The creation of the platform for long-term socio-ecological research in the French Alps (LTSER Alps) provided a challenging opportunity to reactivate unique data sets on vegetation composition and land use spanning over a period of more than 40 years. The main objective of the LTSER platform Alps which is research on coupled dynamics of alpine ecosystems, their uses and the climate is constructed around topics on which all partners have already worked for several years. Moreover, a great amount of data has already been produced but is not yet available to all partners. Through the organisation of the LTSER platform, collaborations already envisaged which remained for many years in the state of drafts (e.g. projects on transformation of the coupling of functioning of farm holdings and mountain summering pastures and on mutations of alpine tourism in the face of climate change) were finally fostered and formalised. Other long-term data sets initially recorded to describe the status quo of diverse alpine ecosystems are now used to respond to urgent question on the impact of climate change and more precisely of drought on the mountain biodiversity. Moreover, the creation of the LTSER platform is facilitating the emergence of new approaches. This finally led to a new project in which the process of construction of the LTSER platform is becoming itself subject of a study by sociologists.