EOSC Node | Slovakia - EOSC Association

The Slovak Centre of Scientific and Technical Information (CVTI SR) is building the Slovak EOSC Node to integrate national research resources into the EOSC Federation. Through its KOMIS interoperable platform, the Node connects Slovak research organisations, universities, and data repositories, including the Research Data Objects Repository (SVD).

CVTI SR also leverages substantial infrastructure, including the Datacentre for Research and Development, alongside specialised bioinformatics environments and HPC resources interconnected with Slovak research stakeholders. Key contributions include FAIR-compliant data management and cross-border research collaboration capabilities in the form of cross-node scientific use cases.

CVTI SR’s combined role as National EOSC SK Secretariat and National Office for Open Science positions the Slovak EOSC Node as a bridge between Slovak research infrastructures and the broader European research ecosystem, addressing data fragmentation while enhancing interoperability and accessibility for Slovak and European researchers.

EOSC Node | Slovakia homepage

Key objective: To enhance Slovakia’s research capabilities, contribute Slovak resources and expertise, address the fragmentation of Slovak research data, and improve data accessibility. The initial technical objective involves integrating KOMIS subsystem SVD while ensuring compatibility with FAIR principles and other EOSC Federation standards. Subsequent goals include achieving integrations of the Datacentre of CVTI SR and establishing interconnections with HPC-related services of Slovak research stakeholders.

Science areas: Multidisciplinary—the initial build-up phase will focus particularly on bioinformatics and biomedical research domains, such as antimicrobial resistance research and AI for medical diagnostics.

SCIENTIFIC IMPACT

FAIR data

FAIR-compliant repositories are integrated via KOMIS (mainly subsystem SVD – Research data management system, secondary SK CRIS, SCIDAP, etc.), and persistent identifiers (DOI, ORCID, ROR) are implemented. Metadata harmonisation ensures interoperability across Slovak and European resources, with OAI-PMH compatibility ensured.

Scientific use cases

The Slovakian EOSC Node’s scientific impact extends beyond individual use cases by establishing replicable patterns, demonstrating practical EOSC interoperability, and providing a model for smaller countries to progressively engage with EOSC while building local capacity. These initiatives collectively enhance European research capabilities while maintaining data sovereignty and enabling effective cross-border scientific collaboration.

Federated analysis of pathogen genomes

The federated analysis of pathogen genomes science case outlines a federated, cross‑border capability for timely analysis of pathogen genomes that brings computation to the data instead of copying sensitive datasets across institutions.

The objective is to shorten time‑to‑insight for outbreak detection, source attribution, and antimicrobial‑resistance (AMR) surveillance while preserving data sovereignty and meeting European legal and ethical requirements. Experience from COVID‑19 showed that sequencing at scale can transform public‑health decision‑making. Operationally, the effort starts with two neighbouring nodes of the EOSC Federation—the Slovakian national node providing workflows, datasets, computational infrastructure and domain expertise, and the Polish national node (via Poland’s National Science Centre (NCN) and a scientific repository service) supplying key technical support and their own datasets. Their geographical proximity make the two EOSC Nodes an ideal pair for a cross-border pilot. The approach demonstrates how to establish a federation of trusted sites, run harmonized workflows locally, and share only the minimum results needed for action.

EOSC Federation scientific use case – Pathogen genomes

Multi-centric validation of AI models for prostate-cancer screening

Advances in digital pathology are transforming cancer diagnosis by enabling high-resolution imaging of tissue samples and the application of artificial intelligence (AI) for clinical decision support.

Prostate cancer, one of the most prevalent malignancies among men worldwide, represents a critical case for early and accurate diagnosis, as survival rates are strongly tied to timely detection and treatment. The objective of the multi-centric validation of AI models for prostate-cancer screening (MCVAL) use case, coordinated by the BBMRI-ERIC EOSC Node, is to create a secure environment in which AI models for prostate cancer screening can be validated using data from different hospitals. Rather than building new diagnostic systems from scratch, the project focuses on testing an existing model trained on whole-slide images and assessing how well it performs when applied to data processed elsewhere.

EOSC Federation scientific use case – MCVAL

Prostate cancer imaging data for AI training. Courtesy of BBMRI-ERIC

Other use cases

Slovakia is onboarding selected SVD research data objects and selected external national catalogues to the EOSC EU Node.

This short-term onboarding stream precedes the two-year enrolling stream to a fully operational EOSC Node Slovakia. The approach provides a replicable pathway from rapid EU Node onboarding to a mature national node for future candidate nodes from similar environment like Slovakia.

STATUS & TIMELINE

Status

Candidate national EOSC Node (build-up phase)

EOSC Node | Slovakia Project Charter

Director General of CVTI SR Róbert Gálik signing
the EOSC Federation MoU, November 2025

Deliverables

Onboarding stream
- API harmonization
- interoperable repositories
- stakeholder engagement
- connect SVD to EOSC EU Node
- cross‑node pilots (MCVAL and AMR)
Enrolling stream
- IT governance & GDPR
- EOSC Node Slovakia deployment
- operational quality plans
- AAI integration
- HPC/resource allocation in EOSC Node Slovakia portal
- production roll‑out (KOMIS based one‑stop)
Scaling stream
- Policies to onboard third‑party Slovak institutions
- cross‑node interoperability
- standardized workflows and extended sensitive‑data policies
- tools pairing data with infrastructure

Technical status

Completed

Onboarded service catalogues (finalising catalogue of SVD Subsystem of KOMIS)
Management system (IT governance, GDPR, dealing with ISO-compliant policies in development)

Planned

Federated AAI (EOSC AAI integration planned in enrolling stream)
Application workflow management
Service monitoring
Service and research product accounting
Order management
Helpdesk

CAPABILITIES & ACCESS

COORDINATION

FAIR data

Scientific use cases

Federated analysis of pathogen genomes

The federated analysis of pathogen genomes science case outlines a federated, cross‑border capability for timely analysis of pathogen genomes that brings computation to the data instead of copying sensitive datasets across institutions.

Multi-centric validation of AI models for prostate-cancer screening

Advances in digital pathology are transforming cancer diagnosis by enabling high-resolution imaging of tissue samples and the application of artificial intelligence (AI) for clinical decision support.

Other use cases

Slovakia is onboarding selected SVD research data objects and selected external national catalogues to the EOSC EU Node.

This short-term onboarding stream precedes the two-year enrolling stream to a fully operational EOSC Node Slovakia. The approach provides a replicable pathway from rapid EU Node onboarding to a mature national node for future candidate nodes from similar environment like Slovakia.

Status

Candidate national EOSC Node (build-up phase)

Deliverables

Technical status

Completed

Planned

Interactions with other EOSC Nodes

How to access the Node

Rules of Participation

Access points

Node capabilities

Federated services

Data repositories

Compute and storage

VRE

File sync-and-share

Other

Coordinating organisation

Node organisation

Coordinator

Scientific Officer/ Deputy Coordinator

Communication Officer

Technical Coordinator

Security Officer

IT Contributors

Contributors

Contributing organisations

Slovak universities, R&D institutions, citizen science initiatives, and regional partners in Central Europe.