Google Scholar seems already into it with its new "Labs" feature (haven't tried it yet).

A solution to this might be for scholarly tools to implement their own AI platforms to ease the search for literature without ignoring publications that might be highly relevant but are not open access for one reason or another.

It would be fascinating to study how citations are evolving as these tools become more widely used. In fact, I wonder if certain publishers are already noticing this internally in their own metrics.

Even if that might seem like a "force for good" that pushes researchers to publish open access, leading to greater research visibility, there's also a flip side: research building on lower-quality work simply because it's openly available.

And the thing is that I'm sure the number of people using AI to search for papers (instead of Scholar, Scopus, and other platforms) will only grow.

Will this bias global literature citation to open-access journals?

If you've ever used an LLM like ChatGPT to search for literature, you'll notice it will mostly only be able to look into papers that are open access, particularly fully open access journals, and a lot of times from certain publishing groups with more or less dubious practices and low-Q publications.

Overall, this represents a step up from the ERC, not only in supporting ambitious EU researchers but also clearly focused on attracting foreign talent to the EU.

Thoughts?

Who can apply? PhD Researchers from everywhere and at any stage, as long as they are residents in the EU or those wanting to set up labs in Europe.
Restrictions: Not available to those with an active ERC grant, and only 1 ERC+ grant can be held in a lifetime.

- Exceptionally competitive with only 30 ERC+ grants to be awarded (in comparison with the 1000 ERC typically awarded).
- Evaluation will be similar to advanced grants (including the panels).

- Up to a maximum funding of up to €7M, it's the single largest grant an individual can obtain in the EU. Representing a maximum of 1M/Year. For comparison, NIH R01s fund projects typically at $500K/Year and R35s at $750K/year.

- ERC+ grants will have no distinction between Junior, Middle, and Advanced Career Stages. They'll still be based only on scientific excellence.
- The ERC+ supports a research program for up to 7 years, approaching the longest duration grants in the US like NIH R35's (up to 8 years).

- They will open for applications next year (Deadline September 2026) and will be available in the next 2 years (final 2 years of the current ERC funding period).

Full Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYT...

Nature is still the most outstanding engineer of all, and there's always a lot of inspiration to draw from it.

The mosquito proboscis, with its distinctive shape, structure, and mechanics, enabled printed lines as thin as 20 μm, exceeding the printing resolution of standard 36-gauge nozzles by about 100%.

So my message is always that if you like finding things out and understanding how the universe works in any of its dimensions, don’t let anything discourage you, go for it. If you’re slightly crazy - even better! 😀

And, to me, there’s no feeling under the sun that beats that of scientific discovery. To find out something that was unknown to mankind before is a feeling that no other natural or synthetic stimuli can emulate. Nothing compares to it.

We are privileged enough to be given the space to have ideas, get creative, and experiment, which is kind of playing with things and checking out what happens!