EOSCsecretariat.eu

EOSCsecretariat.eu
Name	EOSCsecretariat.eu
Formation	2018
Type	Secretariat
Headquarters	Brussels
Region served	European Union
Website	(not linked)

EOSCsecretariat.eu provides coordination and support for the European Open Science Cloud initiative, acting as a focal point for policy, technical, and community activities. It connects research infrastructures, funding bodies, and research organisations to facilitate data sharing and interoperability across platforms and domains. The secretariat engages with stakeholders to align efforts among programs, initiatives, and projects across Europe and internationally.

Overview

EOSCsecretariat.eu operates at the nexus of the European Commission, European Research Council, Horizon 2020, Horizon Europe, European Cloud Initiative, and related bodies to advance the European Open Science Cloud vision. It liaises with the European Data Infrastructure and networks such as GÉANT, EMBL-EBI, CERN, ESA, and EUREST. The secretariat supports alignment with standards from ISO, FAIR principles, RDA, GO FAIR, and engages with stakeholder communities including Universities UK, League of European Research Universities, and European University Association. Through coordination with programmes like Copernicus, ITER, ESFRI, EuroHPC, and Digital Europe Programme, the secretariat helps integrate services across infrastructures such as Zenodo, DataCite, ORCID, Figshare, and GitHub.

History and Development

The secretariat emerged following recommendations from the High-Level Expert Group on the European Open Science Cloud and policy signals from the European Commission White Paper on digital transformation. Early links to projects funded under FP7 and COST informed its establishment, and it has coordinated with landmark programmes including OpenAIRE, EOSCpilot, EOSC-hub, and EOSC-synergy. Engagement with national initiatives such as FranceX, DeNBI, NFDI, and UK Research and Innovation shaped its roadmap. Collaborations with agencies like JRC, EIT, ERC Executive Agency, and European Investment Bank influenced governance design and funding mechanisms.

Structure and Governance

Governance of the secretariat aligns with advisory bodies like the GΔFCC, the European Commission Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, and stakeholder assemblies resembling the European Research Area Committee. It interacts with national contact points such as Science Europe, Swedish Research Council, DFG, ANR, CSIC, CNR, and Spanish Ministry of Science. The organisational model draws on principles used by World Wide Web Consortium, ISO/IEC, and IEEE for standards development. Oversight includes partnerships with entities like European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures, Stakeholder Forum, RDA Europe, and legal frameworks informed by the General Data Protection Regulation and Directive on Open Access.

Projects and Initiatives

The secretariat has coordinated or supported initiatives including EOSC Future, EOSC-Life, Euro-BioImaging, ESCAPE, PaNOSC, SERENA, FAIRsFAIR, RDA Europe 4.0, OpenAIRE-Advance, and NI4OS-Europe. It interacts with thematic infrastructures such as ELIXIR, BBMRI-ERIC, ERIC Forum, CLARIAH, DARIAH, and Cessda while engaging domain-specific projects like Human Brain Project, Euro-Argo, EMSO ERIC, and EPOS. Coordination extends to software and metadata projects including Apache Software Foundation-hosted tools, CKAN, Dataverse, and repositories curated by Max Planck Society and Wellcome Trust initiatives.

Services and Activities

Services facilitated by the secretariat include policy synthesis, stakeholder workshops, technical interoperability assessments, and cataloguing of services similar to registries maintained by ORCID, DataCite, and RICs. Activities encompass community building with events paralleling Open Science Fair, EOSC Week, Research Data Alliance Plenaries, and workshops involving EuroHPC Summit participants. It produces guidance comparable to outputs from JISC, Digital Science, SPARC Europe, and Science Europe on topics like stewardship, metadata, PID strategies, and access frameworks.

Partnerships and Collaborations

The secretariat partners with international organisations such as UNESCO, OECD, World Bank, United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, and research infrastructures including SKAO, ILL, ICGEB, and Instruct-ERIC. It collaborates with funders like Wellcome Trust, Gates Foundation, European Investment Bank, and national research councils across France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, and Netherlands. Industrial and cloud partners include providers and consortia reminiscent of Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and OpenStack Foundation while engaging standards bodies such as W3C and Dublin Core.

Impact and Evaluation

Evaluation of the secretariat’s impact uses metrics similar to bibliometric analyses from Scopus, Web of Science, and altmetrics from Altmetric alongside infrastructure usage statistics from GÉANT and repository harvests from CORE. Assessments reference policy uptake in documents from the European Parliament, Council of the European Union, and national ministries, with influence observable in funding calls from Horizon Europe and practice changes among institutions like Karolinska Institutet, CNRS, TU Delft, and University of Oxford. Independent reviews draw on methodologies used by RAND Corporation and European Court of Auditors for program evaluation.

Category:European research infrastructure