Date: 
25 September 2020

 

The Science Clusters ENVRI-FAIR, EOSC-LIFE, ESCAPE, PaNOSC, and SSHOC have issued a joint statement urging increased emphasis on making EOSC user centric.

The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) will enable a trusted, virtual, federated environment in Europe to store, share and reuse digital outputs from research (including publications, data, metadata and software) across borders and scientific disciplines.  The Science Clusters bring together 72 world-class research infrastructures from the ESFRI roadmap and beyond to work on connecting their user communities to the EOSC in adherence with FAIR data principles. They are flanked by European e-infrastructures EGI, EUDAT, GÉANT, and OpenAIRE which provide inclusive data management services across Europe and beyond to the benefit of science.

In a joint statement published on 18 September 2020 and entitled EOSC - a tool for enabling Open Science in Europe, the Science Clusters noted that currently many building blocks are in place with on-going EOSC projects continuing to enrich the EOSC ecosystem. They stated that to ensure strong engagement by research communities, the time had come to orient the EOSC activities towards higher relevance for these communities.

The statement was a response to the recent, Europe-wide open consultation on the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) which sets the general framework for future strategic research, development and innovation (RDI) activities to be further defined in the context of the candidate EOSC European Partnership proposed under the Horizon Europe Programme.

In placing user requirements at the heart of the next phase of the EOSC implementation, the Science Clusters tabled a number of issues to be considered for integration into the EOSC roadmap. These include research-oriented services, trust-based open access to data, strong collaboration between EOSC user communities, service providers and governance, and sustainable funding.

The draft SRIA was presented at the EOSC Governance Board meeting on 1 October 2020

Read the joint statement