Tag: EU funding

Horizon Europe backs inclusive environmental decision-making: Pensoft joins BALANSED

Within the project, Pensoft is to bridge the gap between complex science and accessible digital experiences, playing a central technical and communications role.

Pensoft will lead the communication, dissemination and exploitation activities of the EU Horizon project BALANSED (Biomass Assessment of Land and Sea for Engagement and Deliberation), while also developing innovative digital tools that support informed public participation in environmental decision-making.

As Europe’s Green Deal goal is fast approaching, policy-makers are increasingly faced with tough choices regarding the use of natural resources. The project was inspired by the need for conflict resolution as main objectives, such as the expansion of renewable energy infrastructure, the protection of biodiversity and the securing of food production have started to compete with one another. Scientific models are good at predicting the environmental impact of various actions, but not so good at factoring in the views, interests and priorities of people who will be directly affected by those decisions.

That is where BALANSED comes in.

The Project:

This 54-month project, between 1 June 2026 and 30 November 2030, funded under Horizon Europe, aims to change the way environmental planning and natural resource management is carried out across Europe. Advanced scientific modelling joins forces with community driven deliberation to ensure that climate and environmental policies are not only scientifically sound, but also socially fair, transparent and broadly supported.

BALANSED is an EU project helping citizens, policymakers, and scientists make better decisions about the environment – balancing land and sea use, biodiversity, and local economies.

It will turn complex environmental data into simple, understandable indicators, so communities can clearly see how different choices affect them. The tools will be tested in six local study regions and two cross-regional ones, tackling issues like water shortages, farming, forestry, and ocean management.

The project will also launch an Online European Public Deliberation Platform and Deliberation Toolkit to support informed public debate on environmental planning across all European regions.

Between 8 and 9 June 2026 representatives from all 13 partner organisations met in Wageningen, Netherlands, to kick off the project.

Central discussions focused on how environmental decisions can better balance ecological and societal needs. A key theme was the importance of involving citizens, researchers, and policymakers together from day one.

Pensoft’s role:

Pensoft bridges the gap between complex science and accessible digital experiences, playing a central technical and communications role in BALANSED across three key areas:

Digital tools – as lead of Work Package 6, Pensoft will turn scientific data and models into intuitive digital interfaces, including online deliberation software and tailored digital environments for each of the study regions
EU-wide platform – Pensoft will build the final Online European Public Deliberation Platform, integrated directly with the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre to support decision-making across all European regions
Communications & impact – drawing on its expertise in science communication, Pensoft leads Work Packages 8 and 9, ensuring the project’s findings are widely shared and put to use across Europe

Project partners:

Stichting Wageningen Research (WR) – https://www.linkedin.com/company/wageningenenvironmentalresearch/ ; https://bsky.app/profile/wurenvironmental.bsky.social

Wageningen University – https://www.linkedin.com/school/wageningenuniversity/ ; https://bsky.app/profile/w-u-r.bsky.social

Internationales Institut Fuer Angewandte Systemanalyse – https://www.linkedin.com/company/iiasa-vienna/ ; https://bsky.app/profile/iiasa.ac.at

Gfz Helmholtz-Zentrum Für Geoforschung – https://www.linkedin.com/company/gfz-helmholtz-zentrum-fuer-geoforschung/ ; https://bsky.app/profile/gfz.bsky.social

Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale Ogs – https://www.linkedin.com/company/istituto-nazionale-di-oceanografia-e-geofisica-sperimentale/ ; https://bsky.app/profile/ogsit.bsky.social

Pensoft Publishers – https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/pensoft-project-services/about/ ; https://bsky.app/profile/pensoft.net

Cooperativas Agro-alimentarias – https://www.linkedin.com/company/coopsagroes/posts/?feedView=all ;

Unión Regional de Cooperativas Agrarias de Castilla y León (URCACYL)

Cooperativas Agro-alimentarias Castilla-La Mancha (CALCM)

Society for Territorial and Environmental Prosperity

Gozdarski inštitut Slovenije – https://www.linkedin.com/company/gozdarski-in%C5%A1titut-slovenije-slovenian-forestry-institute-sfi/

Zavod za gozdove Slovenije – https://www.linkedin.com/company/zavod-za-gozdove-slovenije/

Mittetulundusühing Ökoloogiliste Tehnoloogiate Keskus (CEET)

Coordinators: Berien Elbersen & Tomaso Ceccarelli from Wageningen Environmental Research

BALANSED website coming soon!

Follow us on LinkedIn and Bluesky to stay updated

Towards a climate-neutral society: Pensoft takes part in the Horizon project ForestPaths

Apart from science communication, Pensoft is also tasked with the development and maintenance of the CANOPY platform, whose aim is to support policymakers and national and regional authorities

Dedicated to bridging the gap between science, policy, industry and society, Pensoft is striving to maximise ForestPaths’ impact in meeting Europe’s climate and biodiversity targets

The backdrop

The European Union (EU) has set ambitious targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% in 2030 and to become climate neutral by 2050, which require urgent and major societal and economic reforms.

In the meantime, the EU also aims to protect biodiversity and reverse the degradation of ecosystems, while using natural resources to mitigate climate change.

ForestPaths – a recently started Horizon Europe project will help meet Europe’s climate and biodiversity targets by providing clear policy options that enable European forests and the forest-based sector to contribute to climate change mitigation, while conserving their biodiversity and sustaining the services they provide to people.

As an experienced science communicator, Pensoft is dedicated to maximising ForestPaths’ impact. The team will do so by means of tailored communication, dissemination and exploitation strategies aimed at sharing the project’s results with relevant stakeholder groups.

Furthermore, Pensoft is tasked with the development and long-term maintenance of the CANOPY platform, whose aim is to support policymakers and national and regional authorities by granting them access to the knowledge and scientific evidence acquired within ForestPaths long after the project is finalised.

The ForestPaths approach

ForestPaths will work with practitioners through four demo cases to determine climate- and biodiversity-smart forest management options.

Building on these options, the project will collaborate with policymakers and key authorities through a series of Policy labs, where the partners will co-design policy pathways, which will then be analysed with next-generation integrated assessment techniques.

Lastly, ForestPaths will apply this framework for an all-round assessment of the climate mitigation potential of European forests and the forest-based sector.

The ForestPaths legacy

ForestPaths’ policy pathways – as well as their supporting information and evidence – will be made openly available through the project’s policy-support platform CANOPY, hosted on the ForestPaths website.

The platform, whose launch is scheduled for 2026, will feature an interactive policy analysis tool explaining the policy pathways and showcasing their implications, as well as providing detailed assessment results and policy recommendations in an easily accessible manner. Its long-term mission is to become the go-to place for easily accessible assessment results and policy recommendations.

“We are excited to be doing our part for Europe’s fight for climate neutrality by extending ForestPaths reach to policy, industry and society at large! As an open-access scientific publisher engaged in about 50 environmental research projects, Pensoft echoes ForestPaths’ aim to support the EU’s climate neutrality transition through what we are sure will be a prolific international research collaboration,” says ForestPaths’ WP7 leader Anna Sapundzhieva.

You can find out more about the project on the ForestPath website: forestpaths.eu. Stay up to date with the project’s progress on Twitter (@forestpaths_eu) and LinkedIn (/forestpaths-project).

Full list of project partners:

Boosting the reproducibility of research: Pensoft joins the EU-funded project TIER2

As an experienced science communicator and open-science publisher, Pensoft is joining this promising project on its mission within its acronym: Trust, Integrity, and Efficiency in Research, through next-level Reproducibility

Recent years have seen perceptions of a “reproducibility crisis” grow in various disciplines. Scientists see poor levels of reproducibility as a severe threat to scientific self-correction, the efficiency of research processes, and societal trust in research results.

Now, a newly launched Horizon Europe-funded project: TIER² brings together 10 major European organisations and proponents of open science to dig deeper into the issues surrounding reproducibility in research work with the aim to improve practices and policies across diverse scientific fields.

In its capacity as an experienced science communicator and open-science publisher, Pensoft is joining this promising project on its mission within its acronym: Trust, Integrity, and Efficiency in Research, through next-level Reproducibility (TIER²).

TIER²’s interdisciplinary, expert project team will use co-creative methods to work with researchers in social, life and computer sciences, research funders, and publishers to further understand and address the causes of poor reproducibility.

The project will produce and test new tools, connect initiatives, engage communities, and test novel interventions to increase reuse and overall quality of research results.

“It is very exciting to take part in such significant work for the benefit of scientific rigor and integrity. As an open-access publisher, the goals of Pensoft and TIER² are very much aligned – increasing the trust and efficiency of the research apparatus on a large scale. We are looking forward to collaborating on this mutual goal.”
said Teodor Metodiev, TIER² Principal Investigator for Pensoft.

The project

TIER² launched in early January 2023 and will be running until December 2025 with the support of EUR 2 millions in funding, provided by the European Union’s Horizon Europe program and the United Kingdom’s Research & Innovation.

TIER² will study reproducibility in diverse contexts by selecting three broad research areas (i.e. social, life and computer sciences) and two cross-disciplinary stakeholder groups (i.e. research publishers and funders). Reaching different contexts will allow the project team to systematically investigate the causes and implications of the lack of reproducibility across the research spectrum. Together with curated co-creation communities of these groups, the project will design, implement, and assess systematic interventions – addressing critical levers of change (tools, skills, communities, incentives, and policies) in the process.

In 3 years’ time, TIER²-led activities will have significantly boosted knowledge on reproducibility, created valuable tools, engaged communities, and implemented interventions and policies across science. As a result, the reuse of resources and the quality of research results in the European research landscape and beyond will be improved and increased, and so will trust, integrity, and efficiency in research overall.

You can read more about the project’s plans, rationale and mission in the full project proposal, recently published in the open-science journal Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO).

You can also browse the project’s website at https://tier2-project.eu/.

The website – including its design and software development – is itself one of Pensoft’s communication contributions to TIER².

Stay up to date with the project’s activities and progress on Twitter: @TIER2Project.

International consortium

The interdisciplinary TIER2 consortium comprises ten members from universities and research centers across Europe to bring together a range of expertise spanning open science, research integrity, AI, data analytics, policy research, science infrastructures, stakeholder engagement, and core knowledge in social, life, and computational sciences. They share a long history of successful cooperation and have extensive experience in completed EU projects, especially in the fields of Open Science, Research Integrity, and Science Policy.