Title: Open research data and methods. National policy and executive plan by the higher education and research community for 2021–2025. Policy component 1: Open access to research data
Author: Open Science Coordination in Finland, Federation of Finnish Learned Societies
Series: Responsible Research Series 7:2021
Publisher: The Committee for Public Information (TJNK) and Federation of Finnish Learned Societies (TSV)
Editorial Board: Susanna Nykyri, Seliina Päällysaho, Tomi Rosti (chairperson), Anne Sunikka, Anssi Neuvonen, Mari Elisa Kuusniemi
ISSN: 2670-062X
ISBN: 978-952-5995-48-0
DOI: https://doi.org/10.23847/isbn.9789525995480
Copyright: CC-BY
European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) initiative is the tangible outcome of a number of key European and global policy milestones and position statements regarding Open Science. EOSC is an integral part of, and supports, the European Commission’s strategy for realising the European Research Area (ERA), in particular the policy priorities of Open Innovation, Open Science and Open to the World and the goal of findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) data.
EOSC will essentially involve the federation of existing research data infrastructures and the realisation of a Web of FAIR Data and Related Services for Science, making research data interoperable and machine actionable following the FAIR guiding principles. This web of data will allow researchers to find, exploit and combine linked datasets, providing a basis for artificial intelligence (AI) tools, leading to new discoveries and research paradigms.
EOSC will initially focus on traditional research data but will also include research publications and research code. EOSC will encourage FAIR datasets to be made fully open, and will follow the principle of ‘as open as possible, as closed as necessary’.
In an initial phase of development from 2016 to 2020, the European Commission (EC) made a financial investment of approximately €350 million to begin building the foundations of EOSC through project calls in Work Programmes in Horizon 2020. This investment was targeted to develop a new pan- European access mechanism to public e-infrastructures, to coordinate related national activities, to connect European research infrastructures (RIs) to EOSC, to set up and begin the implementation of the FAIR guiding principles, and to start a FAIR-compliant certification scheme for research data infrastructures. These projects have involved the community of stakeholders of the EOSC and have been steadily developing the broader the EOSC ecosystem.
To direct the strategic implementation of EOSC, the EC published an implementation roadmap in 2018 detailing six main action lines to realise an architecture, data, services, access and interfaces, rules and governance for EOSC. This roadmap not only served the first implementation phase of EOSC in 2018–2020 under Horizon 2020, but also prepared for the second implementation phase of EOSC under the new funding programme of Horizon Europe for 2021–2027.
With the aim of bringing the community together and ensuring a smooth transition from the first to the second implementation phase of EOSC, a three-tiered transition governance structure was established to run from 2019–2020. The transition governance bodies founded a new legal entity called EOSC Association which has as members all relevant stakeholders in the EOSC ecosystem and will enter into a contractual agreement with the European Commission to direct the Partnership under Horizon Europe.
The EOSC Partnership brings together all relevant stakeholders to co-design and deploy a European Research Data Commons where data are findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR). An open and inclusive European Partnership will help ensure directionality (common vision and objectives) and additionality (complementary commitments and contributions at all levels). It will help provide a framework to reach consensus amongst those committed to achieving results.
The EOSC Partnership aims to expand on the planned Minimum Viable EOSC (MVE) to create a growing ecosystem, bringing together relevant European initiatives around the FAIR data economy, fostering collaboration among those initiatives towards the objective of open research, attracting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and start-ups to use and benefit from the federated services and data sources, and raising awareness in society about the benefits of FAIR-data-driven innovation. The Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) strategically defines the roadmap for implementing and further developing EOSC with the wider stakeholder community.
The EOSC Partnership will develop and implement EOSC through financial, in-kind and policy commitments from three tiers of stakeholders in the EOSC community:
Finland has been closely involved in the various stages of EOSC development by contributing to:
the EOSC Association: In December 2020, CSC – IT Center for Science Ltd. joined the EOSC Association as a member.
Interested in being involved in the EOSC? Read more how to get involved in the EOSC.
EOSC-Nordic is a 3-year project operating as a part of EOSC. The project started in September 2019. It aims to promote the deployment of EOSC in Northern Europe. EOSC-Nordic has a budget of € 5.99M. The project is coordinated by NeIC which is part of NordForsk and involves members from 24 organisations, in addition to the Nordic countries from Germany, the Netherlands, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The Finnish partners in the consortium are:
EOSC-Nordic aims to: