Tom Jakobs is the Head of Data Management & Digital Transformation for the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR). He has been actively involved in setting up systems to streamline research grant submission and management systems since he started with LNRF nearly 15 years ago. The purpose of his role is to make life easier for stakeholders – grant application reviewers, grantees and fund managers – through digital transformation.

 

He notes that open access mandates have certainly brought new challenges to the role as there is another aspect to the grant management that just was not there 15 years ago when they were attempting to automate grant applications.

 

FNR are signatories to PlanS and are committed to ensuring that all the output of the research they fund is available open access. Like all research funders they have their own criteria which their grantees have to abide by. They acknowledge it is a confusing landscape for those researchers to navigate when it comes to ensuring they are submitting their research output to a journal that is compliant with the funder mandate.

 

“Researchers generally want to abide by their rules, but they also want to find out instantly if the journal they have selected to submit their work to is compliant with the funder mandate.”