ERA Scoreboard 2025: substantial progress but challenges remain

The ERA Scoreboard is a component of the ERA Monitoring Mechanism covering 60 indicators that provide a comprehensive overview of the progress made towards achieving the ERA priorities both at the EU level and national levels. The findings highlight substantial progress in several ERA sub-priorities such as R&D investment, open science, gender equality, researchers’ careers and mobility, global engagement, synergies with sectoral and industrial policies, and citizen and societal engagement in R&I. Examples at EU level:

• the share of publications available in open access is at 66.5% in 2024, while it stood at 41.4% in 2010;
• the number of researchers per million inhabitants has steadily increased from 3.055 in 2010 to 4.913 in 2024;
• the proportion of women of Grade A among academic staff/researchers has increased to 29.2% in 2023, from 19.7% in 2010.

On the other hand, a moderate progress has been recorded in knowledge valorisation, and efforts to strengthen R&I systems in lower-performing countries and regions (e.g. the share of innovating firms collaborating with HEIs is staggering at around 13.6% since 2020, or the no. of participations of Widening countries in Horizon Europe has only slightly increased since 2015). The report identifies limited or stagnating progress in several key areas, like scientific leadership, challenge-based R&I actions, R&I investments coordination, and synergies with education and skills policies.

The report will be complemented by further analytical outputs, e.g. by country snapshots. The EC news and ERA Scoreboard 2025.

More details are in the EC News and the ERA Scoreboard 2026 report.