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European Open Science Cloud: small projects, big plans and 1 billion EUR

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by Claudia Sittner

Prof. Dr Klaus Tochtermann is Director of the ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, Member of the German Council for Scientific Information Infrastructures (RfII) and board member of the recently established European Open Science Cloud Association (EOSC Association). He was a member of the EOSC’s High Level Expert Group and the EOSC working group for sustainability for many years. He also founded, in 2012, the Leibniz Research Alliance Open Science, the international Open Science Conference and the associated Barcamp Open Science.

Recently, he was interviewed by host Dr Doreen Siegfried (ZBW) in the ZBW podcast “The Future is Open Science” on the future of the European Open Science Cloud and the complexity of the landscape for research data. This blog post is a shortened version of the podcast episode “European Open Science Cloud – Internet of FAIR Data and Services” with Klaus Tochtermann. You can listen to the entire episode (35 minutes) here (German).

Why the name European Open Science Cloud never fitted

Something that will surprise many people: “The terminology of the EOSC was never appropriate – even in 2015”, according to Tochtermann. Back then – as the initial ideas for the EOSC were being developed and small projects were commencing – it was neither European, nor Open, nor Science nor a Cloud:

“It isn’t European – because research doesn’t stop at the regional borders of Europe, but instead many research groups are internationally networked. It isn’t open – because even in science there is data that requires protection such as patient data. It isn’t science – because many scientific research projects also use data from economy. And it isn’t cloud – because the point is not to deposit all data centrally in a cloud solution”, explains Klaus Tochtermann. The term was specified by the European Commission at the time and is now established. Among experts, the term “Internet of FAIR Data and Services” (IFDS) is preferred, says Tochtermann.

Preparatory phase 2015 to 2020

The EOSC started in 2015 with the aim “to provide European researchers, innovators, companies and citizens with a federated and open multi-disciplinary environment where they can publish, find and re-use data, tools and services for research, innovation and educational purposes.” (European Commission).

Since then, 320 million EUR have been deployed to fund 50 projects relating to research data management. These have however only shed light on individual aspects of the EOSC. “In fact, we are still a long way from being able to offer EOSC operationally in the scientific system”, says Tochtermann.

The funds were integrated into a research framework programme that only financed smaller projects at a time – this is owing to the way the European Commission functions and how it funds research. That’s why there was never one big EOSC project, but many small individual projects. These examined issues such as: “What would a search engine for research data look like? How can identifiers for research data be managed?”, explains the ZBW director.

Large projects EOSC Secretariat and EOSC Future

Then the EOSC went into the next phase with two large projects: EOSC Secretariat and EOSC Future. Running time: 30 months. Budget: 41 million EUR. Both are intended to bring together all previous projects in the direction of EOSC, i.e. to enable convergence and actually draw up a “System EOSC”. All puzzle parts from earlier small projects are now being put together to form a large EOSC blueprint.

Founding of the EOSC Association

The EOSC Association was founded in 2020. It is a formal institution and a foundation under Belgian law. It is headquartered in Brussels and will consolidate all activities. A board of directors has been appointed to coordinate the activities, made up of the president Karl Luyben and a further eight members, including Klaus Tochtermann.

In February 2021, the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA, PDF) laid down what the EOSC Association should achieve over the next few years. From now on, all EOSC projects must be orientated on these SRIA guidelines.

Initial time plan for the European Open Science Cloud

The Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda anticipates various development stages with precisely defined timetables. Basis functionalities are classified as “EOSC Core”, a level that should be implemented by 2023. Here, elements such as search, storage/save or a log-in function will be realised. This will be followed by the launch of “EOSC Exchange”, which deals with more complex functionalities and services for special data analyses of research datasets.

Collaboration between the EOSC Association and the European Commission

On the question of how the European Open Science Cloud Association and the European Commission cooperate with each other, Tochtermann emphasises the good relationship to the Commission. The so called partnership model, which is new for everyone and first needs to be experienced, forms the framework for this. However, sometimes the time windows in which the Commission wants reactions from the EOSC Association are very narrow. “I’m glad we have a very strong president of the EOSC Association, who also has the backbone to ensure that we are not always confronted with such short time windows, where reactions are sometimes simply not possible because the subject matter is too complex. But overall it works well”, Tochtermann sums up.

Financing the EOSC Association: 1 billion EUR

For the next ten years, 1 billion EUR is being made available for the development of the EOSC – half from the European Commission and half by the 27 member states of the EU. This was negotiated between the European Commission and the EOSC Association from December 2020 to July 2021 and laid down in an agreement (PDF, the Memorandum of Understanding for the Co-progammed Euroepean Partnership on the European Open Science Cloud.

The EOSC Association also raises further funds through membership fees. According to Klaus Tochtermann: “Members are not individuals, but organisations such as the ZBW or the NFDI Association in Germany. (…) Members can choose between full membership, meaning they can take part in all votes and currently pay a contribution of 10,000 EUR per year. Or they can be an observer, where (…) they have a less active role and are not allowed to vote in the annual general meeting. As an observer, you pay 2,000 EUR.” The contributions of the 200 members currently generate a budget of around 1.5 million EUR for the EOSC Association. This is being utilised to build up staff in the office, among other things.

EOSC, NFDI and Gaia-X: a confusing mishmash?

As well as the EOSC, there are further projects in Germany and Europe aimed at implementing large research data infrastructures. The most well-known from a German perspective are the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) and Gaia-X. All three projects – EOSC, NFDI and Gaia-X are technically linked. They are all technical infrastructures. But how do they differ?

  • National Research Data Infrastructure

    As well as the European EOSC, there is the NFDI (German) in Germany, which was founded by the German Council for Scientific Information Infrastructures (RfII).

    The NFDI – similarly to the EOSC – deals with the technical infrastructure for research data, but is also concerned with the networking people, i.e. the scientific community, says Tochtermann. The NFDI thereby focusses on individual disciplines such as economics, social sciences, material sciences or chemistry.

    The NFDI directorate, a central coordinating body, brings the individual NFDI initiatives together, so that they interact. This takes places through working groups and applies above all to cross-discipline or discipline-independent topics. Klaus Tochtermann gives the following examples:

    • digital long-term archiving of research data,
    • allocation of unique identifiers for a data set,
    • single login or single sign-in for the research data infrastructure NFDI,
    • interoperability of systems,
    • uniform metadata standards and
    • uniform protocols.

  • Gaia-X

    On the other hand, there is Gaia-X: “Gaia-X is an initiative which aims to offer companies in Germany and Europe a European infrastructure for the management, i.e. storage of their data, for example, because many of them opt for services from America or China”, explains Tochtermann. As well as in its target group (including industry, companies), Gaia-X also differs from the EOSC and the NFDI in relation to the major role that the topic of data sovereignty plays in the project. Klaus Tochtermann summarises this as follows: “Data sovereignty means that when I generate data, I can follow who is using my data for what purposes at any time. And if I don’t want this, then I can also say, ’I don’t want my data to go there.’”

How can you learn more about the EOSC?

The EOSC Portal is an information platform that gives details about the services that will be playing a role at the EOSC at a later date. These include services such as European research data repositories. It’s a good place to start if you want to find out more about the EOSC.

Take part in the development of the EOSC

Anyone who wants to get involved in the EOSC can do so in the Advisory Groups. Six of these have been set up initially, to explore topics such as curricula in the field of research data, FAIR data and metadata standards. There was an open call to participate in these groups, for which around 500 applications were received. Most of them came from France (18 percent) and Germany (17 percent) which shows how much the EOSC has already caught on in both countries, says Tochtermann. A selection from these 500 applications will now be used to fill the six working groups.

On the website of the EOSC Association, you will also find regular “Calls and Grants”, which people can apply for, or job applications https://www.eosc.eu/careers. For up-to-date information, you can subscribe to the monthly newsletter https://www.eosc.eu/newsletter or follow the EOSC Association on Twitter @eoscassociation.

This blogpost is a translation from German.

Related Links

This might also interest you:

  • Episode 12 of the ZBW podcast „The Future is Open Science“ with Prof. Dr Klaus Tochtermann on the European Open Science Cloud (German)

    • The post European Open Science Cloud: small projects, big plans and 1 billion EUR first appeared on ZBW MediaTalk.

    Open Science: How to Implement It in a Multidisciplinary Faculty – 7 Recommendations

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    An interview with Ari J. Asmi

    Ari J. Asmi is research infrastructure coordinator at the University of Helsinki, Faculty of Science, a multidisciplinary faculty. There he has been involved in the process of developing common and workable Open Science recommendations with all stakeholders for the medium-sized science-oriented university faculty. The result is seven recommendations, which he already presented at the Open Science Conference 2021 in a poster presentation.

    Poster Seven Recommendations presented at the Open Science Conference 2021.

    In the interview, he reports on how the recommendations came about, why it is so important to also have Open Science sceptics involved, what the biggest challenges were and still are in developing and implementing them, and what he would advise others who would themselves like to create suitable recommendations for a more Open Science practice at their own faculty.

    Ari, you accompanied the process of developing a common Open Science policy at the Faculty of Science at the University of Helsinki. What was the outcome of this process?

    We created a working group, with the help of the dean and the faculty administration. This group included representatives from all divisions of the Faculty of Science at the University of Helsinki, and importantly did not have only “Open Science advocates”, but mostly normal scientists and research coordinators from different divisions. We agreed that the Open Science recommendations should be easy to implement, with relatively quick time-scale (from months to few years), not resource demanding, and above all – acceptable to the science community in the faculty. This led to a suitable ambition level for the recommendations, which in turn helped their acceptance in the faculty. We agreed on seven key recommendations:

    1. Set the overall faculty policy on science products: “as open as possible, as closed as necessary”.
    2. Value the Open Science products in the staff annual development discussions.
    3. Consider Open Science products in unit, department and tenure track evaluations.
    4. Require listing of Open Science products in recruiting.
    5. Create a short, clear and well documented knowledge base of Open Science best practices in the faculty.
    6. Organise structured staff training on the best practices, facilitate peer support, and Open Science culture in the faculty.
    7. Develop Open Science content for curriculum MSc and Doctoral programmes.

    Open Science recommendations should be easy to implement, with relatively quick time-scale (from months to few years), not resource demanding, and above all – acceptable to the science community in the faculty.
    – Ari J. Asmi

    The first recommendation is more a statement, second to fourth are based on long term change in internal science evaluation towards openness, fifth and sixth on helping the faculty staff to adjust for Open Science, and seventh towards future generations. A more detailed version of the recommandations can be found in this document: Open Science Recommendations for the Faculty of Science.

    Open Science Recommendations for the Faculty of Science.

    A key point was also to always look for a holistic view on scientific end products, not only on scientific journal articles. This includes then, e.g., software, datasets, teaching material, etc. Another key point for us was not to prescribe value difference between open/closed scientific products, but instead just highlight the openness in all activity, and asking to justify the closed products if needed.

    (How) Have you practically implemented the seven recommendations in the faculty?

    The recommendations were accepted with enthusiasm on the faculty board level and from the dean, which made including the development discussion and staff recruitment changes in principle easy. They were faculty decisions, however, so I am not sure how well they have yet been implemented by the divisions’ administrations. The knowledge base is clearly more effort requiring part, and even with some level of resources, it is very dependent on finding proper contact points on each division (and even individual groups) to give information on domain-specific repositories, journals, etc. I am now personally trying to recruit semi-volunteers to do these. The training part is quite well dependent on the knowledge base, and the inclusion of new Open Science courses to curricula will most likely happen on the next round of MSc and PhD programme development.

    What were your biggest challenges? What were the biggest concerns from the faculty and researchers? How were you able to overcome the obstacles and convince the persons concerned?

    The main issue came from time and resource limitation of researchers. There is already a lot of “extra” work added to the researchers, as administrative staff has been reduced, and some of the Open Science relevant tasks (e.g. data management plans) are seen by some researchers as additional burden. This was somewhat reflected on the response for the plan, and how we developed it. The idea of having a common knowledge base was directly responding to the idea of reducing time required for these tasks. Also, some worries were about too rapid changes on how research and researchers are evaluated, making career planning challenging. This was responded by specifically avoiding any specific value for Open Science products in comparison to traditional evaluation criteria.

    To what extent were and are libraries involved in this process?

    We had a few times some contact with the university library, and I am personally well connected to some parts of their team on Open Science. The recommendations themselves did not go through any kind of close evaluation with them, but their services will be of course extremely important for the knowledge base, training and potentially even career advancement follow up, i.e. on following the publication of Open Science products.

    What are your tips for other faculties that would like to anchor these principles and put them into practice?

    An important part was to have a working group with enough of sceptical people along with Open Science enthusiasts. It is easy to come up with very idealistic approaches, which cannot then be implemented. Ambition is good, but realistic and short-to-medium time frame and minimal resource needs worked at least for us well. Support from top level (faculty dean and university strategy) is important, but these things have to be supported from bottom as well – so having diversity is excellent addition.

    We were talking to Ari J Asmi.

    This article emerged from the Open Science Conference 2021. The next International Open Science Conference (#OSC2022) will be held on March 08-09, 2022. Stay tuned for more information on the conference website.

    You may also find this interesting:

  • Open Science Recommendations for the Faculty of Science (University of Helsinki).
  • Open science recommendations for a multidisciplinary Faculty – goals, process & challenges.
  • Open Science Conference 2021: On the Way to the “New Normal”.
  • Open Science: Grassroots Initiative from Students for Students at the University of Amsterdam.
  • Barcamp Open Science 2021: Opening up new perspectives.
  • Research Data Management Project bw2FDM: Best Practice for Consultations and Training Seminars.
  • Open Science Podcasts: 7 + 3 Tips for Your Ears.

    • The post Open Science: How to Implement It in a Multidisciplinary Faculty – 7 Recommendations first appeared on ZBW MediaTalk.