The year 2024 has been a year of renewal for the CERCA Institution (I-CERCA). With a change in leadership, structural and organisational reforms have been driven forward to consolidate its core mission: to be an agile and efficient tool at the service of the CERCA centres, enhancing research and its impact on society.

The new organisational structure responds to the demands and opportunities set out in the Science Act and its regulatory framework. With a determination to adapt to emerging challenges, I-CERCA is now structured into two main areas of work that strengthen its operational capacity.

On the one hand, the management area focuses on internal administration and on providing legal, financial, public sector and communications advice to the centres. On the other, the strategic area has been created with the mission of establishing the necessary structures to support the CERCA centres in complying with the Science Act and its implementation.

To this end, this new area brings together the units of internationalisation, knowledge transfer and evaluation—already part of the current performance contract—and incorporates three new fields: the development of the open science strategy, the promotion of the gender equality strategy, and the reinforcement of the Catalan language in the scientific domain.

Through these changes, I-CERCA strengthens its commitment to being a key institution for the research ecosystem in Catalonia, providing the CERCA centres with the necessary support to grow, innovate and lead.

We present the 2023 annual report, highlighting the advances and achievements made by the CERCA Institution. During 2023, I-CERCA continued to support CERCA centres, promoted collaboration activities, training, and facilitated knowledge transfer and synergy creation.

A significant part of the year’s activity focused on developing actions aimed at promoting and communicating knowledge transfer within the CERCA System. These activities are linked to the strategic plan for innovation and knowledge transfer promoted by the Department of Research and Universities through the Directorate General for Transfer and Knowledge Society.

It is also worth mentioning the campaign ‘At CERCA, the future is our present,’ which aims to disseminate and bring the Catalan research centre system closer to the public.

If the year 2021 can be considered to have marked the turning point in the evolution of I-CERCA, advancing the system of centres towards a European model, the year 2022 has meant the consolidation of the research and development model in Catalonia with the approval of the Science Law on 21 December. The long-awaited new law provides the system and, therefore, the CERCA centres with the legal and economic tools necessary to develop and compete within the international scientific community and defines the CERCA centres and the Fundació Institució dels Centres de Recerca de Catalunya as members of the CERCA system.

This was also the year in which two training actions were launched that will define the evolution of the system in the coming years. The first is the ÀGORA training program, aimed at the management group of the centres. The program includes different topics of interest ranging from the update in labour legislation to the push for internationalization, the diversification of funding sources, the implementation of the Responsible Research and Innovation agenda (RRI) in the centres or the improvement of citizen participation in research and innovation.

The second program launched is aimed at those responsible for the research impact strategy. The aim of this activity is to train this group of professionals to develop good impact narratives with a view to 2024, the year in which a new call for impact assessment (RIA) is planned.

In summary, the action of I-CERCA during 2022 has meant an evolution of the activities it had been developing successfully and has opened up new opportunities that should bring growth to both the system and the institution.

The year about to end will be seen as a turning point in the evolution of the CERCA Institute. Obtaining the first positive results in the European Commission Horizon Europe calls for applications and funding from the General State Budget for the CERCAGINYS project will undoubtedly mark the an advance in the institute in coming years.

We may safely say that the initial CERCA Institute instrument for implementing a common policy of action as a core benchmark for research centres is now consolidated and has evolved coherently toward a system of research centres in Catalonia (the CERCA system), with more in common with the French and German models of centre systems.

The system has now reached a degree of maturity, making it time to move towards more ambitious positions and bring us closer to what we would like to be. Believing we can have a system of centres similar to the Max Planck Society should not be a chimera or a dream, but our goal.

Viewing the centres as a whole has always been CERCA’s aim. It will surely be a source of joy to all research centres in Catalonia, which, it should be remembered, are deeply embedded in the Catalan university system.