The EOSC Association is delighted to announce the releases of the Report on the EOSC Winter School 2024, summarising discussions from a landmark event which took place between 30 January and 1 February 2024 in Thessaloniki, Greece. The report is centred on actions designed by discussion groups during the Winter School, all of which will be translated into a work plan during Spring 2024.
Organised by EOSC-A, with the support of the EOSC Focus project, the Horizon Europe (HE) EOSC-related projects, and local organisers from the RAISE project consortium, the Winter School had the goal of increasing collaborations among the EOSC-related projects funded by the Horizon Europe programme of the European Commission, identified as essential to enable faster progress towards creating EOSC, the “web of FAIR data and services” envisioned to implement Open Science in Europe co-developed by the European Commission and the EOSC Association under the EOSC Co-programmed European Partnership.
Collaborations between projects should aim to generating results that contribute to a better return on investment from the projects by delivering “one EOSC” that is more than the sum of the results of the individual projects. Additional input in the discussions and meetings at the Winter School was provided by the results obtained by the Task Forces set up by the EOSC Association.
Participants included representatives of all EOSC-related projects, co-chairs of the EOSC Association Task Forces, representatives of the European Commission, and facilitators from EOSC Focus and EOSC Association’s Board of Directors.
The meetings were organised in seven “tracks” or “Opportunity Areas for technical collaboration”, or Opportunity Area groups, which are a translation of the high-level Action Areas of EOSC’s Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda into specific technological challenges. Attendees were split into the tracks according to their interests and expertise to devise collectively actionable and collaborative work plans.
Originally identified by the Horizon Europe Technology Working Group established by EOSC Focus under the Vademecum to increase mutual knowledge among EOSC-related projects, the Opportunity Areas describe topics addressed by the EOSC-related projects with good chances of enticing several of them into a collaboration.
A description of the origin and preparation of the EOSC Winter School, as well as extensive summaries of the conclusions and recommendations reached in all the Opportunity Areas, is provided as background material.
The scope and detail of the actions suggested, however, present important variations between Opportunity Area groups. This suggests that further work within the Horizon Europe Technology Working Group is needed to identify topics where concrete collaboration opportunities can be established, and to develop them into a realistic work plan.
Pending on the realisation of the objectives of the actions, the Winter School has proved to be the right setting to create down-to-earth operational plans to realise the SRIA in a collaborative spirit. A second edition that incorporates the lessons learnt into an updated methodology and scope is planned for early 2025, still under the coordination of EOSC Focus as main support for EOSC Association to engage with EOSC-related projects.
