The European Open Science Cloud is quickly moving toward an operational EOSC Federation.
The EOSC EU Node is online and available for public use, presented to the scientific community at the EOSC Symposium in October 2024. Meanwhile, the EOSC Tripartite Governance has established a process for the sequencing of the first wave of Candidate EOSC Nodes, expected to come online in the first half of 2025. The federating of the first thematic, national and organisational nodes with the EOSC EU Node will mark the start of the EOSC Federation. A kick-off workshop for the build-up phase of the EOSC Federation is planned for March 2025.
Update: 26 February 2025
The EOSC Tripartite Governance has agreed on the organisations that have been invited to the kick-off workshop of the EOSC Federation, signalling the opening act in EOSC’s build-up phase.
The 17-18 March kick-off workshop will include the selected organisations, the EOSC EU Node and the Tripartite Group. Together, these groups will begin to co-develop the EOSC Federation’s work plan, based on draft individual project charters by the organisations, and establish inter-Node groups to work on specific issues. After committing to join the build-up phase, the organisations will successively form the first Candidate EOSC Nodes.
Update: 07 January 2025
In line with the sequencing process established by the Tripartite Governance in November 2024, the first-stage dialogue meetings were held with all 29 Potential Candidate Nodes (PCN) at the end of 2024. On 13 December 2024, the Tripartite issued an online questionnaire to the 29 PCNs as a follow-up to the first-stage dialogue meetings. The questionnaire is an integral part of the first-stage dialogues, and will serve as input to the Tripartite’s plan to identify a reduced number of PCNs that will participate in the second-stage dialogues this month. Following these dialogues, anywhere from seven to ten first wave Candidate Nodes will be selected to be onboarded in February as the first wave of the Federation.
- SEQUENCING OF POTENTIAL CANDIDATE NODES
Winter 2024-Spring 2025 - QUESTIONNAIRE
Summer 2024 - NEXT-WAVE CANDIDATE NODES
Agreed by the EOSC Tripartite Governance at its 07 November 2024 meeting in Budapest was a two-stage dialogue process to enable the Tripartite to initiate the build-up phase of the EOSC Federation with a first wave of Candidate Nodes.
The build-up phase of the EOSC Federation will help the Tripartite to gain experience from cooperation between the EOSC EU Node and the individual future EOSC Nodes, and to test the different aspects of the EOSC Federation Handbook in practice.
Kick-off workshop
In February 2025, the EOSC Tripartite Governance invited 13 organisations to join the kick-off workshop of the EOSC Federation, signalling the opening act in EOSC’s build-up phase.
The 17-18 March kick-off workshop will include the selected organisations, the EOSC EU Node and the Tripartite Group. Together, these groups will begin to co-develop the EOSC Federation’s work plan, based on draft individual project charters by the organisations, and establish inter-Node groups to work on specific issues. After committing to join the build-up phase, the organisations, all Members or Observers of EOSC-A, will successively form the first Candidate EOSC Nodes.
and the Life Science Research Node (on behalf of four Life Science Research Infrastructures: ELIXIR, EMBL, Euro-BioImaging ERIC, and Instruct-ERIC)
Criteria for sequencing
Grounded in the technical, organisational and scientific goals of the EOSC Federation’s build-up phase, the criteria agreed by the Tripartite include the following:
Interest to become an EOSC Node
- Respondent expresses intention to build an EOSC Node and can identify legal entity
Maturity and diversity of resources that can be offered through the EOSC Federation
- Respondent can offer a diverse set of proven resources/services
- Services/resources offered are in a mature state, with priority given to those with a track record of operating them in a production-grade environment
- Respondent is referred by other respondents as representative Candidate Node to onboard resources
Inclusivity and representation of research communities and different types of organisations
- Inclusion of organisations from the thematic domains of the five science clusters, as well as of national scope
- Inclusion of RPOs, service providers, research infrastructures, national organisations and institutions
- Broad geographic representation
- Potential for coordination amongst groups of respondents
- Take into account participation in EOSC EU Node consortium
The Potential Candidate Nodes (first wave) invited to participate in first-stage dialogue meetings in winter 2024-2025 included the following organisations:
| First-stage dialogue Meeting 1 | First-stage dialogue Meeting 2 | First-stage dialogue Meeting 3 | First-stage dialogue Meeting 4 |
|---|---|---|---|
| ACTRIS ERIC ARIADNE RI CERN CLARIN ERIC CNR (Blue-Cloud) CNRS-LAPP (ESCAPE) ESRF (PaNOSC) | BITP CNRS (Data Terra) CVTI SR Foundation ICSC HUN REN Lux NDS NCN NFDI | ACOnet / EOSC Support Office Austria ARNES CSC – IT Centre for Science DeiC EUDAT NRIS SND SRCE SURF | BBMRI ERIC Elixir Hub EMBL Euro-BioImaging ERIC Instruct ERIC |
The EOSC Tripartite Governance ran a questionnaire from June through August 2024 to gauge the scale and scope of interest in and readiness for the build-up phase of the EOSC Federation.
Replying to the questionnaire was a first step in establishing the interest of parties to contribute to a testbed of EOSC Nodes representing the different stakeholders involved in the research communities of Europe.
Questions included in the questionnaire
- Do you intend to offer your institutional resources through a future EOSC Node of the EOSC Federation?
- Do you wish to join the build-up phase with the intention to build a potential future EOSC Node?
- Are you able to identify the legal entity that would assume legal responsibility for the potential EOSC Node?
- Please list the resources your organisation intends to make available via the node. For each entry give the Technology Readiness Level (TRL 1-9), any restrictions that apply to use of the resource, and describe their added value to the EOSC Federation.
- Are all these resources owned/operated by your organisation?
- Please estimate when you would be able to start offering resources to the EOSC Federation?
- What support/competences/training will be offered to the users of the resources made available via the potential node?
- What is the added value that you see for you and for your users in contributing to the EOSC Federation?
- Please add any additional remarks you would like to make about the EOSC Federation
- Upload supporting documents (optional)
Summary of responses to:
What is the added value that you see for you and for your users in contributing to the EOSC Federation?
- Increased visibility and reach
- Collaboration and interoperability
- Support for Open Science and FAIR principles
- Access to broader resources and expertise
- Influence on policy and standardisation
- Sustainability and economic benefits
Briefing papers
Webinars: video and slides
A subsequent wave of Candidate EOSC Nodes will follow in the footsteps of the first.
The next call to contribute to the development of the EOSC Federation is planned to be issued as soon as summer 2025.
The second-wave Candidate Nodes will benefit from the experiences of the first-wave Nodes that have preceded them, as well as from the continuous feedback loop that will inform the development of the Federation. Following the second wave, it is anticipated that the processes in place will enable a continuous stream of enrolment for future EOSC Nodes.