Through ERA, the Union and its Member States will strengthen their scientific and technological bases, their competitiveness and their capacity to collectively address grand challenges.
The Digital Single Market (DSM) forms one of the ten political priorities of the European Commission and, as part of the Digital Agenda for Europe (DAE), is also one of the 7 flagship initiatives set by the “Europe2020” strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. DSM envisages a market where “free movement of goods, persons, services and capital is ensured … under conditions of fair competition, and a high level of consumer and personal data protection, irrespective of their nationality or place of residence.”.
The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) is grounded in the EC’s aim to promote the access and reuse of research data which comes out of publicly funded research. At present, there is fragmented access to research data, which exists, stored and is created in many different data centres, institutions and research centres across Europe. Open access to this data is not a given, and the content is not interoperable, restricting inter-disciplinary research.
EOSC will solve this problem by providing easy access to this data, making publicly funded data open. It will provide one single point of free access, ensuring all databases are interoperable. The push therefore for a recognition of the benefits of Open Science - policies and infrastructures - is therefore key.
After the 2017 EOSC declaration a number of implementation plans have been published. After extensive consultation with scientific stakeholders, this implementation plan was put in place in 2018
See OpenAIRE’s response to the declaration.
In 2019, the most up-to-date European Open Science Cloud Implementation Plan was published.
In the context of the launch of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) implementation phase 2018-2020, two important reports are being published by the Commission that constitute major sources of strategic orientations and concrete actions for the new EOSC governance structure:
Report of the Commission FAIR Data Expert Group (FAIR Data EG)
Why do we need EOSC? Watch the EOSC video.
Read more here to see how OpenAIRE is relevant in EOSC, and where our members are active!
The Digital Single Market encompasses several policy areas where actions need to be further communicated and implemented by Member States, one of them being on “Open Data”. The term refers to all public sector information (PSI) which, according to the PSI 2013 Directive, should be properly described with metadata and published as datasets in an open, interoperable platform. Additionally, to ensure re-usability, standard licenses should be applied to them. It is worth noting that the Directive includes Archives, Museums and Libraries in the public sector bodies, mainly because of their cultural heritage and digitised materials.