In the realm of its Open Science strategy, the European Commission (EC) has announced its intentions to promote open access to research data resulting from publically funded research under Horizon 2020 to increase the circulation and exploitation of knowledge. Openness should become the default case respecting constraints to privacy, national security and intellectual property rights. For making open science happen, two major pillars need to be addressed. Data needs to be FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) to overcome the fragmentation and inefficiencies and thus to increase data reuse effectively. Commissioner Moedas made clear that "Europe's final transition must be one from fragmented data sets to an integrated European Open Science Cloud (EOSC)". By 2020, all European researchers need to be able depositing, accessing and analyzing European scientific data through the EOSC. EOSC and FAIR research data are closely related and the EC is working out phases for implementing EOSC and action plans to make data FAIR.
In a fast moving and increasingly interdependent world, many social, economic and sustainability issues faced by countries and citizens are cross-border and interdisciplinary in nature. Grand societal challenges like climate change, health and energy are intertwined with local and regional issues. Addressing such complex challenges at various scales requires strengthening collaboration across borders and disciplines based on new shared approaches to generate and diffuse scientific knowledge (the latter being increasingly data driven by default).
In 2013, the G8 science ministers recognized the
pivotal role of science to secure present and future
sustainable growth [
At the Hangzhou Summit in 2016, the G20 Leaders
resolved to promote open science and to facilitate
appropriate access to public funded research results
through implementation of Findable, Accessible,
Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR) principles [
Open Science provides a fundamental transformation of the whole research lifecycle to make it more open and accessible, more credible with increased integrity, more reliable and transparent, more efficient and collaborative, more responsive to societal challenges and closer to citizens. The ongoing transition to open science brings new opportunities to accelerate fundamental research, cross-disciplinary research, cutting edge innovation and co-designed pathways towards sustainability.
As a general trend, the quantity of data produced by or susceptible to be injected in research life cycles is growing exponentially. With the internet of everything, all reality tends to become a data point and therefore fit for research. Exploiting this trend requires levelling up capacities to discover, access, and process research data and information of different types, volumes and origins. The challenge becomes more acute when investigating the intersection of multiple fields, disciplines and cultures. This emphasizes an increasing dependency of science and innovation on new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) including technologies for data analytics and processing on the cloud. It also highlights the pressing need to better address cross-domain interoperability.
As a matter of fact, too many datasets and publications from publicly funded research still remain beyond the reach of most scientists, even of scientists belonging to the same discipline. Obstacles are diverse ranging from a huge variety of individual (or community) data handlings to the low level of resources (e.g. time, budget, skills) invested in data annotation and preservation
The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) initiative
has been proposed in 2016 by the European Commission
as part of the European Cloud Initiative to build a
competitive data and knowledge economy in Europe [
The ambition is to set up a virtual environment which federates the handling of research data by existing scientific data infrastructures and provides a one-stopshop (from the point of view of the researcher) for seamless access to services supporting the research community along the data life cycle. Data providers will benefit from services for data annotation, storage, curation and long term preservation on trusted repositories. Data users will be empowered to discover, access, re-use, combine and analyze research data. Amongst its future service offering, the EOSC would also connect to underpinning high-capacity cloud solutions with super-computing capacity.
The EOSC will be discipline-agnostic. As such, the initiative represents a collective venture of which the implementation must remain inclusive of all stakeholders including research communities, research institutions, research infrastructures, research funding bodies and policy makers.
Following the example of the internet, the EOSC will be governed by rules and procedures which are not physically related to a server or institutions. EOSC is therefore sometimes associated to the internet of FAIR research data.
Challenges are multi-dimensional: scientific,
technical, cultural and governance-related. Europe's
decision to develop the EOSC reflects the willingness to
"embrace change, try new things and be willing to take
risks to keep European research and innovation at the
forefront of modernity and economic growth”[
Varying data management practices by different research communities and heterogeneous access policies by different research data infrastructures generate complex ecosystems of poorly interoperable data infrastructures. Resulting data silos slow down the circulation of knowledge and prevent cross-fertilization of interdisciplinary research. This kind of situation occurs in Europe and other regions of the world.
The FAIR data principles were first introduced in
2014 and published in 2016 [
Policy-related action to support the demand for FAIR
data has started in Europe. Leading by example, the
European Commission has introduced the obligation of
FAIR Data Management Plans (DMPs) in the context of
Horizon 2020, the EU Framework Programme for
research and innovation in the period 2014-2020.
Horizon Europe – the successor of Horizon 2020 after
2020 – is being conceived to support Open Science at all
levels [
At the same time, the EU Member States are consistently working on open access to and preservation of scientific information. Overall, open access and open science are also consistently included in the national research agendas.
The next challenge will be to turn the FAIR data
principles into practice by all European stakeholders
across all EU Member States. A FAIR Data Action Plan
[
An extensive consultation with scientific and institutional stakeholders in Europe took place in 2016 and 2017. This consultation confirmed the demand for a fit for purpose pan-European federation of research data infrastructures, with a view to moving from the current fragmentation to a situation where data is easy to store, find, share and re-use.
The summary outcome of the consultation was
presented in March 2018 by the European Commission
in the form of a roadmap for implementing the EOSC [
Before the end of the year, the governance structure will be formally set up as an agreement of the Member States at the ministerial level. A prototype "EOSC Portal" will also be launched and will evolve to become the future universal entry point to the EOSC service and data gateways. The EOSC platform will progressively expand its catalogues of data and services following a continued survey of data infrastructures in Europe interested in taking part in the development phase of the EOSC. Following a recent open consultation, a compliance framework including rules of participation to the EOSC will be refined to take into consideration the diversity of EOSC providers and users. These rules will guide future operationalization of day-to-day transactions across the EOSC federation and strengthen requirements for FAIR-accredited/certified data infrastructures in Europe.
2018 is a landmark year for the EOSC. Consultation, engagement and pilot demonstration activities conducted during the last years are now converging to kick-off the initial phase of implementation.
The EOSC typifies an Open Science accelerator aiming at promoting data Commons and developing a FAIR ecosystem in Europe. Implementation will follow a step-wise approach. While, the EOSC will foremost serve the research community in Europe, it will then expand further to the broader community of users including European public authorities, SMEs and citizens.
In that respect EOSC is Europe’s answer - as a public good - to the transition to open science.
While EOSC has a pan-European focus, its scope is
global. The initiative is framed to become a major EU
contribution to a global playing field regarding open and
FAIR research data and related services. Over time, the
EOSC will reach out beyond its initial core of European
infrastructures and gradually widen to interested
networks and nodes from global research partners.
Acknowledgments. This paper draws largely on
observations and recommendations by the Open Science
Policy Platform of the European Commission, the High
Level Expert Group on the European Open Science
Cloud, the European Commission Expert Group on
FAIR data and the group of Horizon 2020 projects
involved in the Implementation Roadmap for the
European Open Science Cloud [
Disclaimer. The views expressed in this paper do not necessarily represent the opinions of the European Commission or any other body; nor do they commit the Commission to implement them. Crosas M., Dillo I., Dumon O., Edmunds S., Evelo C. T., Finkers R., Gonzalez-Beltran A., Gray A. J. G., Groth P., Goble C., Grethe J. S., Heringa J., ’t Hoen P. A. C., Hooft R., Kuhn T., Kok R., Kok J., Lusher S. J., Martone M. E., Mons A., Packer A. L., Persson B., Rocca-Serra P., Roos M., van Schaik R., Sansone S-A., Schultes E., Sengstag T., Slater T., Strawn G., Swertz M. A., Thompson M., van der Lei J., van Mulligen E., Velterop J., Waagmeester A., Wittenburg P., Wolstencroft K., Zhao J. Mons B.: The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship. In: Scientific Data volume 3, Article number: 160018 (2016). doi:10.1038/sdata.2016.18, 15 March 2016