Release Date: 30th October 2015

 

Leading European initiatives, EUDAT, LIBER, OpenAIRE, EGI and GÉANT share their joint vision for the European Open Science Cloud for Research which includes eight elements of success for a concrete contribution to the Digital Single Market.

The Open Science Cloud, part of the European Commission’s Digital Single Market Strategy, will empower research data sharing, data stewardship and data reuse in Europe for the benefit of innovation and growth. Today’s joint statement sets out the partners’ strategic vision for the Open Science Cloud’s organisation, sustainability and governance as a contribution towards the practical realisation of the EC’s vision.

The European Open Science Cloud initiative is strategically important as Open Science is a key driver, not only of scientific progress, but also of economic and societal innovation. To harness its full value and reap the fruits of public and private investment, Europe needs to foster an open, collaborative platform for the management, analysis, sharing, reuse and preservation of research data on which innovative services can be developed and delivered.

For this, Europe can and must build on decades of public investment in scientific infrastructures—experimental facilities, networking, high-performance and high-throughput computing, cloud services, scientific software and institutional and community data repositories—by connecting national and international infrastructures and services.

The European Open Science Cloud for Research must be:

  1. Open in design, participation and use
  2. Publicly funded & governed with the 'commons approach'
  3. Research-centric with an agile co-design with researchers and research communities
  4. Comprehensive in terms of universality and inclusiveness of all disciplines
  5. Diverse & distributed empowering network effects
  6. Interoperable with common standards for resources and services 
  7. Service-oriented as well as protocol-centric
  8. Social connecting diverse communities

Following these principles will ensure that the Open Science Cloud is an open, trusted, service-driven endeavour, inclusive of all stakeholders, which gives researchers from all areas seamless, open access to the advanced digital capabilities, resources and expertise they need to collaborate and to carry out data- and computing-intensive science. Secure and trustworthy, the Open Science Cloud will engage researchers in governing, managing and preserving resources for everyone’s benefit. Governed as a commons, it will leverage two decades of public and private investment in e-infrastructures for the benefit of scientific research and innovation. The Open Science Cloud is the vehicle to achieve this vision and to ensure excellent science in Europe and beyond.

Read the full vision statement: http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.32915

Vision Statement Authors:

EUDAT: European Data Infrastructure www.eudat.eu ~ LIBER: Association of European Research Libraries www.libereurope.eu ~ OpenAIRE: Open Access Infrastructure for Research in Europe www.openaire.eu ~ GÉANT: European research and education networking collaboration http://www.geant.org  ~ EGI: International Grid & Cloud Infrastructure for Research http://www.egi.eu

For further information, please contact EUDAT Project Director Damien Lecarpentier: damien.lecarpentier@csc.fi