Interview with Klaus Tochtermann, Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, Kiel, Germany, recorded at the BEILSTEIN OPEN SCIENCE SYMPOSIUM (22 – 24 May 2017). Klaus Tochtermann discusses the European Science Cloud (EOSC) with Carsten Kettner. He describes the concept for the ESOC which is planned to connect current and future research data centers with one another in an eco-system of infrastructures. Also discussed are the standards necessary to make such an eco-system function: standards for metadata, standards for APIs and standards for authentication. He stressed the need for scientists to make their data FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable), to support cross-disciplinary research and re-use. In the EOSC all data should be FAIR. Klaus mentions that in the opinion of the high level expert group on EOSC, about 80% of the reasons that scientists do not share data are cultural, mainly due to the lack of sufficient incentives.