$6.5M Boost for Connected Science Knowledge

A new international initiative has received a $6.5 million program-related investment from Wellcome to address one of modern science’s most persistent challenges: the fragmentation of scientific knowledge across disciplines, institutions, and data silos.

The funding supports SYSTEM, an effort focused on organizing scientific outputs — including publications, datasets, and research tools — into a single, interoperable, and interconnected knowledge system. The goal is to make research easier to discover, connect, and reuse across fields, ultimately accelerating scientific progress.

Despite unprecedented growth in global research output, much of today’s scientific knowledge remains difficult to navigate. Findings are often scattered across journals, databases, and proprietary platforms, limiting researchers’ ability to synthesize insights, reproduce results, or build efficiently on prior work.

By rethinking how scientific knowledge is structured and linked, SYSTEM aims to:

• Improve discoverability and reuse of research outputs across disciplines
• Reduce duplication and inefficiencies in scientific work
• Support interdisciplinary collaboration, particularly in complex areas such as health, climate, and biological systems
• Strengthen transparency and reproducibility, helping research findings travel further and last longer

The initiative reflects growing recognition that scientific progress depends not only on producing new knowledge, but also on how well existing knowledge is organized, connected, and shared.

A Systems Approach to Science

Rather than treating publications, data, and tools as isolated outputs, SYSTEM takes a systems-level view of science — modeling research as a dynamic, interconnected ecosystem. By building shared infrastructure and standards, the initiative seeks to enable researchers, funders, and institutions to navigate scientific knowledge more holistically.

This approach aligns with broader global efforts to modernize research infrastructure, especially as science becomes more data-intensive, collaborative, and computationally driven.

Implications for Open Science

The project’s emphasis on interoperability and shared infrastructure also has important implications for open science. Making knowledge more connected and machine-readable can amplify the value of open-access research, open data, and open-source tools — ensuring that publicly funded science delivers broader public benefit.

As scientific challenges grow more complex and global, initiatives like SYSTEM highlight a shift in focus: from simply generating more research, to building better foundations for understanding and using it.