On the 30th of April 2018, the two flagship EC initiatives, OpenAIRE-Advance and EOSC-hub, opened a new chapter in their collaboration with the signing of a formal collaboration agreement.

The agreement highlights their joint commitment to a vision of Europe as a global leader in digital and open science and to empowering scientists to reap the full benefits of open data-driven science. Science requires a joint effort and new tools are needed to harness all the relevant information within the research process. Together, the two initiative will provide a set of services and resources that will become part of the EOSC (European Open Science Cloud).

The collaboration builds around three major pillars of activities:

  • Service Integration;
  • Communication, Engagement, Support and Training;
  • Governance and Strategy.

Service Integration

From the architecture and service point of view, the goal of this activity is to support the publishing of research/scientific products (research data, research software, experiments, research objects, etc.) in a FAIR way so as to lower the barriers for scientific communities to make research products more findable and discoverable to a larger scientific community, and to increase the uptake of open science by enabling the use and reuse of a wider range of scientific outputs. Service Integration will also facilitate the adoption of data management plans.

As part of this activity, in the context of the RDA Common Standards Working Group, the ongoing developments of the Data Management Plan (DMP) tool will be continued by OpenAIRE and EUDAT and a pilot will be performed with relevant communities to provide feedback on the usability of the DMP tool. The jointly developed DMP tool will be offered as an official service to Communities and H2020 beneficiaries.

Another key aspect of the collaboration where EUDAT will have a prominent role will be the activity related to enabling metadata harvesting from scientific products to the OpenAIRE Research Community Dashboard. The minimum metadata templates and guidelines for the B2FIND and B2SHARE services will be brought in-line with the guidelines for Data Archives and the B2FIND service will be made harvestable by the OpenAIRE RCD service. This will allow researchers while performing their scientific process using EOSC-Hub services to (i) implicitly/automatically publish and report their scientific products to the funders while (ii) sharing their products within their community.

These are only a couple of examples of how the collaboration will enhance the provision of the EOSC services.

Communication, Engagement, Support and Training

The purpose fo the collaboration in this area is to develop a common language and strategy to approach stakeholders of common interest for support and engagement at European and national levels; to identify overlaps and complementarities between EOSC-hub and OpenAIRE-Advance in order to jointly support Open Science in EOSC and to plan and implement harmonised engagement with stakeholders via a joint presence and outreach. The Digital Infrastructure for Research event is already a concrete outcome of the collaboration.

Governance and Strategy

Ensuring strategic alignment between the two Complementary Grants including but not limited to community engagement, service development, and service positioning and sustainability within the EOSC is of parampount importance. A Cross-project strategic board will be set up at this purpose.
 

More information on the EOSC-hub / OpenAIRE-Advance collaboration here