The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) has made progress in Portugal and Europe, with the support of Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, through the FCCN Unit. This initiative aims to place the European Union in the global leadership in the field of research data, guaranteeing benefits to almost 2 million European scientists.
The EOSC creation process started in 2015 with a clear goal: to create a data storage and processing ecosystem that supports European Science. In this sense, EOSC foresees the creation, by 2025, of a virtual, international and multidisciplinary environment that includes open and uninterrupted services for research data storage, management, analysis and reuse.
In order to assure this versatility, the European data infrastructure envisaged by EOSC includes high-capacity cloud solutions, as well as supercomputing and artificial intelligence tools. It is also expected that this structure will be expanded, through its gradual opening to the public sector and industry. “EOSC will unite institutional, national and European agents, initiatives and data infrastructures to develop an inclusive Open Science ecosystem in Europe”, explains the European Commission, on the project’s institutional page.
The European Commission predicts that the impact of this effort will translate into benefits for around 1.7 million European researchers and 70 million science professionals. In one of the most important steps taken in this direction, in February 2020 the Commission launched the European Data Strategy, which defines EOSC as the centerpiece of an open data space for innovation and research.
The EOSC initiative is part of the 2021-2027 cycle of the European Commission’s “Horizon Europe” funding program for innovation, and it is planned to make EOSC services available to European researchers by 2025. However, the impact of the EOSC is already being felt, namely in the current context of a pandemic, by accelerating access and sharing of research data through the newly created European COVID-19 research data platform.
To learn more about EOSC, visit: https://www.eosc-portal.eu/
About EOSC in Portugal:
This European initiative is expected to have a profound impact on national research communities, as both providers of national research data services and the institutions that use them to do science will have to align themselves with EOSC. In Portugal, Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, through the FCCN Unit, has been developing efforts in this field.
FCT’s strategy for the adoption of the EOSC at the national level is centered on the axes of policies and regulations, services to support the adoption of the EOSC, and communication, dissemination and training activities. A visible result of this effort is the inclusion of the research data management aspect in the recent data science competition promoted by FCT.
At the same time, the FCCN Unit has been promoting data management and EOSC with the RDA-pt community and GDI forum, as well as with the roadmap infrastructures. On the other hand, participation in the H2020 EOSC-Synergy project resulted in an in-depth analysis of EOSC-related policies, practices and strategies in Portugal.
Since October 2020, the FCT has been the organization mandated to represent the interests of Portugal within the EOSC association, represented by the national representative João Mendes Moreira.