Prompting an EOSC in practice

Executive summary

«With the staff working document (SWD) on the EOSC at its very heart, this final report picks up from the recommendations of the first EOSC HLEG report, the findings from the 2nd EOSC HLEG interim report with the aim of providing truly practical considerations and pointers for the timely implementation of the EOSC, based around the concept of a ‘Minimal Viable Product’ i.e. a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development. It also highlights the ground-breaking work taking place in Europe, guided by the increasingly prevalent principles of research data sharing.

The Commission presented its vision for the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) in its April 2016 Communication on the ‘European Cloud Initiative’, 1as a part of the digital single market strategy. This will be attained through policy action and financial support to integrate and consolidate e-infrastructure platforms, to federate existing research infrastructures and scientific clouds and to support the development of cloud-based services for open science. In close collaboration with Member States to connect the priority European research infrastructures to the EOSC, the Commission will also work towards an action plan for scientific data interoperability, including ‘metadata’, specifications and certification.

To help drive forward and implement the EOSC, the main thread of the report is to understand how the EOSC, as highlighted also in the foreword, can effectively interlink people, data, services and training, publications, projects and organisations. Formation of these bonds would not only produce valuable data, but also provide visibility and networking space, with obvious incentive mechanisms for the recognition of the work of scientists and the value of supporting infrastructures. The EOSC should be a user-friendly, collaborative tool for data sharing and reuse.

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The following recommendations are the result of a combination of extensive discussion exchanges amongst expert findings and the stakeholders cited at the beginning of the report, first-hand experience from some of the Science Demonstrators (SDs) involved in EOSC Pilot project3, results from the open consultation launched at the EOSC summit in June 2018, and from evidence gathered from the EOSC in practice stories.

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