Cross-Cluster Collaboration: DARIAH engaging the research community in the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC)
What did we do?
Research infrastructures, such as DARIAH, play a crucial role in engaging the research community with the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). Within the EOSC Future project, DARIAH, in close collaboration with the Science Clusters, developed and implemented workflows to integrate their services and data sources into EOSC, resulting in an EOSC Service Provider’s Maturity Model.
Why did we do it?
There are currently 63 Research Infrastructures on the ESFRI Roadmap. Their resources (e.g. tools, services, datasets, training materials and workflows) are already widely used in the research communities they serve and are therefore crucial for populating the European Open Science Cloud and stimulating its use. During EOSC Future, a critical mass of services and data sources from across the Science Clusters were successfully onboarded. This ensures that EOSC supports both a wide array of scientific disciplines and domains, but also facilitates innovative, interdisciplinary research by providing easy access to high-quality data and state-of-the-art tools.
Who did we do it for?
The Science Clusters, representing the research communities from a broad range of disciplines (Astronomy and Particle Physics, Environmental Sciences, Life Science, Photon & Neutron Sciences and the Social Sciences and Humanities) across Europe.
Overview
The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), like any other infrastructure, only becomes valuable once it is used by the research community. With 63 ESFRI research infrastructures on the ESFRI Roadmap, including 41 Landmark (operational) Infrastructures, such as DARIAH and 22 emerging infrastructures, it is essential that the services and data sources that these research infrastructures provide are fully leveraged in the context of EOSC. The design and implementation of the service and data source integration workflows within the EOSC Future project has been crucial to interconnect the EOSC Core Services with the research services provided by the Science Clusters. Through an analysis of good practices and lessons learned during the development of these workflows, it was possible to derive recommendations for ongoing work beyond the EOSC Future project. This analysis led to the development and publication of a EOSC Service Provider’s Maturity Model, which can be used by individual ESFRI Research Infrastructures, by the Science Clusters and other EOSC Service providers, to self-assess the maturity of their integration into the EOSC ecosystem. This work ensures that domain-specific knowledge remains firmly embedded in EOSC.
Description of the Impact
By the end of EOSC Future, the Science Clusters have successfully used these services and data source workflows to onboard and integrate over 150 resources from across the disciplines to the EOSC Catalogue and Marketplace (Environmental Sciences (ENVRI-FAIR): 81 services and 5 data sources; Life Sciences (EOSC Life), 15 services and 3 data sources; Astronomy and Particle Physics (ESCAPE): 6 services and 5 data sources; Photon and Neutron Sciences (PANOSC): 7 services and Social Sciences and Humanities (SSHOC): 33 services and 3 data sources). These onboarded services will be used as the basis for the Resources Hub for the EOSC EU Node which is scheduled to be launched in 2024. The metadata about the onboarded services and data sources will also be published as an open science dataset to make it available for reuse.
The DARIAH-led approach to onboarding and integrated services will be used as the basis for creating a Services and FAIR Data Portfolio per Science Cluster in the OSCARS, Open Science Clusters’ Action for Research and Society project which started in early 2024. Additionally, the DARIAH Services Policy, which is closely aligned with EOSC, has already been shared with other research infrastructures beyond the Social Sciences and Humanities, both as inspiration for their own service management and in preparation for their contribution to the EOSC Federation.
Finally, the EOSC Service Provider’s Maturity Model has also been successfully utilised by the Science Clusters in relation to the “composability” of services and data sources through the creation of reproducible research workflows. Such workflows, as exemplified by the workflows in the SSH Open Marketplace, will also be used as a further approach to engage researchers with EOSC in the context of OSCARS.
Evidence of the Impact
DARIAH has been taking a strategic and sustainable approach to service management for a number of years now. Through active participation in EOSC Future, DARIAH has been able to take the lead on the integration of services and data sources from all five science clusters (EOSC-Life, ENVRI-FAIR, ESCAPE, SSHOC and PANOSC).
Such achievements have been recognised both within the SSHOC cluster:
The coordination efforts undertaken by DARIAH in the EOSC Future project to inventorise the services and data sources from the Science Clusters have paved the way for the Services and FAIR Data Portfolios that the Science Clusters will elaborate on in the OSCARS project to contribute to the EOSC ecosystem through thematic service federation.
Franciska de Jong, Senior Advisor, CLARIN ERIC (SSHOC Science Cluster)
And beyond:
There has been considerable focus on the ‘Cloud’ of EOSC. Now is the time to turn our attention to putting the ‘Science’ into EOSC. The work to onboard and integrate services and data sources from the Science Clusters, so that they can potentially be used in any combination, led by DARIAH in EOSC Future is a crucial step towards developing reproducible research workflows based on open science practices within the context of EOSC.
Christos Arvanitidis, Chief Executive Officer, LifeWatch ERIC (ENVRI Science Cluster)
This successful cross-cluster collaboration is further underscored by the awarding of the OSCARS project, where DARIAH, together with PANOSC, will co-lead the ongoing activities to engage the European research community, through our collaborative infrastructural efforts in EOSC.
[1] Chambers, S. (2023): Putting the Science into EOSC: the Service Provider’s story.
[2] Chambers, S., Barbot, L and Kirnbauer, M (2023). EOSC Service Providers Maturity Model: https://marketplace.sshopencloud.eu/workflow/pig9Nt
[3] Durco, M., Barbot, L., Tasovac, T., Tóth-Czifra, E., Roi, A., Chambers, S., Benardou, A., Constantopoulos, P., Dobreva, M., Scharnhorst, A., Kálmán, T., Rißler-Pipka, N., & McConville, A. (2023). DARIAH Services Policy. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10184825
Contributors
Lead Author: Sally Chambers
Contributing Author: Laure Barbot
