ENVRI-FAIR at the “Research Infrastructures shaping EOSC” event

Research Infrastructures shaping EOSC

The 2nd workshop on the connection of ESFRI Research Infrastructures (RIs) to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), “Research Infrastructures shaping EOSC”, was organized as a virtual event on 6 & 7 October 2020. As RIs have a crucial role in deploying the EOSC, many ENVRI community representatives participated in the meeting, including Helen Glaves, who introduced ENVRI-FAIR project during one of the plenary sessions. Since EOSC is meant to serve the researchers, it is evident that the RIs need to have a strong position and voice in its development.

Partnership with the new legal entity called EOSC Association – who, how, and on what terms?

The workshop’s main objective was to bring together ESFRI, ESFRI RIs and EOSC stakeholders together to showcase and better comprehend the EOSC concept and value proposition for its users and ensure an optimal federation of ESFRI clusters and their RIs with EOSC. Indeed, a partnership with the new legal entity called EOSC Association was a hot topic during the meeting, as the benefits of joining the association are not yet completely evident to RIs. Additionally, there was uncertainty on the best level of interaction, as RIs could join in as separate entities, but it would be likely more economical and powerful to use the science clusters? If the second is the case, then who pays for the membership, and who makes the decisions with respect to the association? It seems that discussion around establishing the joint ENVRI legal entity which has started in the Board of European Environmental Research infrastructures (BEERi) already two years ago is again quite a timely topic. The representatives of different environmental RIs will meet during the next BEERi meeting in December and will further discuss the ENVRI organizational structure, and how to involve the Member States funding the RIs in the process.

ENVRI-FAIR in the spotlight

But back to the meeting – as said earlier, Helen Glaves introduced our project activities, showcased the ENVRI RIs, and discussed the role of EOSC for our community. She explained there has so far been an intense cross-fertilization of ENVRI-FAIR and EOSC on several topics including the FAIRness assessment methods, FAIRness training, and FAIR policies. Helen also explained our progress in publishing the ‘FAIR’ data in the catalogue of services provided by participating RIs for the management, storage and reuse of data in the European Open Science Cloud. A lot has been achieved in ENVRI-FAIR during its first 18 months.

‣ If you are interested in a more detailed summary of the results, read our progress report.

‣ Read our joint ESFRI Science Clusters and the European e-infrastructures position paper , to better understand our position towards the development of EOSC.