Recent Activity: EOSC Liaison Platform

Dear all,

I am writing on behalf of the ARCHIVER project to announce the publication of its Request for Tenders for the provision of R&D services for long-term preservation and archiving for scientific data.
Interested firms and consortia have until 31 March 2020 – 4:00 pm (Europe/Zurich time zone) to submit their bids. Follow this link to access the Tender Documents: https://www.archiver-project.eu/request-for-tender.

Two information sessions are foreseen to provide information about the ARCHIVER Project including: the PCP concept, the technical challenge, the Request for Tenders and the process for submitting Tenders.
These sessions, open to all, will be held remotely as webinars on:

• 7 February 2020 starting at 10.00 am (Geneva Time) - click here to register
• 18 March 2020 starting at 10.00 am (Geneva Time) - click here to register

Please feel free to forward this email to anyone who may be interested in the ARCHIVER...

International Network of FAIR Data Stewardship Competence Centers launched

An interesting and very positive trend is the fact that more and more institutes and universities are hiring and training data stewards to assist researchers with their data management plans and in making their data FAIR. This allows researchers to concentrate on his/her domain and for the data steward to develop into an expert. The grouping of data stewards in FAIR Data Steward Competence Centers (DSCC) is the latest trend seen in a number of countries.

Data stewardship experts from Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Switzerland and The Netherlands recently started collaborating in a DSCC Implementation Network (IN) hosted by the GO FAIR initiative. The group’s overall aim is to establish a pragmatic way of cooperation, reuse of assets and enable convergence between national and international DSCCs at universities or other research performing institutions. A similar initiative can be found in...

The EOSC-hub project has produced updated proposals for the composition and organisation of the Federating Core of the EOSC.  Also available is a working draft of a Community Position Paper on the EOSC Federating Core, produced cooperatively by nine EOSC implementation projects.  Comments on both documents are invited until 16 December 2019.

The updated proposals for the EOSC Federating Core are based on consultation with EOSC implementation projects and research user communities.  A vision for the EOSC and its value-add are also described.  Comments are invited in the Briefing Paper v2.0 document available at http://tiny.cc/FedCoreBPv2.

Also available is a working draft of a Community Position Paper on the EOSC Federating Core, developed by the EOSC-hub, EOSC-Life, ENVRI-FAIR, ESCAPE, FAIRsFAIR, FREYA, NI4OS, PaNOSC and SSHOC projects.  The Position Paper summarises requirements of the EOSC based on use cases, and describes the EOSC Federating Core required to achieve them.  Comments on this are also...

Starting on 13 November 2019, TU Wien released three short video interviews with Austrian delegate of the EOSC Governance Board Stefan Hanslik. In the course of this series, Stefan Hanslik addressed frequently asked questions and themes regarding the EOSC initiative, its overall goal and societal benefits as well as the role played by scientific institutions. Please, see the links below to see the video takes:

• EOSC What you need to know: https://youtu.be/qYyliQp5Fkk
• The backbone of EOSC: https://youtu.be/DSVmqH_HrcY
• EOSC A Sustainable Future: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbzAfZ80iPs&feature=youtu.be

Dear members of the EOSC liaison platform,

I am writing to remind that European universities are kindly invited to participate in this ongoing survey on research data management and the FAIR principles conducted by the EUA in the context of the FAIRsFAIR project.
The survey will address the following dimensions of research data management and the FAIR principles at higher education institutions: 

• the state and nature of institutional policies and support services for research data management;
• the awareness of the FAIR principles for research data within universities;
• the teaching of research data competences to students and researchers;
• the level of awareness of and views on the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).

The survey deadline has been extended until 15 November 2019. The survey should be filled out by university leadership or management staff responsible for the development and implementation of research data management policies and plans. Universities that...

FAIR DIGITAL OBJECTS driving worldwide interoperability 

Experts worldwide are discussing FAIR Digital Objects (FDO) as the smallest FAIR technical components with maximum freedom to operate.  Agreement on this concept would be a breakthrough comparable with the agreement on TCP / IP in the late 80’s for the Internet. Once TCP/IP was agreed as the smallest element to comply with, the Internet took off like a rocket. A similar type of fast adoption could happen again with FDO.  

In September 2019 USA based initiatives like NSF, NIST, NIH, SPARC-USA and CNRI organised a meeting together with RDA and GO FAIR on FAIR Digital Objects and FAIR Digital frameworks. The meeting took place in Washington where European delegates presented the consensus proposal. After intensive discussions, broad consensus was reached. This was followed up by a similar meeting in Beijing, associated with the CODATA conference, where the consensus was broadened to China,...

OPEN SCIENCE in China / Malaysia / Korea / Taiwan / Australia

In China, the Science (data) Cloud is mainly developed under the supervision of the Chinese Academy of Science CAS), with the computer Network Information Center (CNIC) in the lead. Scientific data cloud infrastructure and services in Chinese Academy of Sciences gives an overview of what happened in the recent past. At the CODATA conference in Beijing September 2019, Mr. Jianhui -Li (in charge of the Cloud in China, and Vice President of CODATA) demonstrated how the Chinese Science Data Cloud will work on a distributed architecture and will adhere to the FAIR principles throughout. It was also decided that the Chinese colleagues will participate in the global consensus building around the core elements of machine readability and interoperability between the various clouds, i.e. the FAIR Digital Object Framework.

At a technical session in Beijing, representatives from sister...

Dear members of the EOSC Liaison platform,

I am writing on behalf of the H2020 funded FAIRsFAIR project "Fostering FAIR Data Practices In Europe" running from March 2019 to February 2022.

The project is working to offer practical solutions for implementing FAIR data principles across data repositories all around Europe, with a focus on fostering a FAIR data culture and promoting good practices.

In order to meet these objectives and building upon the findings of recent studies, we now seek input from a wide range of organisations already helping to make data FAIR. We invite contributions to two surveys - one focusing on policies and practices, and the other more focused on semantics and interoperability. We welcome individual contributions to either or both surveys and encourage multiple responses from an organisation, reflecting different views and areas of expertise.