EOSC Portal and Marketplace

Short Description

The EOSC Portal and Marketplace - that have developed into joint efforts with EOSC Enhance project - support the resources discovery and access in EOSC. As described in the 2019 EOSC Portal collaboration agreement (concluded in 2019 with the representatives of the EOSC-hub, OpenAIRE-Advance and eInfraCentral project consortia) this KER includes: “technical components, intangible assets and contractual arrangements that make it possible to provide the service that facilitates the access and use of the EOSC assets. The contractual arrangements include - but are not limited to - the rights to administer the IP addresses and IT infrastructure making accessing the EOSC Portal possible”.

Relevant deliverables

• D2.6 - First Service roadmap, service portfolio and service catalogue
• EOSC Portal Marketplace GitHub software repository

Key benefits for EOSC

Thanks to this KER, it will be possible to operate a scalable and well-managed EOSC portal and marketplace with a growing service portfolio and with a transparent governance model. From the researcher point of view, the benefits include the ability to:

• Discover and compare multiple resources and services such as scientific outputs, applications, data management, compute services and thematic services;

• Order EOSC resources;

• Organise resources of interest and resource orders into logical blocks in EOSC Marketplace Projects to reflect a common scientific purpose and gain EOSC expert support for the created Marketplace Project;

• Access services and resources using a common authentication/authorisation process;

• Pick up on best practices and practical examples featuring research communities making the most of EOSC;

• Provide feedback about services and information to contribute to building the EOSC service portfolio.

From the service provider point of view, the benefits are based on the ability to:

• Publish, share and advertise services and resources to a wider user base;

• Get statistics about access requests and customer feedback;

• Get a free online platform where providers can manage service requests, interact with users and provide support to them, and agree the most suitable service levels;

• Allow users to authenticate with existing credentials to access services;

• Demonstrate that the services meet EOSC quality standards.

The importance of the EOSC Portal as the primary, Pan-European entry point to the EOSC ecosystem is going to grow dramatically as the scope of the EOSC resources grows. Naturally, this activity does not preclude the reuse of the portal components by third parties. In fact, the anticipated growth of volume and diversity of use of the components is likely to speed up the maturing process of future versions considerably.

Use and impact after EOSC-HUB

The EOSC Portal will continue to serve EOSC users (researchers / providers / operation team members / founders etc) after the conclusion of the EOSC-hub project. Moreover, it will be further developed in the forthcoming EOSC Future project. It will go beyond the Minimum Viable Product phase to support the growth of EOSC and acknowledge new EOSC competences and use-cases. An expansion of EOSC Portal capabilities is foreseen especially in the areas of professional resource discovery and delivery (supporting both supply and demand side of the process): 

• significant expansion of the EOSC resource portfolio and catalogue;

• evolution of the resource discovery including the integration with external, thematic catalogues; 

• inclusion of resource allocation process, EOSC interoperability framework, user-centric resource monitoring and accounting; 

• improvements on customer relationship management functionalities etc. 

The focus on the EOSC user perspective and a use of UX design methods will be maintained, so all of the developed functionalities will keep user experience in its centre. Incorporation of the AI techniques  will be one the factors contributing to this goal. Also, by widening the scope of statistics components, EOSC governance will gain new relevant data regarding the EOSC developlopment. 

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