If you work with, or have other ties to, research related activities, chances are that you’ve heard about EOSC, or the European Open Science Cloud. It’s a gigantic project initiated by the European Commission to create a European infrastructure for sharing research data across national and disciplinary borders. But what is EOSC? Does it exist already, or is the work only just beginning? An SND webinar on 11 February provided more information about EOSC and how Sweden is part of this development.
Directors of the EOSC Association.
—My answer is that EOSC both exists and doesn’t exist. It exists as a vision; a clear notion that we will create EOSC. And there are plenty of projects to achieve that. But there isn’t a common entryway to it, yet. There is an EOSC Portal, but that isn’t EOSC, but a catalogue of services that may become part of EOSC in the future
That was Wilhelm Widmark’s response when he took the floor as the first speaker in the SND webinar to introduce EOSC. Wilhelm Widmark is Library Director at Stockholm University, and one of nine Directors in what’s called the EOSC Association. He explained how a lot has happened since the EOSC vision was first presented in 2016. One important step was taken in 2020, when the EOSC Association was founded. The EOSC Association is now one of the governing bodies of EOSC, together with the European Commission and a Steering Board connected to Horizon Europe, the European Union’s Research and Innovation framework. The EOSC Association has more than 200 members, who are research funding organisations, service providing organisations, and research performing organisations. Sweden is currently represented by seven higher education institutions, the Swedish Research Council, Formas, and the research infrastructure ESS.
—EOSC Association is the common voice for the research community in EOSC. Sweden has played an active part in this development, but we can do more than participate. By becoming members, we can influence the implementation of EOSC, said Wilhelm Widmark.
EOSC will make Open Science the new normal
Wilhelm Widmark emphasised that the vision for EOSC is broader than to merely develop technical solutions.
—We’re not just building a technical platform. The work includes to develop the next generation of data professionals who work with Open Science and data management, close the education gap, and coordinate curricula.
Sofia Abrahamsson from the Swedish Research Council agreed that the vision is more than a platform for tools and resources.
—We mustn't forget that EOSC is also striving to change the culture and to make Open Science the new normal, she said.
Sofia Abrahamsson took part in the webinar to introduce the role of the Swedish Research Council (VR) in EOSC. VR has been appointed a Swedish Mandated Organisation in EOSC Association and will represent national interests and stakeholders in the development of the infrastructure. She said that the Swedish Research Council has plans to initiate a collective national forum and a workspace for organisations that are involved in EOSC.
Task forces implement key areas of EOSC
EOSC Association has five advisory groups with five focus areas: Implementation of EOSC, technical challenges, metadata and data quality, research careers and curricula, and sustaining EOSC. Under the advisory groups are 13 task forces. They address key areas of implementation of various parts of EOSC. The SND webinar gave an insight into three of these groups where Sweden is represented.
Jessica Lindvall from SciLifeLab/NBIS and Sabina Anderberg from Stockholm University presented the task force Upskilling countries to engage in EOSC. Their work includes to increase awareness of EOSC and the common good of open science.
—We will answer the question why we want to implement open science, but also explain why this is important on an individual level. We also want to communicate the higher purpose of open science, said Jessica Lindvall.
Another group that strives to change the view on open science is called Research Careers, recognition and credit. They address incentives for researchers and investigate how it can be rewarding to share research data openly. Gustav Nilsonne, from Karolinska Institutet and SND, presented the group’s work. He said that questions of recognition and credit are hot topics in the European research debate and that there are plenty of initiatives in this field, but no agreed plan for how to proceed. Their task force promotes the development of new grant assessment processes and open standards for measuring quality, more evaluations over a longer period, support to local and national policy development, and training and competence-raising activities.
—Funding bodies, HEIs, and other parties should also prepare to take a stand on whether they want to influence this development, said Gustav Nilsonne.
The third and final task force, Researcher Engagement and Adoption, was presented by Sverker Holmgren from Chalmers University of Technology. Their main task is to contribute to updating the strategic agenda of EOSC. Simultaneously, they will make sure that EOSC develops in a direction that creates added value for researchers.
—An overarching principle for EOSC is that research has to be at the core of the initiative. I’m not sure that we can say that we have achieved that so far. Our objective is to do something about that. Engagement with researchers is fundamental to understanding what they need, and to ensure that EOSC operates in a way that is useful to them, stated Sverker Holmgren.
Related collaborations and projects
During the webinar, Iris Alfredsson from SND presented SND’s involvement in various collaborations that are connected to EOSC. Among them we see the cluster project SSHOC, with a focus on the social sciences and humanities, and EOSC Nordic, which will coordinate resources in the Nordic and Baltic countries. SND also takes part in EOSC Future, and the coming project Skills4EOSC.
Maria Johnsson from Lund University shared the latest developments in two EOSC related projects that she has participated in. ENVRI-FAIR, a large project to develop services and tools for environmental and climate data for the EOSC portal, and FAIRsFAIR, a large-scale project about different ways to apply FAIR.
Here you can read more about the event and the presentations (in Swedish only).