The Photon and Neutron Cloud EOSC Node federates data and services from Europe’s photon and neutron research infrastructures.
It builds on the PaNOSC and ExPaNDS projects, integrating 11 facilities and their catalogues, AAI, VREs, training, and visualisation services. The Node will enhance FAIR data availability, enable AI/ML applications, and strengthen Open Science practices across domains. It connects with EOSC EU Node and other thematic/national nodes to maximise scientific and societal impact.
Key objective: To provide FAIR, high-quality data and services from photon and neutron RIs into the EOSC Federation, increasing scientific impact, adoption of FAIR, and cross-node collaboration.
Science areas: Photon and neutron science, including X-ray crystallography, neutron scattering, CryoEM, spectroscopy, palaeontology, imaging, materials science, life sciences.
FAIR data
The Photon and Neutron Cloud EOSC Node makes more than 600,000 datasets from photon and neutron research infrastructures accessible via federated catalogues (OAI-PMH, PaN Federated Search), and links them with EOSC metadata search engines, LSRI databases, and domain ontologies (PaNET).
Scientific use cases
PaN-Finder
The PaN-Finder science case presents an artificial intelligence–driven data discovery platform designed to enhance Open Science within Europe’s research communities by making data from photon and neutron facilities easier to find.
The initiative builds upon previous work undertaken through the PaNOSC (Photon and Neutron Open Science Cloud) project, which aimed to interconnect data catalogues from large-scale research facilities. While the initial federated portal provided a single access point to open data, it was limited by inconsistencies in metadata, domain-specific terminology, and the need for users to possess detailed technical knowledge to perform effective searches. PaN-Finder aims to lower these barriers, making the discovery of open research data more intuitive and inclusive.
Other use cases
- Align PaNOSC AAI with EOSC AAI (eduTEAMS, UmbrellaID → MyAccessID)
- Integrate PaNOSC catalogues into EOSC Federation (FAIR data discovery and access)
- 2.1. Find curated FAIR data for specific X-ray/neutron techniques (OSCARS projects: AI-Scope, SHARE, MatScatNet)
- 2.2. Link PaN data to de-facto standard LSRI databases (PDB, EMPIAR, CXIDB)
- 2.1. Find curated FAIR data for specific X-ray/neutron techniques (OSCARS projects: AI-Scope, SHARE, MatScatNet)
- Provide access to PaNOSC VRE (VISA) for EOSC Users (OpenStack, Jupyter, VMs)
- Provide common training platform federated with LSRI Node (pan-training.eu, TeSS)
- Provide H5Web visualisation and verification service (metadata validation, NeXus, AI quality control).
