European Open Science Cloud

Building the European Open Science Cloud 

In recent decades, Europe has invested heavily in setting up data infrastructures (RISCAPE. n.d.). The next phase in this development will be the challenge of connecting the 'data silos' that have resulted from this. And that is precisely the ambition of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC portal. n.d.). EOSC is not a new data infrastructure. There will not be hanging a new cloud over Europe. Rather, the EOSC is a blueprint that sketches a picture of a future in which the current data infrastructures and services talk to each other in a FAIR manner, in which it is easier to find research data, in which data are exchanged - across disciplinary boundaries - and in which European researchers and innovators find innovative solutions to societal challenges.

Many players are involved and needed to realise the ambitions of the EOSC. For example, a Social Sciences and Humanities Open Cloud will be created for the social sciences and humanities (SSHOC, n.d.) that will be part of the EOSC cloud cover. The intention is that interested parties will be able to benefit from linked datasets, tools and training via the SSHOC.

The ambitions and current practice

There is a discussion on how far the ambitions of the EOSC should reach (de Knecht, 2018 (Dutch)). According to some, integrating all existing services and data is simply impossible and perhaps not even desirable. There is also still work to be done to engage the researchers themselves (Cardol, 2018 (Dutch)).     

On the one hand, the EOSC will be accessible via a central entry point where European researchers can go to share, discover, use and reuse research data, tools and services. The EOSC MarketPlace (n.d.), a kind of catalogue of connected data infrastructures and services, gives a taste of this. On the other hand, the EOSC will probably also be accessible from the already known data infrastructures. After all, when everything is linked together, the point of entry is no longer of importance. You can enter everywhere. 
In order to bring the EOSC to the attention of researchers, it is useful to follow their habits. And researchers don't start from scratch either. They are already in the process of archiving their data and are using the tools and Virtual Research Environments that currently work for them. By offering them access to a wider range of data at the interface of different scientific disciplines through their familiar entrance, the added value of the EOSC can also become visible to them.

The community use cases on the site of EOSC (EOSC Portal, 2022) clearly show that there are benefits to be reaped from linking up existing infrastructures and services. For example, a virtual laboratory called 'Alien and Invasive Species' was set up to investigate the emergence of puffer fish in the Mediterranean by connecting heterogeneous services from different European infrastructures. (SeaDataNet (n.d.), D4Science (n.d.), EGI (n.d.) and Copernicus (n.d.)). In the video below you can see how this was done and what conclusions the researchers drew.