incoherent across the different countries, and this will remain a significant barrier to finding a place for RIs in the research ecosystems. Such alignment is required both thematically – within specific scientific domains such as SSH – as well as at the level of optimising national and European R&I priorities. Many RIs tend to feature in national strategies, but their founding focus is often as a national resource; the task to make them aligned to European aims and purpose comes with high costs in time and effort. In 2021, the European Research Area launched action 8, which aims to share more information to align better national and European funding policies to foster common approaches across Member States. This action, bringing together all MS interested in joining the dialogue, tries to tackle a variety of problems: sustainability of funding, equal access to RIs throughout MS, the economic and societal impact of RIs in Europe, and priority setting with regard to the focus on specific scientific and political needs. WP10 – Deliverable 10.2 Strategic Research Agenda on Migration. Proposal number: GA 7701121 Horizon 2020: Call: H2020-SC6-REV-INEQUAL-2016-2017

Within the emergence of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) in the R&I ecosystem, this positioning becomes even more urgent as Member States and Associated Countries should also report on their EOSC contribution; the EOSC partnership assumes in fact that the €500 million of EC budget will be matched by the countries. The SSH Thematic Science Cluster SSHOC, which brings together the SSH RIs with other key research organisations in the domain, will facilitate a stronger SSH voice within the EOSC.

However, the integration or collaboration of SSH research with other domains to address European priorities is still very weak. For instance, at the European Mission level – as the E-RIHS report highlights – none of the five Missions identified has properly focused or included Humanities and Social Sciences effectively, making it harder for these RIs to leverage the data that could be particularly valuable for the Missions’ objectives. This situation can be exemplified by a case from the cultural heritage perspective: in the Ocean Mission, opportunities can be found to connect coastal and maritime communities with their cultural heritage and the adaptation to Climate Change to increase awareness of the value of preserving cultural landscape. In the Soil Mission, art, culture, and creative industries have been used to stimulate citizens’ consensus. As for Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities Mission, there is unexplored potential for data from E-RIHS, GUIDE and SHARE ERIC, which can substantially contribute to new social policies on cultural heritage, ageing societies and children wellbeing.

Even more cooperation between existing RIs should be pursued along with a tentative expansion of their activities to cover fields related to the thematic areas they already serve. This also includes cooperation with RIs in other domains, which requires establishing stronger, sufficient, and stable financial support to the RIs.