CARE: Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility and Ethics.

Research Infrastructures are complex socio-technical systems that play a central role in advancing scientific knowledge, fostering innovation and supporting evidence-based policy. Their effective management is therefore critical not only for ensuring scientific progress, but also for delivering broader societal, economic and environmental benefits. However, the increasing scale, diversity and interconnectedness of RIs within the ERA have made their management inherently complex, requiring coordinated approaches that integrate scientific, technological, organisational and societal dimensions.

Within the European Union, substantial investments have been made in RIs, which are defined as facilities, resources and services used by research communities to conduct research and promote innovation (e.g. European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) (2020), European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) 2021). Amongst these, ERICs constitute legally established entities operating under a common regulatory framework. While the ERIC Regulation (Council of the European Union 2009) provides the legal basis for their establishment, operation and dissolution, their governance structures and operational modalities are defined through individual Statutes (ERIC Practical Guidelines 2025). As such, ERICs represent the primary legally constituted infrastructures operating across Europe.

Although this study focuses on ERICs, comparable large-scale research infrastructure arrangements exist internationally, including the United States NSF major facilities and mid-scale research infrastructure, Australia’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy and China’s major science and technology infrastructures, indicating that the need for integrated, sustainable and adaptive RI management extends well beyond the ERA.

To promote interdisciplinary and cross-domain collaboration, the European Commission has organised RIs into thematic Science Clusters, which are further embedded within the evolving EOSC ecosystem. However, these Clusters do not possess legal status and operate primarily as coordination mechanisms. Consequently, the responsibility for ensuring integrated, adaptive and sustainable operations rests largely with the individual ERICs, reinforcing the importance of robust and coherent management frameworks.

The ESFRI has developed a comprehensive framework for the mandatory monitoring of the performance of Landmark RIs (fully implemented, research facility (e.g. ERIC) recogniszed by ESFRI), structured around three main components or cases: (a) general information, addressing political support, financial commitment and inclusion in national roadmaps; (b) the scientific case, evaluating scientific excellence and impact; and (c) the implementation case, assessing governance, operations and service delivery (European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) 2024). Excluding the general information component, this framework spans a wide range of thematic areas, covering scientific, organisational and operational aspects of ERIC performance. While highly detailed and operational, this monitoring approach does not explicitly provide a unifying conceptual structure linking these dimensions. In the context of ERICs, the objective is not only to guarantee effective operation, but to enable sustainable and impactful delivery of scientific and societal value. This requires, first, clearly defining the challenges to be addressed and then applying a proposed ‘eleven-tenet framework’ in a systematic and rigorous manner to ensure that all relevant dimensions are considered (see below, Table 1). In this sense, the tenets should be used as a structured checklist to identify potential gaps or impediments that may hinder the successful functioning and long-term sustainability of the infrastructure. By explicitly addressing each of the proposed eleven dimensions, the framework supports a comprehensive and balanced approach to managing ERICs, ensuring that no critical aspect is overlooked.

Previous policy-orientated work has also highlighted the need for general principles to guide the quality, access, impact and sustainability of RIs. For example, the League of European Research Universities proposed four “golden principles” for RIs, emphasising adherence to access principles and FAIR data policies, transparent and up-to-date information on services and access conditions, stable organisational embedding and clear indicators of operational and scientific quality (Väänänen and van Tienderen 2017). This approach is particularly relevant because it links access, openness, organisational accountability and performance evidence and further recommends the development of a standard checklist to assess whether ERICs adhere to these principles. While this provides an important operational reference point, the present study seeks to broaden the conceptual basis for ERIC management by integrating scientific, technological, economic, administrative, political, legal, societal, environmental, ethical, cultural and communication dimensions into a single eleven-tenet framework.

Recent work on open access research infrastructures (Spinello et al. 2021) also reaches a similar conclusion from a different perspective. Haak et al. (2025), focusing on ‘open by design’ approaches, argue that existing open-science frameworks, including FAIR, CARE, POSI and FOREST, provide important principles and evaluative lenses, but do not by themselves offer an integrated design and implementation framework for infrastructure builders. Their approach is particularly relevant here because it similarly emphasises the need to move from fragmented checklists towards a coherent framework through which openness, governance, sustainability, community engagement, interoperability and evaluation can be embedded into the lifecycle of RIs.

Similar multidimensional approaches have been developed in other domains. In business and organisational analysis, the PEST framework (political, economic, social and technological) and its subsequent extensions (PESTLE; adding legal and environmental dimensions) have been widely used to capture the complexity of organisational environments. In the specific context of RI strategy, Marafioti et al. (2026) also underline the relevance of PESTLE analysis as a macro-environmental tool for understanding the political, economic, sociological, technological, legal and environmental factors shaping RI operations, particularly in transnational infrastructures where trends may need to be assessed at both national-node and European levels. In environmental management, particularly in marine ecosystems, these approaches have been further expanded to six, then seven, then ten tenets, which were developed separately from PESTLE to include additional dimensions such as, ethical, cultural and communication aspects, leading to the formulation of the ten-tenet framework for integrated and sustainable management (Elliott 2013, Barnard and Elliott 2015, Elliott et al. 2025).

Striking parallels can be identified between these ten-tenets and the thematic areas covered by the ESFRI monitoring framework. The eleven-tenet framework proposed here addresses this gap by offering an integrated management structure through which ESFRI monitoring dimensions can be interpreted, aligned and implemented. However, an important distinction must be made: in the context of ERICs, scientific excellence is not an intrinsic property of the infrastructure itself, but rather an outcome generated by the research communities it supports. The role of the infrastructure is, therefore, to enable such excellence through the provision of high-quality data, services and collaborative environments, which, in turn, must be amongst the parameters on which ERICs are assessed, as proxies for scientific excellence.

Building on this distinction, this study extends the original ten-tenet framework by introducing an additional tenet, enabling scientifical excellence, thereby forming a set of eleven-tenets (Table 1), tailored to the specific context of ERICs.

The ERICs present a number of inherent strengths, including their capacity to integrate large and diverse datasets, support interdisciplinary collaboration and provide shared services to wide user communities. However, they also face significant challenges, such as fragmentation across domains, complexity in governance and coordination, difficulties in ensuring long-term financial sustainability and the need to continuously adapt to evolving scientific, technological and policy landscapes. These challenges often result in gaps between data generation and effective use, as well as between scientific potential and societal impact. In this context, the application of the tenet-based framework provides a systematic and rigorous approach to both enhancing the inherent strengths of ERICs and addressing their limitations. By ensuring that all critical dimensions are considered in an integrated manner, the framework supports the identification and removal of impediments to effective operation, thereby improving the capacity of ERICs to deliver sustainable, impactful and policy-relevant outcomes.

The interdependence of the eleven-tenets and their organisation into core, structural and contextual tiers can be conceptualised through a concentric model (Fig. 1), which illustrates their integrated and non-hierarchical nature. The three tiers represent complementary levels of functionality within the framework. The core tier defines the fundamental purpose and enabling conditions of the ERIC, focusing on its capacity to deliver scientific value through the integration of scientific excellence, technological capability and financial sustainability. The structural tier encompasses the governance and organisational mechanisms required to ensure that the infrastructure operates effectively within its institutional and policy context, including administrative, legal and political alignment. The contextual tier addresses the broader societal, environmental and cultural environment in which the infrastructure operates, ensuring its relevance, legitimacy and long-term sustainability through responsiveness to societal needs, ethical considerations and effective communication. Together, these tiers illustrate the multi-layered nature of RI management, where purpose, structure and context must be coherently aligned.

The aim is to assess whether this extended framework can provide a coherent and comprehensive basis for supporting the integrated, adaptive and sustainable management of ERICs, while remaining fully aligned with the ESFRI monitoring approach. While highly detailed and operational, the ESFRI monitoring framework is primarily designed to assess the performance of ERICs across a range of dimensions, rather than to provide a unifying conceptual structure for their management. As such, it offers a comprehensive set of criteria and indicators, but does not explicitly integrate these into a coherent framework that links the different dimensions of ERIC functioning. This creates a gap between performance monitoring and the systematic management of ERICs as complex socio-technical systems. The eleven-tenet framework proposed here addresses this gap by providing an integrated structure through which these dimensions can be understood, aligned and implemented, thereby supporting more coherent and effective management practices.

Building on the framework presented above, the eleven tenets are described below according to their organisation into core, structural and contextual tiers.

The ten-tenet framework, originally developed in the context of environmental management (Elliott 2013), is based on the premise that successful and sustainable management can be achieved if a sufficiently comprehensive set of key dimensions is identified and addressed. In essence, the concept assumes that, by properly defining and managing a finite number of critical tenets, it is possible to capture most of the relevant attributes required for effective system governance, thereby providing a “good enough” representation of the complexity involved. This approach has been applied in different domains, including the definition of the essential functions of biodiversity data infrastructures (Güntsch et al. 2024) and the assessment and management of non-indigenous species in marine ecosystems (Ojaveer et al. 2014). It has been proposed in solving environmental problems due to marine litter and garbage and leading to promoting the circular economy in dealing with waste (Borja and Elliott 2019) which can then be applied to minimising the environmentally-damanging actions of ERICs. Principles-based thinking has also been applied in biodiversity informatics, where Patterson et al. (2008) proposed thirteen principles for a names-based cyberinfrastructure serving biology, highlighting organism names as a near-universal indexing system for biological data objects. Although narrower in scope than ERIC management, this work further supports the value of explicit principles for structuring complex, distributed and data-intensive scientific infrastructures. Building on this conceptual basis, the present study extends the framework to eleven tenets in order to address the specific characteristics of ERICs, most notably their role in creating the conditions that allow user communities to achieve scientific excellence. In doing so, the framework provides a structured and integrative approach for capturing the key attributes required for the effective management of ERICs.

In line with these conceptual foundations, the eleven-tenet framework presented here emphasises that the ERIC management should be assessed not only through internal organisational processes, but also through the outcomes these processes enable in relation to its mission, vision and strategic objectives. However, while the original tenets were developed in the context of business and environmental systems management, their adaptation to ERICs highlights the need to manage not only technical and organisational components, but also complex socio-technical interactions involving users, stakeholders, governance bodies and policy frameworks. The eleven-tenet framework can, therefore, be seen as complementary to strategic-management tools such as PESTLE analysis: while PESTLE helps ERICs scan their external operating environment, the tenets provide a broader management scaffold through which such external drivers can be integrated with scientific, technological, economic, governance, societal and sustainability considerations.

A key distinction in the context of ERICs is that scientific excellence is not an intrinsic property of the infrastructure itself, but rather an outcome generated by the research communities it supports. Consequently, the effectiveness of an ERIC is determined by its capacity to enable, sustain, amplify and evolve this excellence through the provision of high-quality services, data and collaborative research environments. This reinforces the central role of the newly- introduced tenet of enabling scientific excellence, which acts as the focal point around which all other tenets operate.

The eleven tenets should not be interpreted as independent or sequential elements, but rather as an integrated system in which each component influences and supports the others. As such, Elliott et al. (2025) gives the tenets as a series of Venn diagrams indicating a continuum from an approach to management and then technical measures to achieve the desired outcome. Consequently, failure to adequately address any single tenet may compromise the overall effectiveness of the infrastructure, while their combined and balanced implementation increases the likelihood of achieving long-term sustainability, adaptability, and impact. In this sense, the framework reflects the characteristics of complex adaptive systems, such as SES, where feedback mechanisms, continuous learning, and responsiveness to external drivers are essential (Smith et al. (2025)).

In line with the tiered structure proposed in this study, the successful application of the framework requires coordinated integration across all three levels. At the core tier, this entails the continuous alignment of enabling scientific excellence, technological feasibility and economic viability, ensuring that the infrastructure remains responsive to evolving scientific priorities, emerging technologies and changing funding landscapes. At the structural tier, effective vertical integration across governance levels, European, national, regional and institutional, is essential, supported by coherent administrative, legal and political frameworks. Finally, at the contextual tier, horizontal integration across domains, societal, environmental, cultural, ethical and communications, is required to ensure relevance, legitimacy and long-term impact. Together, these dimensions highlight the importance of adaptive management approaches, supported by robust monitoring systems, such as those developed by ESFRI, enabling the infrastructure to respond dynamically to internal and external drivers.

Ultimately, the eleven-tenet framework provides a structured, yet flexible, approach to understanding and guiding the management of ERICs and RIs in general. It allows for the identification of strengths and gaps, supports strategic prioritisation and facilitates communication with stakeholders, including funders and policy-makers. At the same time, it raises a set of critical questions that must be addressed in order to assess whether an ERIC is being managed successfully. These questions relate, for example, to the extent to which the infrastructure effectively enables scientific excellence; whether it maintains a balance between technological innovation and operational stability; how it ensures long-term financial sustainability; and how it demonstrates its value and impact to society and policy. Addressing these questions requires the development of measurable performance indicators, robust evaluation methodologies and a shared understanding of success criteria across the RI landscape.

The eleven-tenet framework also complements earlier principle-based approaches to ERIC quality and sustainability. The four “golden principles” proposed by LERU (Väänänen and van Tienderen 2017) emphasise access, FAIR data, transparency of information, stable organisational embedding and evidence of operational and scientific quality. These elements are strongly reflected across the eleven tenets proposed here, particularly in relation to enabling scientific excellence, technological feasibility, economic viability, administrative achievement, societal desirability and effective communication. The present framework extends this logic by situating such principles within a broader management structure that also includes political alignment, legal governance, environmental and energy sustainability, ethical soundness and cultural inclusiveness. In this sense, the eleven-tenet framework can be seen as a more comprehensive conceptual scaffold within which existing RI principles, checklists and monitoring approaches can be organised and further implemented.

This convergence is also visible in recent work on open by design research infrastructures (sensu Spinello et al. (2021)). Haak et al. (2025) frame RIs as systems that should serve and enrich their user communities, rather than as entities that generate knowledge independently. This is consistent with the central premise of the enabling scientific excellence tenet proposed here: the ERIC does not itself produce scientific excellence, but creates the conditions through which research communities can generate it. Their evaluation framework, which combines adoption, sustainability, governance, support, engagement and trust-building, also resonates with the structural and contextual tiers of the eleven-tenet framework. The latter, therefore, provides a complementary management-orientated scaffold for established ERICs, while open by design offers a useful design-orientated perspective for embedding openness and community value from the earliest stages of infrastructure development.

In this context, the present work lays the conceptual foundation for a subsequent analysis focusing on the practical assessment of ERIC performance. Table 2 already provides an initial evidence-based framework for this purpose, by identifying, for each of the eleven tenets, the type of evidence that would indicate successful and sustainable management of a ERIC. These evidence categories can be reformulated into a corresponding set of key assessment questions, addressing, for example, whether the ERIC enables scientific excellence, maintains adequate technological capacity, secures long-term financial sustainability, operates through effective governance, aligns with policy priorities, responds to societal needs, complies with legal and ethical requirements and communicates its value effectively. The next step will be to implement these questions into measurable indicators, assessment criteria and evaluation methodologies, forming the basis of a subsequent publication.

Finally, another issue concerns the practical impediments to achieving all eleven tenets simultaneously. Some dimensions, such as technological feasibility, economic viability, administrative achievability, environmental sustainability and communication effectiveness, can often be supported by relatively explicit indicators, for example, service availability, budget stability, staffing capacity, energy use, user uptake or outreach metrics. Other dimensions, including political alignment, societal desirability, ethical soundness, cultural inclusiveness and the enabling of scientific excellence, are more difficult to quantify because they depend on context, stakeholder interpretation, long-term effects and qualitative forms of legitimacy. This creates a risk that more easily measurable tenets receive disproportionate attention, while less quantifiable, but equally important dimensions are under-represented in assessment and management. For this reason, the eleven-tenet framework should not be implemented only through numerical indicators, but through a mixed approach combining quantitative metrics, qualitative evidence, stakeholder judgement, case studies and periodic reflective review.

ERICs are complex socio-technical systems whose long-term success depends on the balanced management of scientific, technological, economic, administrative, political, legal, societal, environmental, ethical, cultural and communication dimensions.

The eleven-tenet framework offers an integrated scaffold for organising these dimensions and for translating dispersed management requirements into a coherent structure for ERIC reflection, assessment and development.

The addition of “enabling scientific excellence” recognises that scientific excellence is produced by user communities, while ERICs provide the data, services, tools, environments and support that make such excellence possible.

The tenets should be understood as interdependent rather than isolated criteria: weakness in one dimension may affect the resilience, legitimacy, adaptability and sustainability of the whole infrastructure.

Although grounded in the European RI and ERIC context, the framework addresses management challenges that are relevant to large-scale RIs internationally.