FAIR and the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC)
The European Open Science Cloud
The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) is an initiative to advance Open Science to accelerate the creation of new knowledge, inspire education, spur innovation and promote accessibility and transparency. EOSC will offer researchers a virtual environment with open and seamless services for storage, management, analysis and re-use of research data, across borders and scientific disciplines by federating existing data infrastructures.
A Web of FAIR Data and Services
EOSC is conceived as a “Web of FAIR Data and Related Services for Science”. This is intended to highlight the interconnectedness of people, services and content. The term “Web of FAIR Data” is applied in its broadest sense, not just to data, but also to code, publications and other digital outputs. Services and stakeholders need to be identifiable and well-described, with open metadata and persistent identifiers (PIDs) to allow cross-linking.
The FAIR principles with their focus on machine-actionability have great relevance for the EOSC. While access to new data will play a role in the future, EOSC will in a first rollout stage be a federation of existing thematic data repositories and services, interfaced with existing data-sharing frameworks. To be adopted by the data providers and research communities, it should fit with their needs: resources should be able to interface with the EOSC with minimal effort, and the data and functionalities already available should remain.
Here you will find relevant documents created within the 2019-2020 EOSC governance structure.
- EOSC Authentication and Authorization Infrastructure (AAI)
- PID architecture for the EOSC
- A Persistent Identifier (PID) policy for the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC)
- Recommendations on FAIR metrics for EOSC
- Recommendations on certifying services required to enable FAIR within EOSC
- EOSC Interoperability Framework
- Six Recommendations for Implementation of FAIR Practice
Within the current EOSC governance structure, five Advisory Groups and
associated Task Forces have been established to focus on overarching issues for
EOSC implementation. Here you can find an overview of the Task Forces and their
members: https://www.eosc.eu/task-force-faq