The EU-OPENSCREEN Preparatory Phase forms the basis for the construction and operation of a pan-European infrastructure of open screening platforms for Chemical Biology. EU-OPENSCREEN will bring together leading laboratories from 14 European countries covering all aspects of Chemical Biology from high-throughput screening with a dedicated compound library to assay development, chemical synthesis for hit-optimisation, bio-profiling and in vivo studies, as well as a central database, training for scientists and platform staff and dissemination activities. The infrastructure will be used by researchers from universities, research institutes and SMEs across Europe, who either have only limited in-house facilities or no access at all to such resources and expertise. The EU-OPENSCREEN infrastructure will keep Europe at the forefront of the biological and medical sciences and will stimulate industrial research and commercial exploitation.In order to prepare the creation of an efficient network of centres which provide users with optimal resources, the EU-OPENSCREEN Preparatory Phase will address the following issues:- A user-focused access strategy.- The physical infrastructure requirements.- Suitable data standards and the framework for a database to archive and make the results available to the scientific community.- A financial management plan for the construction and sustainable operation of the infrastructure in co-operation with national funding bodies.- The legal approach regarding intellectual property issues.- An appropriate legal and governance structure.- The development of a Chemical Biology education package to ensure adequate training of scientists and platform staff.- A central Chemical Biology information gateway in form of a website.- The dissemination of the business plan to stakeholders and decision makers and co-ordination with national funding strategies.