Twenty-three projects have been awarded nearly €1.15 million under EOSC Gravity to support the preparatory work of potential future EOSC Nodes, and expand the services offered through the EOSC Federation. The projects will hold their kick-off meeting on 06 May 2026, marking the formal start of a six-month implementation period.
Selected through two competitive calls, open from 03 November 2025 to 18 February 2026, these inter-project grant and preparatory grant projects, each receiving up to €50,000, represent a significant step forward in the future development of the EOSC Federation.
Taken together, these twenty-three projects reflect the breadth and ambition of the communities now engaging with the EOSC Federation. Starting from their kick-off on 06 May 2026, each project has six months to deliver. Following this rapid implementation timeline, their results will feed directly into the ongoing development of the EOSC Federation.
Preparatory grants: towards potential future EOSC Nodes
The fifteen preparatory grant recipients, selected from 20 submitted proposals, are designed to support the preparatory work of potential future EOSC Nodes. The main objective is to develop a Project Charter for a subsequent, separate application to a future Enrolment Call of the EOSC Tripartite Governance. The full list of recipients is presented in the table below.
In addition to supporting eight potential future national EOSC Nodes, the awarded projects assist seven potential future thematic EOSC Nodes covering domains and topics such as materials science, research integrity, food and nutrition science, design and spatial research, open science data reuse, and citizen science.
Each project will work towards three key milestones over the next six months: submission of a project plan outlining governance and technical readiness, delivery of a Project Charter, and a final use case report.
Recipients of preparatory grants under EOSC Gravity
| Project title | Lead organisation | Proposed node type |
|---|---|---|
| French National EOSC Node (EOSC France) | INRIA | National |
| EOSC-ES-Prep | Instituto Aragonésde Ciencias de la Salud (IACS) | National |
| The Grant Reuse and Abandoned Ideas Library (GRAIL) | Journal of Trial and Error | Thematic: Open Science — preservation and reuse of unexecuted research |
| Preparation of the Bulgarian Open Science Portal as a candidate national EOSC node (BPOS) | National Centre for Information and Documentation (NACID) | National |
| Scoping a UK EOSC National Node (PATH2EOSCUK) | Jisc | National |
| NASU Materials Science Thematic Node (MATSCI-NASU) | Bogolyubov Institute for Theoretical Physics, NASU | Thematic: Materials science |
| Preparing an EOSC Materials Node (MatOSC) | UKRI / STFC | Thematic: Materials science |
| EOSC Citizen Science Node (EOSC-CSN) | Fundación Ibercivis | Thematic: Citizen science — cross-disciplinary |
| Enrolling EOSC Ireland (FE-EOSC.IE) | Asiera Technology Services (formerly HEAnet) | National |
| Towards an Austrian EOSC Node (AT-EOSC) | ACONET Association / EOSC Support Office Austria | National |
| Open Source European Research Integrity Network (os-ERIN) | Wageningen University & Research | Thematic: Research integrity |
| Thematic EOSC Node on Design and Spatial Research Objects (OPEN-ARK) | University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Architecture | Thematic: Design and spatial research |
| Project Charter for a Danish National EOSC Federation Node (EOSC-DK) | Danish e-Infrastructure Cooperation (DeiC) | National |
| EuroFIR Food | EuroFIR AISBL / Premotec GmbH | Thematic: Food and nutrition science |
| Estonian National Node Preparatory Research Project (EOSC-EST) | University of Tartu | National |
Inter-project grants: expanding EOSC Federation services and use cases
The eight inter-project grant recipients, selected from among 24 applicants, will address a diverse range of scientific use cases and technical services. While half of the projects will pilot service onboarding into existing EOSC Nodes, the other half will develop scientific use cases to demonstrate the value of the EOSC Federation for research communities. The full list of recipients is presented in the table below.
The research domains covered by the awarded projects include for example remote sensing and environmental science, biodiversity and Earth science, as well as life sciences and genomics. The projects will expand the services of the EOSC Federation by onboarding a data management planning tool, a training registry infrastructure, an FDO/RO management platform, and data management for photon and neutron facilities.
Each inter-project grant recipient will also deliver documentation for developers and operators, and training materials for the EOSC Academy.
Recipients of inter-project grants under EOSC Gravity
| Project title | Lead organisation | Use case / service | Nodes involved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Retrospective Forest and Landscape Change Analysis from Historical Satellite Imagery (RETROCHANGE) | Technical University in Zvolen | Scientific use case: Remote sensing / environmental science | EOSC Node Slovakia |
| DAMAP-PL | TU Wien | Service onboarding: Data management planning tool | EOSC Node Poland |
| Training registry for EOSC nodes and science clusters (TeSSHub4EOSC) | University of Manchester | Service onboarding: Training registry infrastructure | PaNOSC Node; Life Sciences Connect Node |
| Earth Science Collection Use Case for Data Terra and the EOSC Federation (Geodera) | Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities (CETAF) | Scientific use case: Earth & biodiversity science — natural history collections | Data Terra Node |
| FAIR Digital Objects / Research Objects Management Platform Deployment (ROH-ON) | Instytut ChemiiBioorganicznej PAN (PSNC) | Service onboarding: FDO/RO management platform | EOSC Node Poland |
| Federated Urban Mobility Datasets and AI-based Handover Prediction (FUMD-AI) | Miguel Hernández University of Elche | Scientific use case: AI / intelligent transport systems | EOSC Node Poland; EOSC Node North Macedonia (2nd wave) |
| Distributed data management for Genomics in the EOSC Federation (FORGE) | Area Science Park | Scientific use case: Life sciences / genomics | CERN Node; EOSC Node Italy (ICSC) |
| Photon and Neutron Data Management Environment for EOSC (PaN-Space) | Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf(HZDR) | Service onboarding: Data management for photon & neutron facilities | PaNOSC Node |
