A comprehensive report from the third edition of the EOSC Winter School has been published on Zenodo, offering a detailed look at the discussions and results from the event held in Nice, France on 27-29 January 2026. The document highlights participants’ recommendations, which give the EOSC community a direct voice in informing the EOSC Federation’s deployment.
The report concludes that the pilot EOSC Stakeholder Brokerage Event, held on day one of the Winter School, was a highly effective and innovative format, offering a unique approach to support the Federation’s operationalisation.
Participants underscored its usefulness in strengthening the sense of belonging to the EOSC community and advancing a shared understanding of the Federation’s practical implementation. This was achieved through more than 280 speed-dating meetings, which connected service providers with candidate EOSC Nodes and created a highly collaborative environment.
The thematic track sessions that followed resulted in recommendations for consideration by the EOSC Federation Build-up Groups across three core areas:
- Thematic track 1: Federating capabilities and interoperability
- This track emphasised the importance of identifying trusted bodies that can endorse the decision-making within EOSC. It also highlighted the value of regular multilateral discussions on interoperability and federating capabilities to avoid fragmentation or discontinuation.
- Thematic track 2: Resources
- Participants highlighted the need for a clear understanding of data quality, control, standards, and protocols at both the service and registry levels.
- Thematic track 3: Competences and training
- This group identified opportunities to make training resources findable to help build a skilled and connected community. It suggested that multiple platforms should converge toward a central point where all resources are accessible, without requiring for them to be in a single catalogue.
The full report from the EOSC Winter School 2026, organised within the framework of the EOSC Gravity project, is available on Zenodo and presents the methodology, lessons learned, key conclusions and detailed summaries of all sessions.
