OpenAIRE-Advance and EOSC-hub join their forces for more Open Science in Europe | Digital Single Market

"On Monday, 30 April 2018 the European ambition to promote Open Science moved up a gear with the signature of a collaboration agreement between two strategic European projects: OpenAIRE-Advance and EOSC-hub. This collaboration agreement is a step further in the implementation of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), a European initiative to create an open virtual environment for research data.

OpenAIRE-Advance and EOSC-hub are financed by the European Union through its R&D funding program, Horizon 2020. They develop and provide services to make the life of researchers easier. These include for instance advice on how to create data to make it durable and discoverable, support for sharing research outputs, access to data storage and data-intensive computing.

With a total budget of EUR 40 million, these projects are two of the cornerstones of the European Open Science Cloud, as it is reflected in the EOSC Implementation Roadmap recently published. In collaboration with other projects such as eInfraCentral, they will have a central role in the development of the EOSC -portal which is expected to be launched in November 2018. The portal will work as an access channel for European researchers to access, use and reuse a broad range of resources in order to carry out advanced data-driven research. Together, the two projects will provide an initial catalogue of services and resources that will become part of the EOSC. Joining resources in such strategic moment is crucial and will ensure that European scientists reap the full benefits of open data-driven science. This will also support Europe to become a global leader in digital and open science.

What does the collaboration agreement propose?

The collaboration agreement signed this week by OpenAIRE-Advance and EOSC-hub proposes a joint activity plan, build around three major pillars of activities: 

Service Integration: the two projects will collaboratively work to ensure a seamless and continuous flow of scientific outputs amongst their services. They will adopt common data management principles and support the publishing of research/scientific products following the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable). They also aim at increasing the interoperability and synergies between the services offered by the two projects.

Communication, Engagement, Support and Training: the two projects will develop joint communication and training programs to provide researchers with a complete package of information about services for open science. One of the first concrete action of the pillar is for instance the organization of a webinar on 15 May 2018 on "How to manage your data to make them Open and FAIR" , open to all researchers.

Governance and Strategy : the two projects will share their expertise and  align their strategic plans to ensure a coordinated community engagement and a better service development.

The collaboration aims to produce tangible results for European researchers but also for a broad range of related communities such as Research Infrastructures, decision makers and policy makers at national and European level, research administrators, service and content providers, citizens, Industry/SMEs...."