What is EOSC, the European Open Science Cloud?
In a nutshell, it’s a vision where researchers worldwide avail of an environment where they can collaborate, share results, re-use research outputs. This vision is based on publicly funded research outputs being Open Access, in turn based on policies, skills, services and infrastructure to build and enable a web of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable) data.
At a European level, the stakeholders (Research Performing Organisations, Research Funding organisations, ERICs) come together in the EOSC Association to influence policy and strategy which in turn informs the Horizon Europe Work Programme, where many projects are funded by the EC to advance the strategic agenda of EOSC. Furthermore, member states also influence policy and strategy via the EOSC-Steering Board, made up of ministry representatives (or their delegated individuals) from all MS/AC.
So what’s happening in Ireland?
Ireland has been active for many years now developing the National Open Research strategy and policies, through the National Open Research Forum (NORF) which in turn has developed a National Action Plan resulting in associated funded actions.
To strengthen co-ordination between national activities and the European activities, the EOSC-Ireland forum was setup in October 2022, following the National Open Science Tri-partite event held in September 2022.
It is based on an MS Teams group at HEAnet and currently includes 36 members and has an associated mailing list EOSC-Ireland@heanet.ie.
Several events and webinars have taken place and more are planned over the coming months:
- 5 December 2022 on monitoring Open Science: Policies and Practices by Member States.
- 7 February 2023 on Financial Sustainability of EOSC core functionality.
- 29 March 2023 on FAIR metrics and Data Quality.
- 16 May 2023 on Long Term Data Preservation.
Several events and webinars have taken place and more are planned over the coming The EOSC-Ireland group is also informed of and consulted on the works of the EOSC Steering board (EOSC-SB) which focuses on policy position papers developed by EU member states and associated countries. There are currently 4 policy areas the EOSC-SB is working on:
- Monitoring of policies and practices related to Open Science
- FAIR data and sovereignty
- Data Literacy
- Relationships to commercial suppliers
Work in progress related to these policies is available in the MS teams’ group to enable EOSC-Ireland members to provide feedback. In addition, the EOSC-SB welcomes experts to contribute directly to the development of such policy position papers.
To join the EOSC-Ireland group, and if you would like to contribute to policy development in EOSC-SB please send an email to Roberto.Sabatino@heanet.ie.