Belgium

Belgian organisations have invested in Open Science infrastructure and policies since the early 2000s. Universities subscribed to the Berlin declaration in 2007, as did the Belgian, Flemish and French Community ministers of research in 2012. The European projects DRIVER and OpenAIRE started coordinating efforts in Belgium, uniting Open Science ambassadors in the informal network Open Access Belgium. Research organisations have set up publication and data repositories throughout the years, most of them compliant to OpenAIRE guidelines and thus part of the OpenAIRE Research Graph.

Research is a regional competence, managed by Flanders and the Wallonia-Brussels Federation. Flanders started the Flemish Open Science Board (FOSB) to coordinate efforts, in Wallonia-Brussels Federation a working group is established. The Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (BELSPO) is managing the Open Science (OS) policies at the Federal level. In November 2019, the first Belgian EOSC event "Belgian Open Science EOSC Initiatives" was organised by the three policy levels.

Source: EOSC-Pillar

ICC-FCC OS EOSC

The National structure in Belgium is a taskforce named International Cooperation Commission (ICC) and Federal Cooperation Commission (FCC) Open Science EOSC Taskforce or in short: ICC-FCC OS EOSC. This Taskforce is for consulting or common decision making only.

The federal Science Policy Office (Belspo), the research foundation of Flanders (FWO) and the Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS) for the Wallonia-Brussels Federation are the three entities in Belgium who are actively engaged in Open Science. They consult within the ICC-FCC OS EOSC and have all committed to the EOSC Partnership.

The ICC-FCC OS EOSC wants to foster Belgian participation with EOSC through sensitising or creation of infrastructures. The taskforce wants to participate in the EOSC decision making process accordingly with Belgium's engagements regarding Open Science as expressed in Belgium and its entities' multiple national and international engagements.

Main priorities for the ICC-FCC OS EOSC taskforce are:

• Disseminating and promoting EOSC at national level
• Offering a channel to connect the national stakeholders with the EOSC governance
• Coordinating EOSC activities at national level

Belgium is represented in the EOSC Steering Board and a consensus was reached to provide Belnet, the National Research and Education Network (NREN), as a mandated organisation to the EOSC Association.