Advancing Reproducibility Across the European Research Area

REWIRE is a Horizon Europe project coordinated by Athena Research Center. Funded by the European Union under Grant agreement ID: 101287431, the project runs from September 2026 to August 2029 and brings together 12 partner organisations from 8 European countries to support the wider adoption of reproducible research practices across the European Research Area.

Scientific progress depends on the ability to verify, repeat, and build upon previous research. Yet as research becomes increasingly data-intensive, computational, and AI-driven, ensuring that results can be reproduced remains a significant challenge.

To help address this challenge, the Horizon Europe project REWIRE (Reproducibility Enablement for Widespread Implementation, Reuse and Evidence in the European Research Area) brings together 12 organisations from across Europe to support the wider adoption of reproducible research practices and strengthen trust in research outcomes. Coordinated by Athena Research Center, REWIRE aims to help make reproducibility a standard part of the research process rather than an additional burden for researchers.

Why reproducibility matters

Researchers increasingly rely on complex software, workflows, datasets, computational environments, and AI-driven methods to generate scientific results. While Open Science has significantly improved access to publications and research data, reproducing published findings often remains difficult because essential information about how research was conducted is not always documented, preserved, or shared in a systematic way.

Improving reproducibility helps strengthen confidence in research, supports the reuse of scientific knowledge, and maximises the value of public investment in research and innovation. It also enables researchers, institutions, funders, and publishers to better assess, validate, and build upon existing work.

REWIRE seeks to address these challenges by working with researchers, research-performing organisations, funders, publishers, and research infrastructures across Europe. Through a series of pilot implementations and community-driven activities, the project will identify practical and scalable approaches for embedding reproducibility throughout the research lifecycle.

From awareness to implementation

Rather than developing entirely new tools, REWIRE focuses on helping organisations adopt and integrate existing, proven approaches that support reproducible research.

The project will work across the stages of planning, conducting, and publishing research, helping organisations document research processes more effectively, preserve research workflows and computational environments, and improve the transparency and reusability of research outputs. REWIRE will also generate practical guidance, implementation pathways, training resources, and evidence-based recommendations that can support broader uptake across the European Research Area.

The project will validate its approach through pilot implementations in diverse research domains, including biodiversity, life sciences, robotics, biomedical artificial intelligence, publishing, and information technology. These pilots will provide real-world experience and evidence on how reproducibility practices can be successfully adopted in different organisational and disciplinary contexts.

Consortium of organisations in REWIRE

RO-Crate and reproducibility workflows

RO-Crate is one of REWIRE’s three core technical interventions across the research lifecycle: machine-actionable Reproducibility Management Plans (RMPs) for planning, GNU Guix reproducible computational environments for execution, and RO-Crate for publishing reproducible research objects.

Within REWIRE, RO-Crate also provides an integration layer between these stages. RO-Crate profiles will connect research plans, computational environments, workflows, data, outputs and provenance in machine-actionable packages that can be validated and exchanged between research infrastructures and repositories. REWIRE will adapt Process, Workflow Run, Recuperative and machine-actionable DMP RO-Crate profiles and test their use across its pilots.

eScience Lab involvement

The eScience Lab contributes expertise in RO-Crate, WorkflowHub, scientific workflows, provenance and FAIR Digital Objects. In REWIRE, the University of Manchester contributes across all five work packages and leads or co-leads work on RO-Crate profiles, BLUEPRINTS evidence synthesis, and pilot implementation support.

UNIMAN contributions

  • WP1: REWIRE IMPACT – Evidence Synthesis and Policy Development (lead: AthenaRC)
  • Task T1.2: BLUEPRINTS Wiki & Evidence Synthesis (co-lead: UNIMAN with Inria)
  • Task T1.3: Learning & Sustainability (lead: DRA)
  • Task T1.4: Policy Development and Validation (lead: AthenaRC)
  • WP2: REWIRE ENABLE – Adaptation & Deployment of Tools and Services for Reproducibility (lead: Inria)
  • Task T2.2: Guix Computational Environments (lead: Inria)
  • Task T2.3: RO-Crate Profiles (lead: UNIMAN)
  • Task T2.4: Cross-Intervention Integration (lead: PSNC)
  • Task T2.5: PLAYBOOK Coordination and Release Management (lead: Inria)
  • WP3: REWIRE DEPLOY – Pilot Coordination and Implementation (lead: OpenAIRE)
  • Task T3.3: Pilot Group B (lead: UNIMAN)
  • WP4: REWIRE SCALE – Training, Community Mobilization & Network Expansion (lead: DRA)
  • Task T4.3: Follower Wave Management and Implementation Support (lead: Inria)
  • Task T4.4: Research Culture Transformation and Comprehensive Sustainability (lead: DRA)
  • WP5: REWIRE MANAGE – Coordination, Communication & Quality (lead: AthenaRC)

For more details, please read the post on OpenAIRE.