By the end of the year 2020, the current EOSC implementation phase comes to an end and the EOSC Association will take over the management of the EOSC project. To support this new, more formal and legal organisation structure with suggestions, recommendations and guidelines, several working groups have been established in the past two years.

I had the pleasure to represent the ESCAPE cluster project in the architecture working group (EAWG), discussing with experts from EOSC projects, e-Infrastructure projects, and national delegates. In the architecture working group, the technical framework required to enable and sustain the EOSC federation of systems was discussed and guidelines/recommendations on a phased implementation defined. The major outcomes of all working groups have been collected in the SRIA (Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda) document which has been presented in October at the EOSC Governance Symposium 2020 and forms the basis for the multi-annual roadmap of EOSC.

It was a very intense and interesting time spent in this diverse group of experts, seeing many alignments but also some conflicts discussed in a very professional way. For me, the most important points to take away from the SRIA are: the recognition of the need and support of thematic EOSC cells – like ESCAPE –, a strong support for handling the researchers needs, and the broading of the terms from “data” to all kinds of “scientific products” including – and for me personally very important – the software needed to process, analyse and visualise the data.  This is very much in the focus of my attention, as those points are exactly in focus of ESCAPE and the OSSR work package therein and I believe they will stimulate the uptake of open science as an incentive for researchers and experiments.

Therefore, I also joined the task force on Scholarly Infrastructure for Research Software within the EAWG. The report is available for open consulation until November at this link. Taking into account the remarks and requests by the community from the various open consultations, the work of the EAWG will come to an end. I hope and recommend that the EAWG outputs will be picked up by the EOSC Association to form a strong open science base for the EOSC in the future.

 A blogpost by Kay Graf – ESCAPE OSSR Working Group Coordinator

Know more about ESCAPE EOSC cell that will support researchers in their data management needs

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