Academic books continue to play an important role in scholarly production and research communication, particularly in the social sciences and humanities. As an important output of scholarly production, academic books must be included in open science/open access policies and strategies developed by research funders and institutions, to ensure that open science becomes the modus operandi of modern science across all disciplines. However, contrary to article publishing in journals (especially in the areas of Science, Technology, and Medicine) academic books have not been a focus point for open access (OA) policymakers. Consequently books are only rarely mandated to be published OA by research funders and institutions. PALOMERA will investigate the reasons for this situation across geographies, languages, economies, and disciplines within the European Research Area (ERA). Through desk studies, surveys, in-depth interviews, and use cases, PALOMERA will collect, structure, analyse, and make available knowledge that can explain the challenges and bottlenecks that prevent OA to academic books. Based on this evidence PALOMERA will provide actionable recommendations and concrete resources to support and coordinate aligned funder and institutional policies for OA books, with the overall objective of speeding up the transition to open access for books to further promote open science. The recommendations will address all relevant stakeholders (research funders and institutions, researchers, publishers, infrastructure providers, libraries, and national policymakers). The PALOMERA consortium broadly represents all relevant stakeholders for OA academic books, but will facilitate co-creation and validation events throughout the project to ensure that the views and voices of all relevant stakeholders are represented, promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion.This will assure maximal consensus and take-up of the recommendations.

CORE contributes to Horizon 2020’s focus on secure societies where citizens are facing increasingly threatening situations. It is built on the activities and results of previous and on-going projects and is driven by end-users within the consortium and their wider stakeholder networks. CORE will develop a harmonized vision of crisis management awareness and overcoming, through a transdisciplinary collaboration involving the environmental science and social science communities. In this way, human factors, social, societal and organizational aspects can be supported by the scientific results obtained in research on environmental and anthropogenic risks. CORE will identify and use best practice and knowledge/learning from certain countries with high levels of risk but where risk awareness is high and will provide optimized actions and solutions to help restructure and rebuild socio-economic structures after a disaster that is essential for the European society. CORE is a multi-disciplinary consortium across and outside Europe established to understand how to define common metrics with respect to the different natural and man-made disaster scenarios, and how to measure, control and mitigate the impact on the populations. Special attention will be given to vulnerable groups: disabled, elderly, poor, as well as women and children. CORE will lead to more efficient policies, governance structures and broad awareness and collaboration among citizens and rescue agencies. Best practices will be identified and reported to policymakers, end-users and disseminated to all stakeholders and NGOs. CORE will devote great attention to education in schools and the training activities are also intended to be an "awareness campaign" for young people about the vulnerability of the weak categories that cannot rely on advanced means of communication and of their importance. The young generation, used to the most advanced technologies, might become a sort of "prevention sentinels".

Waste in humanitarian Operations: Reduction and Minimisation (WORM)'s overall objective is designing guidelines and support actions for circular economy in the humanitarian sector. WORM focuses on two selected settings: field hospital deployments, and humanitarian livelihood programmes with a waste picking component. Across these settings, the project focuses on several cross-cutting focus areas: • the integration of bio-based technological innovation solutions in the humanitarian context, • using procurement as a gatekeeper for waste avoidance, and gateway to integrate innovative solutions, • improvements in waste management, and the use of less polluting waste treatment methods, • a specific focus on the sustainable livelihoods of waste pickers, and • policy development, advocacy and a heightened local awareness of improved waste management in the relevant local contexts. Following a multi-actor approach, WORM brings together medical humanitarian organisations and humanitarian organisations with livelihood programmes with innovation and supplier clusters, procurement service providers, logistics service providers, waste management service providers and academic partners. WORM seeks to involve a myriad of different stakeholders in data collection and policy development, including but not limited to, humanitarian actors positioned in the field during an operation, local waste management companies, start-ups focusing on bio-based solutions, policymakers (both local and global), and research institutions. WORM includes partners from low- and middle-income countries (esp. Kenya, Viet Nam) since humanitarian operations are often implemented in these contexts. WORM will focus on these contexts in their local awareness campaigns for improved waste management.

Demand for agricultural commodities from EU agrofood systems are driving land use change in biodiversity-rich countries in the Global South, leading to major biodiversity losses. Tackling the EU’s global biodiversity footprint is a top EU policy priority. The science demonstrates the need for transformative change in economic, social, and financial models for safe and just transitions, but there is limited knowledge on how to achieve transformative change in practice, which requires navigation of biodiversity, climate and equity trade-offs and synergies. TC4BE will support transdisciplinary research on different dimensions and scales of telecoupled agrofood systems, engaging diverse stakeholders, including EU and producer-country policy-makers and Indigenous Peoples and local communities. Scenarios and modelling of EU agrofood systems transformations, will be complemented by analysis of EU governance, trade, legal, consumer, collective action and sustainable finance levers and social innovations. In three producer countries (Cameroon, Colombia, and Kenya), TC4BE will generate methods for and assess land use change drivers, at-risk biodiversity hotspots, and the effectiveness of Sustainable Landscapes Initiatives. In six landscapes TC4BE will explore relationships to nature, perceptions of socio-ecological histories and futures, rigorously evaluate SLIs, and conduct regenerative enterprise case studies using a structured landscape learning process. Transformative change pathways will be co-generated by diverse stakeholders recognizing plural values and informed by new evidence, decision-making tools and training modules. The overall process will strengthen the capacity of participating stakeholders (care-knowledge-agency) to influence biodiversity and equity outcomes. A global dialogue, facilitated by the Global Landscapes Forum will link the transdisciplinary processes between the scales, supported by additional dissemination and communication activities.

ReMuNet identifies and signals disruptive events and assesses their impact on multimodal transport corridors. It reacts quickly and seamlessly upon disruptive events in real-time. It supports TMS-providers to improve route planning resilience. ReMuNet communicates alternative, pre-defined, multimodal transport routes to logistics operators and subsequently to truck drivers, locomotive drivers and barge captains. Through this, it enables a faster and adaptive multimodal network response. ReMuNet orchestrates route utilization, suggests transshipment points and optimizes capacity allocation, minimizing damage and shortening the recovery time. What is ReMuNet’s core objective? As trailblazer for the Physical Internet, ReMuNet pursues the vision to enable and incentivize synchro-modal relay-transport on European rail, road, and inland waterways to increase the holistic network resilience. It significantly reduces emissions and boosts freight transport corridor efficiency in case of disruptive events. How will ReMuNet achieve this? 1. A standardized method to describe multimodal transport networks. The proposed standard is derived from existing approaches and developed together with critical stakeholders to ensure Europe-wide practicability and acceptance 2. An algorithm capable of calculating multimodal route alternatives and capacity utilization in the face of disruptive events. It uses real-time data for dynamic synchromodal alternative route planning 3. A collaborative platform connecting relevant freight operators and enables them to manage disruptions. This is done by providing secure and resilient digital logistic and network management tools enabling alternative route planning information and orchestrating event-based synchromodal relay transportation 4. Using Reinforcement Learning to model and evaluate alternative courses of action, providing the basis for a self-learning, adaptive multimodal European freight transport and logistics network