The European Open Science Cloud: Who pays for what?

Introduction

How should Europe fund its lofty plans for an open science cloud? A far-reaching and multi-faceted undertaking, the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) initiative aims to provide Europe’s 1.7 million researchers and 70 million students and professionals in science and technology with easy access to other researchers’ data, and to a wide range of computing resources. What’s more, the Commission has said, the data in this virtual environment is supposed to be “free at the point of use.”

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The architects of the EOSC urgently need to figure out who will pay for what and how much is being spent on the current data infrastructure. Other related questions include: What will the EOSC really mean for the cost of handling data? How will the internal accounting work? What will be the total bill and how will it change over time?

This paper starts to address some of these thorny questions. It begins by outlining how European science is employing the cloud today and the different categories of costs involved in establishing the EOSC. It then identifies the potential efficiency benefits associated with a move to cloud computing and open data sharing, before considering some of the longer-term economic benefits that could arise from an open science cloud. The paper concludes by looking at the potential sources of funding and making some recommendations for the EOSC’s many stakeholders.

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