The Social Sciences and Humanities Open Cloud (SSHOC) kick-off meeting was held in Utrecht on 11 and 12 March 2019 and gathered more than 100 participants from the 47 partner organisations of the project and beyond.
The aim of this meeting was to introduce the project and its work packages, but it was also a good opportunity to gather key stakeholders of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) implementation. Indeed, as a cluster funded project under the European Union H2020 “INFRA-EOSC-2018”, the SSHOC project aims to implement the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) component of EOSC. Therefore, this kick-off meeting was not only the perfect event to strengthen the link between several research communities from Social Sciences and Humanities, but it was also a good occasion to highlight the role of Research Infrastructure clusters – ENVRI-FAIR and EOSC-Life cluster projects were also represented – in interaction with e-infrastructures for the EOSC implementation.
Session on “Where Research Infrastructures meet” with M. Willems, J. Edmond, A. Asmi, N. Blomberg, F. Fischer and R. Dekker
DARIAH, as one of the partners in SSHOC, was well represented with two of its directors – Jennifer Edmond and Frank Fischer – participating in the panel session on the ESFRI clusters. The session was a good opportunity to highlight the need to preserve the diversity of approaches when talking about data in Arts and Humanities, especially when developing an environment that is expected to meet the needs of diverse research communities.
The SSH Open Marketplace
As project leader of Work Package 7, which is dedicated to the creation of an Open Marketplace, Frank Fischer also presented the three-year work plan for this community-aware initiative. The SSH Open Marketplace will mirror and showcase SSH research practices by providing an easy entry to discover digital tools and services. Participants showed a great interest in the Marketplace and shared their expectations: the SSH Open Marketplace will have to align the services and tools that will be showcased with the researchers’ needs and demands, while ensuring its attractiveness.
The sustainability challenge was also underlined in all presentations. The discussions highlighted that sustainability could be envisioned as coming from the services provided by members or partners of the ERICs. In that sense, cluster projects will act as vehicles to identify assets and to build sustainability embedded in communities. In this process, the SSH Open Marketplace will also have an important role to play.
If you are interested in following the SSHOC activities, you can visit the website and subscribe to the newsletter, as well as follow @SSHOpenCloud on Twitter.
