=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2277/paper01
|storemode=property
|title=
Relevance of EOSC and FAIR in the Realm of Open Science and Phases of Implementing the EOSC
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2277/paper01.pdf
|volume=Vol-2277
|authors=Michel Schouppe,Jean-Claude Burgelman
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/rcdl/SchouppeB18
}}
==
Relevance of EOSC and FAIR in the Realm of Open Science and Phases of Implementing the EOSC
==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2277/paper01.pdf
Relevance of EOSC and FAIR in the Realm of Open Science
and Phases of Implementing the EOSC
Michel Schouppe Jean-Claude Burgelman
European Commission (Directorate-General for Research and Innovation),
Brussels, Belgium
Michel.Schouppe@ec.europa.eu Jean-Claude.Burgelman@ec.europa.eu
Abstract. 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.
Keywords: Open Science, European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), FAIR data management, open data
sharing, research infrastructures, e-infrastructures, cloud technologies.
more responsive to societal challenges and closer to
1 Introduction citizens. The ongoing transition to open science brings
new opportunities to accelerate fundamental
In a fast moving and increasingly interdependent world, research, cross-disciplinary research, cutting
many social, economic and sustainability issues faced by edge innovation and co-designed pathways
countries and citizens are cross-border and inter-
towards sustainability.
disciplinary in nature. Grand societal challenges like
climate change, health and energy are intertwined with
Since about five years, the European Commission –
local and regional issues. Addressing such complex
at the instigation of Carlos Moedas, the EU
challenges at various scales requires strengthening
Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation -
collaboration across borders and disciplines based on
has placed the concepts of Open Science, Open
new shared approaches to generate and diffuse scientific
Innovation and Open to the World at the center of the
knowledge (the latter being increasingly data driven by
European policy for research and innovation [6]. Broad
default).
consultations and engagement activities across Europe
In 2013, the G8 science ministers recognized the
since 2014 have resulted into eight Open Science policy
pivotal role of science to secure present and future
actions, including the following two pillars:
sustainable growth [7]. Proposed areas for collaboration • to develop research infrastructures for Open Science
included global challenges, global research and a common European framework to improve data
infrastructure, open scientific research data, and storage, access, analysis, re-use and governance of
increasing access to the peer-reviewed, published results research data;
of scientific research. • to mainstream and further promote open access to
At the Hangzhou Summit in 2016, the G20 Leaders research data (and metadata), as well as data
resolved to promote open science and to facilitate management practices aiming at making these data
appropriate access to public funded research results Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable
through implementation of Findable, Accessible, (FAIR).
Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR) principles [8].
Open Science provides a fundamental transformation
of the whole research lifecycle to make it more open and 2 The European Open Science Cloud
accessible, more credible with increased integrity, more As a general trend, the quantity of data produced by or
reliable and transparent, more efficient and collaborative, 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
Proceedings of the XX International Conference
for research. Exploiting this trend requires levelling up
“Data Analytics and Management in Data Intensive
capacities to discover, access, and process research data
Domains” (DAMDID/RCDL’2018), Moscow, Russia,
October 9-12, 2018
1
and information of different types, volumes and origins. communities and heterogeneous access policies by
The challenge becomes more acute when investigating different research data infrastructures generate complex
the intersection of multiple fields, disciplines and ecosystems of poorly interoperable data infrastructures.
cultures. This emphasizes an increasing dependency of Resulting data silos slow down the circulation of
science and innovation on new Information and knowledge and prevent cross-fertilization of
Communication Technologies (ICT) including interdisciplinary research. This kind of situation occurs
technologies for data analytics and processing on the in Europe and other regions of the world.
cloud. It also highlights the pressing need to better The FAIR data principles were first introduced in
address cross-domain interoperability. 2014 and published in 2016 [9] to define a minimal set
As a matter of fact, too many datasets and of community-agreed guiding principles allowing both
publications from publicly funded research still remain humans and machines to Find, Access, Interoperate and
beyond the reach of most scientists, even of scientists Re-use data. The initial intention was to support research
belonging to the same discipline. Obstacles are diverse data providers to follow good data management and data
ranging from a huge variety of individual (or stewardship practices. The principles are being
community) data handlings to the low level of resources progressively extended to other digital objects (including
(e.g. time, budget, skills) invested in data annotation and algorithms, models, and workflows) produced by
preservation researchers, as well as to data managed by the public
The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) initiative sector.
has been proposed in 2016 by the European Commission Policy-related action to support the demand for FAIR
as part of the European Cloud Initiative to build a data has started in Europe. Leading by example, the
competitive data and knowledge economy in Europe [1]. European Commission has introduced the obligation of
The EOSC initiative is a means to give a strong push in FAIR Data Management Plans (DMPs) in the context of
Europe towards the FAIR management of research data Horizon 2020, the EU Framework Programme for
and to ensure that European researchers and research and innovation in the period 2014-2020.
professionals in science and technology reap the full Horizon Europe – the successor of Horizon 2020 after
benefits of the data-driven science. 2020 – is being conceived to support Open Science at all
The ambition is to set up a virtual environment which levels [3].
federates the handling of research data by existing At the same time, the EU Member States are
scientific data infrastructures and provides a one-stop- consistently working on open access to and preservation
shop (from the point of view of the researcher) for of scientific information. Overall, open access and open
seamless access to services supporting the research science are also consistently included in the national
community along the data life cycle. Data providers will research agendas.
benefit from services for data annotation, storage, The next challenge will be to turn the FAIR data
curation and long term preservation on trusted principles into practice by all European stakeholders
repositories. Data users will be empowered to discover, across all EU Member States. A FAIR Data Action Plan
access, re-use, combine and analyze research data. [2] will be released in November including actions until
Amongst its future service offering, the EOSC would 2020 to operationalize the FAIR data principles.
also connect to underpinning high-capacity cloud
solutions with super-computing capacity. 4 The EOSC implementation roadmap
The EOSC will be discipline-agnostic. As such, the
initiative represents a collective venture of which the An extensive consultation with scientific and
implementation must remain inclusive of all stakeholders institutional stakeholders in Europe took place in 2016
including research communities, research institutions, and 2017. This consultation confirmed the demand for a
research infrastructures, research funding bodies and fit for purpose pan-European federation of research data
policy makers. infrastructures, with a view to moving from the current
Following the example of the internet, the EOSC will fragmentation to a situation where data is easy to store,
be governed by rules and procedures which are not find, share and re-use.
physically related to a server or institutions. EOSC is The summary outcome of the consultation was
therefore sometimes associated to the internet of FAIR presented in March 2018 by the European Commission
research data. in the form of a roadmap for implementing the EOSC [4].
Challenges are multi-dimensional: scientific, This roadmap was broadly welcomed by the Council of
technical, cultural and governance-related. Europe's the European Union on the occasion of Competitiveness
decision to develop the EOSC reflects the willingness to Council on 18 May 2018. Implementation will follow a
"embrace change, try new things and be willing to take two-stage approach for the roll-out of the EOSC. The
risks to keep European research and innovation at the initial phase will run until 2020 and be essentially
forefront of modernity and economic growth”[5]. implemented through a batch of Horizon 2020 projects.
The start of the second phase after 2020 will depend on
an in-depth evaluation of the initial phase by the
3 The FAIR data principles and the
European Commission and the Member States.
European FAIR data action plan The roadmap till 2020 includes twelve action lines
Varying data management practices by different research related to (i) the EOSC architecture, (ii) the FAIR data
2
principles, (iii) services and datasets accessible via the References
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European Open Science Cloud [4]. accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR)
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