About
The idea of a European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) took shape in 2015, as a vision of the European Commission of a large infrastructure to support and develop open science and open innovation in Europe and beyond.
The EOSC is becoming a reality. The European Open Science Cloud is envisioned by the European Commission as a supporting landscape to foster open science and open innovation: a network of organisations and infrastructures from various countries and communities that supports the open creation and dissemination of knowledge and scientific data.
The EOSC portal collects and deliver the services researchers need for their work. It is an online platform where researchers can learn about what is available, as well as access services, tools to manage data and compute & storage resources.
The EOSC secretariat addresses the set-up of an operational framework supporting the overall Governance of the EOSC. Led by a consortium of experienced and complementary partners, the project maintains a practical approach to address all the specific needs of the coordination structure expected by the EOSC.
EOSC in Belgium
Mandated organization
Belnet is appointed as the mandated organisation of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) Association for Belgium. As a National Education and Research Network (NREN), Belnet is one of the few research-oriented infrastructures in Belgium that is national in scope.
Having obtained its mandate, Belnet will directly influence the strategic direction of the EOSC Association and will represent the interests of all players that form part of the Belgian research landscape. In order to achieve this, Belnet developed a close working relationship with a number of parties, including the various authorities that hold powers in the scientific domain.
EOSC Task Forces
The EOSC Association (EOSC-A) Task Forces (TF) address key areas of EOSC implementation. They liaise with EOSC projects and the EOSC Association Board of Directors. The TFs offer feedback on EOSC developments and provide input to the development of the EOSC Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA), which in turn affects the future work programmes of Horizon Europe. The Task Forces are grouped under five thematic EOSC Advisory Groups (AG). Each of the Task Forces has a Charter that defines their objectives and activities.
Taske forces and Belgian representation
The task forces are the following:
· AG Implementation of EOSC
- TF PID Policy and Implementation
- TF Researcher Engagement and Adoption
- TF Rules of Participation Compliance Monitorin
· AG Metadata and Data Quality
- TF FAIR Metrics and Data Quali
- TF Semantic Interoperability
- Chair:
- Sadia Vancauwenbergh UHasselt / euroCRIS
- Chair:
· AG Research Careers and Curricula
- TF Data Stewardship Curricula and Career Paths
- Members:
- Claes, Nathalie (KU Leuven)
- Meeus, Joke (FWO)
- Members:
- TF Research Careers, Recognition, and Credit
- Members:
- O’Neill, Gareth (Technopolis Group Belgium)
- Thillou, Céline (University of Mons)
- Members:
- TF Upskilling Countries to Engage in EOSC
· AG Sustaining EOSC
- TF Defining Funding Models for EOSC
- Member:
- Mergen, Patricia (Meise Botanic Garden)
- Member:
- TF Long-Term Data Preservation
- Chair:
- Roxanne Wyns (KU Leuven)
- Member:
- de Loof, Chris (Belnet)
- Chair:
· AG Technical Challenges on EOSC
- TF AAI Architecture
- Member:
- Brusten, Philip (KU Leuven)
- Member:
- TF Infrastructure for Quality Research Software
- Member:
- Van den Bossche, Maxime (KU Leuven)
- Member:
- TF Technical Interoperability of Data and Services
- Members:
- Barcena Roig, Ingrid (KU Leuven),
- Coppens, Frederik (UGent),
- Heughebaert, André (Belspo)
- Members:
EOSC related projects with Belgian partners
- Blue-cloud: partner: VLIZ (end date 30 September 2022)
- C-Scale: VITO (End date 30 June 2023)
- EGI-ACE: Sciensano (End date: 30 June 2023)
- ENVRI-FAIR: Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (End date 30 June 2023)
- EOSC-Future
- EOSC-Pillar: UGent
- EOSC-Life: VLIZ, UGent (31 August 2023)
- ESCAPE: Royal Observatory of Belgium (31 January 2023)
- FNS-Cloud: EuroFIR (End date: 30 September 2023)
- OpenAIRE
- Triple: MEOH (End date 31 March 2023)
- SSHOC: UAntwerpen (no-funding)? (End date 30 April 2022)
More information
The with the prevalence of scientific data brings with it new challenges such as access to data and research results, increasing data volumes, data publication and sharing, and disciplines working in silos. Hence, the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) initiative was launched to support researchers and boost research across borders. EOSC enables data sharing, provides a trusted and open distributed environment for the scientific community, FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) data implementation.
Information material
Flyers:
- How can academia benefit from EOSC?
- How can researchers benefit & contribute?
- How can institutions benefit & contribute?
You can also download the presentations on EOSC for researchers and for organisations:
Open Access Belgium 