SEVILLE – The second edition of the EOSC Winter School convened a diverse group of EOSC stakeholders to align work plans, leverage the INFRAEOSC project results, and explore strategies for supporting the EOSC Federation’s build-up phase.
Organised by the EOSC Association, with support from EOSC Focus, the event was held on 20-23 January in Seville. A total of 150 participants, including representatives from EOSC-related projects funded through Horizon Europe, EOSC Opportunity Area Expert Groups, EOSC-A Task Forces, the European Commission, and the EOSC-A Board and Secretariat, joined together under the banner: “Convergence towards the EOSC Federation: Encouraging collaborative efforts among stakeholders”.
The event confirmed the community’s strong interest in and bottom-up support for the emerging EOSC Federation as it advances toward operational readiness in 2025.
A programme built on Strategic Pillars
The programme of the Winter School centred on four Strategic Pillars outlined in the EOSC Multi-Annual Roadmap (MAR), which sets priorities for the years 2026 and 2027, and is an integral part of the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA 1.3).
The four Strategic Pillars are:
Strategic Pillar 1
Sustaining and enhancing the EOSC Federation
Strategic Pillar 2
Contributing to the web of FAIR data and the uptake of AI
Strategic Pillar 3
Ensuring research security and sovereignty
Strategic Pillar 4
Linking with other Common European Data Spaces and beyond
Setting the stage for long-term collaboration
The event opened with an exploration of the key themes shaping the EOSC ecosystem, with a clear emphasis on the possible strong impact of EOSC-related Horizon Europe projects. In the opening plenary it was underlined that, to be of added value, key exploitable results from the projects must demonstrate high relevance to EOSC and the EOSC Federation, and require active ownership and commitment from the leadership of the beneficiaries to ensure long-term sustainability. The timing for leveraging results is ideal as the first projects are concluding while the EOSC Federation is being built up.

A key takeaway of the opening discussion was the importance of initiating sustainable exploitation planning early in the projects’ lifecycles, with active engagement from all partners. In this context, the EOSC Macro-Roadmap was promoted as a unique marketplace, where both expected and delivered outcomes are showcased, fostering long-term sustainability pathways.
Photos by Marcin Plociennik and Winter School participants
The focus then shifted to the EOSC Federation, its foundational principles, progress, and future steps. Representatives from Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (DG RTD), and Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CONNECT) attended the event to provide a detailed overview of the phased build-up of the EOSC Federation and encourage INFRAEOSC projects to follow its evolution. They also urged them to actively explore whether their key exploitable results could find a sustainability pathway in the upcoming EOSC Nodes.
Discussions highlighted the pivotal role of the EOSC EU Node, which has been offering services since autumn 2024 and the evolving EOSC Federation Handbook, which will serve to guide the Federation’s operations, architecture, policies and scientific services during the enrolment of the first candidate EOSC Nodes this spring.
Technical breakouts spark engaging discussions
The breakout sessions blended presentations and interactive workshops to discuss how to align with the Strategic Pillars of the EOSC Partnership’s Multi-Annual Roadmap 2026-2027. The exchange of ideas was shaped by the perspectives and groundwork laid by volunteers in the seven Opportunity Area Expert Groups and four EOSC-A Task Forces, which jointly represent the EOSC brain pool.
The Winter School also served as a platform for the official launch of the new EOSC Opportunity Area Expert Group for Research Software. Building on prior work of volunteers, this seventh expert group will tackle different facets of fostering an Open Science culture for research software, aiming to promote it to a first-class citizen in science.
Discussions that followed explored challenges, such as articulating an interoperable, community-driven vision for research software within the EOSC Federation, addressing the need for a PID Policy and standardisation, advancing interoperability within and beyond the EOSC Federation, and promoting FAIR practices by developing robust assessment tools for quality and preservation of digital objects. Participants also worked to refine the technical guidance for onboarding new services, and to explore new strategies to enhance skills and engagement for Open Science and to integrate Open Scholarly Communication into EOSC.
Key outcomes and recommendations
Strategic Pillar 1
Sustaining and enhancing the EOSC Federation
Discussions on Strategic Pillar 1 emphasised the need for robust governance and proposed setting up an authoritative body within the governance structure to be responsible for PIDs. Participants reiterated the need for harmonised definitions and metadata standards to achieve seamless semantic and technical interoperability and started identifying existing solutions within scientific domains. A shared technical architecture model, common vocabulary, and open communication among stakeholders as represented by the EOSC Federation Handbook were identified as crucial steps in fostering engagement, adoption, and long-term impact of the EOSC Federation. During the closing session the need to promote existing working solutions to avoid raising expectations was highlighted.
Strategic Pillar 2
Contributing to the web of FAIR data and the uptake of AI
The exchanges on critical topics related to Strategic Pillar 2 centred on the intersection of FAIR principles and AI, emphasising the importance of robust metadata, data quality and open sources software for AI applications. Participants distinguished between FAIR-for-AI and AI-for-FAIR data, underscoring the need for standards to harmonise FAIR and AI practices, along with efforts to integrate publications, research data, and metadata for improved resource discovery and usability within the EOSC Federation.
Strategic Pillar 3
Ensuring research security and sovereignty
While assessing research security and sovereignty, Winter School participants acknowledged the lack of high-quality data for training AI models. They stressed the importance of defining responsibility and liability for the disclosure of sensitive data, suggesting that a general requirement is reaching an agreement on a common model for metrics, tests and associated benchmarks across FAIR tools that defines an authority for selecting metrics and community benchmarks.
Strategic Pillar 4
Linking with other Common European Data Spaces and beyond
The attendees concluded that use cases are needed to explore the integration of Data Spaces within the EOSC Federation and vice-versa, and to define their interoperability. They argued that the usability of the EOSC EU Node should be assessed through VREs for real use cases, fostering existing communities to promote Open Science practices. The need for collaborations to establish trusted VREs between projects was highlighted. They also suggested to engage with various Common European Data Spaces and extend the involvement to include EU Missions.
Leveraging key exploitable results
The final day of the 2025 EOSC Winter School brought a forward-looking perspective, emphasising sustainability and exploring the possibilities to leverage results of INFRAEOSC projects within the EOSC Federation.
While the EOSC Federation and its elements are not the sole possible destination for the key exploitable results (KERs), many projects are eager to contribute. A template was co-created during the session on Research Software to capture software related output and activities across EOSC projects to help enhance and sustain the outcomes. Participants were tasked to consider how their specific KERs could support the four Strategic Pillars guiding EOSC priorities for 2026 and 2027, while also adding value to the EOSC Federation. Several projects have pledged to study how their KERs can be integrated into the EOSC Federation through the Handbook, and EOSC-A has committed to make a proposal to the Tripartite on how to proceed in these cases.
The EOSC Winter School reaffirmed its role as a key community event, fostering collaboration, knowledge exchange, networking, and preparation for the EOSC Federation.
“As we move forward, it is crucial that we build on the spirit of collaboration demonstrated at the Winter School, with our efforts converging toward a common goal. 2025 will be a defining year for the EOSC Federation with the first nodes set to enrol in the coming months. We are very happy to have the support of the community,” said EOSC-A President Karel Luyben when closing the event.
