So, we’ve reached triple digits – Celebrating 100 issues of Research*eu magazine
Ten years is a mere drop in the bucket of history but the last ten years have been particularly eventful, from various economic crises, tumultuous politics across the world and continued jumps in technological advancements that have become more and more vital to our everyday lives, from social media, to the ongoing maturity of technologies such as AI and Big Data. The world has also become much more aware of the dangers of climate change and efforts to tackle it have become increasingly serious. And of course, in the last year alone, we’ve had to deal with the health, economic, social and political fallout from the worst pandemic in a century. Much of the cutting-edge research funded through EU programmes, from Horizon 2020 and now Horizon Europe, is dedicated to addressing these fundamental societal challenges faced not only by EU citizens but by everyone across the globe. And it has been our privilege over the last ten years to disseminate the exciting EU-funded research results that are making all the difference. Whilst the first issue of Research*eu was released in April 2011, we have to admit our origins go further back, first to 2008, when this magazine’s direct predecessor was the research*eu results supplement, the more technical supplement to a more generalist magazine (the original research*eu, which is the predecessor of our sister EU online publication, Horizon magazine). But then we can even travel back even further to 1994, when the CORDIS focus newsletter – the grandparent of them all – was published until 2007, when the research*eu era was ushered in. History lesson aside, we’re proud to have covered some truly fascinating topics over the last decade and showcased the EU-funded researchers who really have made waves in their specific field of interest. To highlight just three examples, the EU research community’s sustained focus on new technologies and solutions to work for a more sustainable world (issues 2, 13, 16, 19, 25, 34, 38, 54, 64, 86, 92 and 94), exciting developments in European space exploration (issues 5, 32, 53, 67, 73 and 90) and the development of innovative treatments for many major illnesses, such as cancer, infectious diseases and mental health disorders (issues 6, 7, 18, 22, 47, 50, 55, 65, 71, 76, 79, 84, 89 and 97). Graphically, we have also gone through three comprehensive revamps over our 100 issues to keep the magazine fresh, with the latest incarnation happening from issue 76 onwards. We’ve over time also introduced new features as a response to valued reader feedback and suggestions, such as the EU Agenda events list and, most recently, the launch of the successful ‘Life After’ and ‘Project of the Month’ line of articles. The print editions in English are posted for free to our thousands of worldwide subscribers but don’t forget you can also read all our issues on cordis.europa.eu in French, German, Italian, Polish and Spanish. So now as we embark on the beginning of the next era, our passion to bring our readers the very best EU-funded research results has not dimmed – and so to conclude this commemorative article, we went back to the editorial of the very first Research*eu in 2011 that poetically summarises the philosophy that has driven us over the past ten years: “Curiosity has long been the origin of some of humanity’s most crowning achievements. Driven by wonder and imagination, scientists have often initiated the first step towards a spellbinding discovery. Centuries ago, mathematicians working by candlelight laid the foundation for modern computing. And few could ever have imagined how far their research has changed the world today.” And on that note, thanks for being with us and please, stay with us as we continue on our voyage of discovery together!
Keywords
Research*eu, 100 issues, CORDIS, Horizon 2020, Horizon Europe