Swiss National ORD Prize 2025 for Legal and Environmental Sciences

In 2025, the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences presented the National Prize for Open Research Data for the third time. With prize money of 10,000 Swiss francs each, the award honours researchers at all career stages who distinguish themselves through exemplary and innovative practices in the field of Open Research Data (ORD). This year’s call for submissions, with an open thematic focus, was aimed at teams and individual researchers at Swiss research institutions.

The prize is part of the National ORD Strategy and aims to advance the transition toward open research data in the scientific community. It is awarded by a jury composed of members of the ORD Sounding Board Researchers.

Two projects were recognised this year:

2. “Choice of Law Dataverse (CoLD)” is a project of the Faculty of Law at the University of Lucerne. Through a digital platform, private international law is linked with state-of-the-art technology to provide an openly accessible data archive to identify applicable legal bases. Daniel Girsberger (project lead) and Agatha Brandão de Oliveira (research associate) promote transparent and openly accessible information on the choice of law through this project. Using comparative law methodology, national regulations and court decisions are systematically organised and made available through a collaborative process. This enables students, researchers, and legal practitioners to navigate private international law more efficiently.

1. “Alplakes – Monitoring and forecasting European alpine lakes”, is led by James Runnalls at Eawag, the water research institute of the ETH Domain. The Alplakes research project aims to improve understanding of lakes in the European Alpine region by integrating measurement data, hydrodynamic models, and remote sensing products into an openly accessible platform. The goal is to create a foundation that advances the study and observation of lakes by providing an open data platform for researchers and water professionals. As a freely accessible web application, it also gives access to the broader public and demonstrates how modelling, Earth observation, and open research data practices can be effectively combined to tackle complex environmental monitoring tasks transparently and collaboratively.

Dr Clemens Lange, physicist at the Paul Scherrer Institute and CERN and chair of the ORD Prize jury, emphasises: “I am delighted by the impressive number and disciplinary breadth of the submitted projects. This extensive engagement clearly indicates the growing momentum behind Open Science and its evolution into standard research practice.”

Information about the award ceremony

The award ceremony will take place on 27 November 2025 from 5:30 p.m. at the Bern History Museum in Bern.

The programme includes a keynote speech by Brigitte Vézina (Creative Commons) on the topic of Open Heritage, as well as the official prize ceremony including lightning talks by the winning projects.

Prize money

The total prize money of 20,000 Swiss francs is provided by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Further information:

Olivia Denk, Specialist Open Science and Head of the ORD Office (a+), +41 31 306 92 11, olivia.denk@akademien-schweiz.ch

About the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences (a+)

The Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences are an association of Switzerland's science academies: the Swiss Academy of Sciences SCNAT, the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences SAHS, the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences SAMS, the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences SATW and the Swiss Young Academy SYA. In addition to the five academies, they include the competence centres TA-SWISS and Science et Cité as well as other scientific networks. Early career academics can network and exchange ideas within the Swiss Young Academy. The Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences network the sciences regionally, nationally and internationally. They represent the scientific communities in a disciplinary, interdisciplinary manner and independently of institutions and subjects. Their network is long-term oriented and committed to scientific excellence. They advise politics and society on knowledge-based and societally relevant issues.