Realising the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) - a system of systems approach
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00:21
Computer animation
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Computer animation
08:37
Computer animation
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:00
I will have a bird view on the project that is running now for one year and a half and it's in its final year by now. And I want to emphasize and zoom in on what is called the system of systems approach. Before I go into the project, I want to do one step back
00:27
and address open science. Why are we doing open science? Basically two reasons. We need it and we can do it. First, the way we do science will change. There is need for faster circulation
00:45
of knowledge. At increasing speed, information is becoming available. And what we see is that current publication system is not sustainable money-wise but also technology-wise. There are issues about reproducibility or lack of reproducibility, I must say.
01:05
There is an explosion of data. Everything is digital and how do we deal with this data explosion? And there is more need to connect science to the sustainable development
01:21
goals or complex scientific and societal problems. We saw it also in the previous presentation. It's this relation between research and innovation that we want to strengthen. And also we do open science because we can, we have the internet, we have the digitization
01:44
which gives new opportunities to share information faster and better. On how we do then this open science, the European Commission has set up a strategy.
02:01
And this strategy connects to what is called the era, the European research area. And the European platform for data and services around these data. In the open science strategy,
02:21
you see eight pillars, specific topics of which this European Open Science Cloud is one. And it's, of course, closely related to fair open data. But in a way, all eight items are related to each other. What we see, for example, in open data and the sharing,
02:44
the willingness to share data has also to do with the reward and assessment system, which is currently based on publications and doesn't encourage sharing of data. So we see that all eight items are closely related. I will now zoom in on the European Open
03:06
Science Cloud. So what is this EOSC? In short, it's a web of research data. A researcher should be able to enter this EOSC platform to go for
03:23
finding data, relevant data to also find services that are related to data that can be used to access or to analyze these data. It also refers to computing resources, storage,
03:41
computing time, network availability. And for this reason, the European Commission has invested in a lot of money in EOSC related projects. And it's also part of what is called the work program, specifically the work program on research infrastructures.
04:05
Since last year, the results of governance in place, it's twofold. One is the EOSC Association, which is a membership organization and has what is called a partnership with the European
04:21
Commission. That means that both the European Commission and the members that are part of this EOSC will invest on an equal basis. This partnership is between the European Commission, this association, but also with the member state. So each member state is also involved.
04:46
It's called the Steering Board or the member states and associated countries. So it's this three-part tie partnership that is taking care of the governance.
05:00
Then on this system of systems, what I want to stress is that we are building on existing systems. We want to pool the resources. We want to create more functionality than the sum of the systems. One example, by logging in on the EOSC
05:23
platform, a researcher or other user should have easy access to all the catalogs that are connected to this EOSC. And that prevents that you need to log in or need to require access each time you enter a different catalog or a different facility.
05:43
But it's also important to realize that these systems that are part of this EOSC operate independently. And it's not bringing everything into one place. The data stay where they are, the facilities stay where they are. It's a distributed system. And we have to take into
06:04
account that these systems are using different heart and software. So that's the key items of what is called the system of system approach. Also important, I think,
06:21
is the governance. The most easy way to govern such a system is directly. And this can be done if you do a system within one organization. Last week at your symposium, we had a presentation by Roche Pharmaceutical. They are building an in-company data cloud. And then it's,
06:47
well, it's not easy, but it's easier to do this within one organization. We have a federated governance. That means different organizations, but you at least you agree on the overall purpose.
07:03
And that comes with setting up rules of participation, agreeing on interoperability frameworks, things like that. I have a picture of this on the architecture. It's very complex. But if you look at the colors, you can see the main
07:25
parts. At the bottom, it's the core system, which has the basic functionality of the platform. Going up to the blue part, you can add and onboard new services. They can be horizontal,
07:41
which means fit for all disciplines, or very specific. And there you see the columns, Community A, cluster B, et cetera. This is the base of the platform. And it's accompanied by, on the right-hand side, this interoperability framework, which are policy documents,
08:02
operational documents on how you do things, how do we do persistent identifiers, how we deal with DOIs, et cetera. And on the left-hand side, there is all kinds of support activities. It can be training, also outreach and engagement, and also collaborations,
08:26
which is called Digital Innovation Hub. This is outreach to commercial providers that also can provide services. But more simplified, the project leans on three basic principles.
08:44
One is to build this platform. That's the technological part. And it has this core in the middle again, and then you go broader to the exchange, and the user are at the outside. We follow an approach which is called the minimum viable product, or the minimum viable EOS,
09:04
that at least we want full functionality on part of the system, instead of focusing on core and exchange only, because that doesn't make sense, as you cannot communicate and get feedback from the research communities. The second part is to provide content. That can be data content
09:27
from big research infrastructures, the e-infrastructures that do the computing, storage, et cetera, and also commercial or non-commercial third parties. And it can be data
09:40
and tools and services. And last but not least, it's the communities. We start and focus on the research communities. But in the end, it's meant to be open for everybody. And that's how we do all these engagements and the training and the skills. Zooming in on the project,
10:05
you can see that the technology part is very important. It is four work packages out of 10 deal with this technology. But we have the science and co-development by external partners
10:25
for services and tools in work packages six and eight. There is a training, there is engagement. And we also have a policy and strategy work package that connects to the European Commission,
10:41
to the member states, to other big projects that are currently running. Where are we now? Well, we are up and running. There is an EOS portal that provides services for both providers
11:00
and users. For providers, it's a way of how you can onboard with your services. And for the users, we have this marketplace where you can search either by scientific domain or by categories. And in blue, you see the types of communities that
11:22
are on this current platform, the providers, the number of providers we have currently and the target groups that we aim for. And there are all kinds of selections or filters
11:40
in this catalog. One other output I want to mention is that it's building also an observatory, which is a policy instrument. This is also now up and running since two weeks, and it has a number of data surveys that were performed among the countries to see,
12:07
do you have a policy? Do you have an open science policy? Is it related to data? So, all kinds of questions, and these are visualized by in this observatory instrument. So,
12:22
to conclude, the EOS serves different stakeholders. The main focus is on the research communities in connection to the providers of data and services. But we also have in parallel a policy instrument that is called the EOS observatory.
12:45
I leave it with this, and thank you for your attention.