EOSC-hub and ESFRIs towards co-creation: the key for the success of EOSC

Per Öster highlights how the ESFRI clusters are at the core of the EOSC-hub vision

The consolidation of ESFRI clusters as EOSC thematic platforms, and the articulation of these platforms with the EOSC-hub will be critical for the success of EOSC. Research infrastructures have spent decades building strong thematic platforms and organising their community of users, and are rightfully expecting that EOSC supports this effort. How can EOSC-hub support these platforms?

We propose here a vision where EOSC stakeholders, in particular data and service providers, join forces to establish the Hub as an access channel to data and services - coming both from research infrastructures and e-Infrastructures - made open to the entire research community.

We envision the Hub to be used by researchers and research communities in a bi-directional way:

• to discover and use new generic and thematic services.
• to open up data and services to new users.

Research infrastructures want to remain in control of their own delivery and access channel to serve their organised user base. But, when research infrastructures have an interest to open services beyond their community, the Hub is precisely the right place to promote these resources and facilitate their use.

How is EOSC-hub promoting this vision?

First, the project is pursuing an active engagement strategy with ESFRI clusters to discuss concrete requirements, operational agreements and governance, in the spirit of co-creation. It is crucial with a genuinely shared ownership of the discussion and co-creation of this common future.

At technical and policy level, the project is making sure that the existing instruments (e.g. marketplace, software and metadata catalogues) are fully operational and fit for purpose, and that the rules of participation for publishing data sets or services are easy to understand and implement. Promoting a service through the EOSC-hub should be possible with very little effort for the service providers!

The question of business models for opening up services also needs to be addressed. The current instruments provided by the EC (e.g. Virtual Access) are primarily designed for access to research infrastructures and not consumption of compute and storage resources. Innovation is needed in this area to create incentives to attract service providers.

With this agenda in mind, EOSC-hub is happy to continue to engage with all interested parties.

Per Öster, Director Research Infrastructures & Policyat CSC and EOSC-hub Project Director

Follow Per on Twitter: @pererikoster