Challenge: Unprecedented anthropogenic pressures put ecological research at the center of efforts to maintain ecosystem services supporting life on earth. In this capacity, ecology is increasingly becoming predictive and scalable science. However, the transition is hampered as most ecologists do not make use of novel opportunities to integrate existing data across scales. Further, much of the ecological research remains unused, as we recently identified. Therefore, it is pressing to drastically empower ecological research. | Solution: EcoOpen will capitalize on the global momentum of meta-research and open science developments. It will use these to develop solutions to reduce unused research and foster scientific breakthroughs by facilitating uptake of a rich landscape of existing ecologically relevant information.| How: We will develop protocols, tools, and methods for the use of open data and other open science artifacts in evidence synthesis and broader. We will guide their development using meta-research approach. Meta-research is a burgeoning interdisciplinary research line that investigates the scientific system to optimize it. Specifically, we will quantify the benefits of open science artifacts and technical and social barriers to their use, building trade-off models. We will demonstrate the benefits of developed tools by addressing several fundamental questions in ecology on a global scale, using state-of-the-art approaches to evidence synthesis. My unique background in ecology, expertise in open science and meta-research, and wide international network of collaborators, uniquely position me to successfully conduct this innovative project. | Vision: Tools developed in EcoOpen will foster scientific breakthroughs in ecology. Results of EcoOpen have the potential to inform scientific reform. The project will allow me to establish the first meta-research group that focuses on ecology, further strengthening Croatia's position in a global scientific landscape.