Enable the open sharing of knowledge and the re-use of research outputs, including through the development of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC)

01WHAT’S UP

02INTRODUCTION

Structural Policy 1 in the ERA Policy Agenda (2025-2027)

This structural policy aims to achieve a step change across research communities and research infrastructures in Europe. It will seek to create a better EU legal framework for open sharing, seamless access and reliable re-use of research data and other digital research objects used and produced along the research life cycle. Example activities are:

  • Promoting the uptake of the EOSC EU Node by the European research community;
  • Support the enlargement of the EOSC Federation with several nodes and ensure its scalability through common EOSC Federation standards and use policies, as of 2025;
  • conducting further stakeholder consultations and collecting more evidence on identified policy options to make the EU copyright and data legislative and regulatory framework fit for research;
  • expanding the EOSC monitoring framework with state-of-the-art methodologies to assess the impact of related policies and practices.

Objectives

  • Open science practices and skills are rewarded and taught, becoming the ‘new normal’;
  • standards, tools and services allow researchers to find, access, reuse and combine results;
  • a federated community-driven infrastructure enabling open sharing of scientific results is deployed and maintained;
  • Europe is in the driving seat towards a web of FAIR8 research data with established links to other data spaces;
  • researchers are provided with better legal conditions and resources to access and reuse publicly funded research results, and use publications and data for scientific purposes.

Expected outcomes

  • Develop a high-value EOSC federation and increase its uptake;
  • increase the amount and productivity of FAIR research data in Europe;
  • identify areas for measures and initiatives to enable an EU copyright and data framework fit for research;
  • assess the impact of open science policies and practices based on an open science policy intelligence platform.

Background information

The amount of data generated or used in publicly-funded research and innovation (R&I) activities is growing exponentially. However, a significant part of this data (i) is not shared openly, (ii) never makes it to a trusted and sustainable repository, (iii) is poorly annotated or not formatted in a standardised way allowing for machine-readability. Consequently, many research experiments producing, or based on, this data cannot be reproduced, increasing the risk of mistrust in their outcomes. Efficiency and productivity of the research is also reduced. The cost of not having FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable) research data has been estimated to more than € 10 billion every year for Europe.

In the first ERA Policy Agenda (2022-2024), the action supported the development of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) as the material and immaterial infrastructure sustaining the transition to open science and digital research.

The action required a strong involvement by the Member States (MS) and Associated Countries (AC) to engage scientific communities and research infrastructures in Europe towards: (i) FAIR management of scientific data and other publicly funded research digital output such as codes and software, and (ii) the sharing of these research outputs following the principle “as open as possible, as closed as necessary”.

This is at the core of the EOSC ambition to provide European researchers, innovators, companies and citizens with an accessible, trusted and open distributed environment where they can publish, find and re-use each other’s data and tools for research, innovation and educational purposes, as well as access relevant services.

The ERA Action in the first ERA Policy Agenda aimed at the following outcomes:

  1. Deploy Open Science principles in synergy with other relevant ERA actions and identify Open Science best practices by the various communities to progressively make Open Science (OS) ‘the new normal’.
  2. Deploy the core components and services of EOSC, federate existing data infrastructures in Europe, and develop community frameworks for interoperability of research data and quality control of EOSC resources.
  3. Establish a mechanism to collect data and investments, policies, digital research outputs, Open Science skills and infrastructure capacities related to EOSC, and link it to the ERA Monitoring Mechanism.

For more information:

European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) - European Commission

EOSC Association as the legal entity established to govern the European Open Science Cloud

EOSC Catalogue of Best Practices