Improving and coordinating technical infrastructure for institutional open access publishing across Europe

The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) is an ecosystem of research data and related services. It encompasses rules of engagement, standards, abstractions, technologies, and services, which will enable and enhance seamless access to and reliable re-use of FAIR^[1] research outputs (i.e. data and other digital objects), including those generated or collected by other research infrastructures, and covering the whole research data life cycle from generation or discovery and mining to storage, processing, management, analysis, and re-use. The EOSC will contribute to the European Strategy for Data, including its thematic common interoperable data spaces, and the provision of secure and FAIR-enabling European cloud services.

EOSC development has been supported through a series of Horizon 2020 projects and an interim EOSC governance structure preparing the next stage of EOSC development for the period after 2020. These projects have contributed to the creation of a pan-European access mechanism; coordination of national activities for EOSC on-boarding; connection of European research infrastructures (e.g. ERIC and other world-class RIs) and existing e-infrastructures; initial development and operationalisation of the FAIR principles and a FAIR-compliant certification scheme for research data; the EOSC portal providing access to a range of services, guidelines and training; and the development and provision of a number of research-enabling value-added services, including distributed data processing and management (both public and commercial). From 2021, the EOSC partnership will help ensuring directionality (common vision and objectives) and additionality (complementary commitments and contributions) of the stakeholders involved.

Building on this progress, the INFRAEOSC destination aims to continue to develop the EOSC in a more cohesive and structured manner so that it becomes a fully operational enabling ecosystem for the whole research data lifecycle. This ecosystem includes FAIR research data commons (e.g. data, services, tools), based on key horizontal core functions, with corresponding e-infrastructures and service layers accessible to researchers across disciplines throughout Europe, leading to a “Web of FAIR Data and Services” for Science. The EOSC ecosystem will contribute a data space for science, research and innovation articulated with the other data spaces described in the European Strategy for Data.

Expected impact

Proposals for topics under this destination should set out a credible pathway to contributing to one or several of the following impacts:

• Transforming the way researchers as well as the public and private sectors create, share and exploit research outputs (data, publications, protocols, methodologies, software, code, etc.) within and across research disciplines, leading to better quality, validation, more innovation and higher productivity of research;
• Facilitating scientific multi-disciplinary cooperation, leading to discoveries in basic research and solutions in key application areas;
• Seamless access to and management of increasing volumes of research data following FAIR principles (that are open as possible) and other research outputs stimulating the development and uptake of a wide range of new innovative and value-added services from public and commercial providers
• Improving trust in science through increased FAIRness, openness and quality of scientific research in Europe, supported by more meaningful monitoring and better facilitators for reproducibility, validation and re-use of research results, and by improving pathways for the communication of science to the public.

All software developed under this destination should be open source, licensed under a CC0 public domain dedication or under an open source licence as recommended by the Free Software Foundation^[2] and the Open Source Initiative^[3].

All projects that will be financed under this destination are expected to participate in concertation activities in the framework of the EOSC Partnership.

[1] Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable, https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/

[2] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list#SoftwareLicenses

[3] https://opensource.org/licenses

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