European Open Science Cloud

European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) is built to offer the infrastructure for European research and development activities. EOSC ultimately aims to develop a 'Web of FAIR Data and services' for science in Europe upon which a wide range value-added services can be built. These range from visualisation and analytics to long-term information preservation or the monitoring of the uptake of open science practices.

EOSC portal provides resources for research in different scientific domains.

The overall purpose of the EOSC Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) is to define the general framework for future research, development and innovation activities in relation to the EOSC.

The strategic objectives of EOSC are:

1. Ensure that Open Science practices and skills are rewarded and taught, becoming the ‘new normal’.
2. Enable the definition of standards, and the development of tools and services, to allow researchers to find, access, reuse and combine results
3. Establish a sustainable and federated infrastructure enabling open sharing of scientific results

Especially interesting are the key performance indicators presented in page 184 of the SRIA.

The EOSC enables a step change across scientific communities and research infrastructures towards

• seamless access
• FAIR (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reusability) management
• reliable reuse of research data and all other digital objects produced along the research life cycle (e.g. methods, software and publications)

EOSC initiative is the tangible outcome of a number of key European and global policy milestones and position statements regarding Open Science. EOSC is an integral part of, and supports, the European Commission’s strategy for realising the European Research Area (ERA), in particular the policy priorities of Open Innovation, Open Science and Open to the World and the goal of findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) data.

EOSC will essentially involve the federation of existing research data infrastructures and the realisation of a Web of FAIR Data and Related Services for Science, making research data interoperable and machine actionable following the FAIR guiding principles. This web of data will allow researchers to find, exploit and combine linked datasets, providing a basis for artificial intelligence (AI) tools, leading to new discoveries and research paradigms.

Full deployment of the EOSC will lead to higher research productivity, new insights and innovations, as well as improved reproducibility and trust in science.

EOSC Finnish Forum (EOSC-FF)

It is important that Finnish stakeholders follow how EOSC continues to develop under Horizon Europe framework programme. This way they can better understand and influence the research priorities in the area, bring the Finnish expertise to the European context and bring back to the country the most suitable opportunities and services coming out from EOSC to foster innovation and boost the societal impact of Finnish high-quality research.

For these reasons, the Ministry of Education and Culture, Research Council of Finland (Academy of Finland), the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies and CSC – IT Center for Science established the EOSC Finnish Forum (EOSC-FF) in January 2021. It is a national level coordination instrument and network that allows the Finnish EOSC stakeholders to:

• discuss and exchange information on the latest EOSC developments and assess their implications on other national initiatives;
• represent the collective interests of Finland into EOSC by formulating a shared approach/message to be communicated to the EOSC Governance;
• discuss potential future EOSC-related collaborations and opportunities at national level and strengthen the collaboration between Finnish RDI actors.