EC: Enabling an Operational, Open and FAIR EOSC Ecosystem (2023)

Deadline: 9-Mar-23

The European Commission (EC) is offering grants under Horizon Europe Framework Programme (HORIZON) to Build on the science cluster approach to ensure the uptake of EOSC by research infrastructures and research communities.

Scope

• This topic aims to extend the level of cross-domain collaboration and EOSC alignment initiated in Horizon 2020 with the science cluster projects. It also capitalises on the experience gained by these cluster projects in enabling open science practices, FAIR implementation and managing open calls for disciplinary and multi-disciplinary science projects to involve smaller or less structured communities with less experience in open science, and to support communities lacking relevant competence centres.

• Proposals should cover the following two activities:
  • Consolidate common EOSC approaches between the RI communities involved in the five science clusters, help to sustain composable EOSC-onboarded services from and across RIs participating in these clusters and support community-based competence centres for continued EOSC-alignment and extended outreach towards new or underrepresented user communities.
    • This activity should contribute to firmly install the connection to the EOSC ecosystem (including the EOSC onboarding of digital resources), the implementation of open science practices and the management of FAIR research digital objects into the core operation of ESFRI projects and landmarks and other relevant world class research infrastructures with a European dimension. The activity should increase the use and impact of RI resources especially through increased customisation and composability of services, higher amount of FAIR and open data for reuse and strengthened exploitation of the EOSC-Exchange.
    • Through pilots, the activity should test models by which services intended for users of one infrastructure are made available cross-border to a wider audience via the EOSC Exchange, as well as financial models for cross-RI service provision through the EOSC.
    • This activity should also further develop and extend existing networks of competence centres on FAIR and open practices and EOSC resources provisioning, enhancing relevant support to all research communities. Focus should be put on aligning and networking those competence centres to also support and train less-engaged, less-structured communities. The activity should establish a mechanism to collect operational needs coming from the user communities and to interact with future operator(s) of the EOSC platform.
  • Demonstrate and pilot the use of EOSC resources by multiple research communities through cross-RI and/or cross-domain open science projects and services.
    • This activity aims to engage with multiple research communities (academic and industry) to address multi-disciplinary questions of high societal relevance and to accelerate their uptake of RI and EOSC resources (data, services, policies, interoperability framework). Targeted user communities for these open science projects and services should extend beyond the RI communities involved in the H2020 science clusters. Special attention should be put on involving user group(s) also from outside the H2020 INFRAEOSC community including – when relevant – citizen scientists and “the long tail” of science. Proposals should demonstrate how the project plans to reach out to multiple scientific communities. The role of University Associations or Learned Societies to trigger community engagement in this activity should be explored.
    • This activity should be implemented through open calls for cross-RI and/or cross-domain science projects and services through a cascading grant mechanism. Given that the financial support to third parties is a primary aim of the action, at least EUR 18 million of the EU contribution for this topic should be used in this scope. The activity should build on the experience already gained by the science clusters in calling for expressions of interests, implementing open calls and carrying out science projects.

Funding Information

• The financial support to third parties related to these open calls should be sized between EUR 100 000 and 250 000 for a duration of 12 to 24 months.

Outcomes

Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

• Support all researcher communities across Europe to contribute to and benefit from a user-oriented EOSC;
• Populate EOSC Exchange with FAIR data, horizontal services and thematic services of relevance to users in several scientific domains and beyond;
• Develop and demonstrate through cascading grants concrete scientific benefits of open science and FAIR practices through cross-disciplinary use cases;
• Increased alignment of operation of ESFRI and international RIs at the subdomain, domain and interdisciplinary levels in function of the progressive deployment of the EOSC Core, EOSC Exchange and EOSC sustainability models;
• Provide feedback and requirements for the evolution of the EOSC ecosystem.

Expected Impact

Proposals for topics under this destination should set out a credible pathway to contributing to one or several of the following impacts:

• Transforming the way researchers as well as the public and private sectors create, share and exploit research outputs (data, publications, protocols, methodologies, software, code, etc.) within and across research disciplines, leading to better quality, validation, more innovation and higher productivity of research;
• Facilitating scientific multi-disciplinary cooperation, leading to discoveries in basic research and solutions in key application areas;
• Seamless access to and management of increasing volumes of research data following FAIR principles (that are open as possible) and other research outputs stimulating the development and uptake of a wide range of new innovative and value-added services from public and commercial providers
• Improving trust in science through increased FAIRness, openness and quality of scientific research in Europe, supported by more meaningful monitoring and better facilitators for reproducibility, validation and re-use of research results, and by improving pathways for the communication of science to the public.

Eligibility Criteria

• Any legal entity, regardless of its place of establishment, including legal entities from nonassociated third countries or international organisations (including international European research organisations) is eligible to participate (whether it is eligible for funding or not), provided that the conditions laid down in the Horizon Europe Regulation have been met, along with any other conditions laid down in the specific call topic.
• A ‘legal entity’ means any natural or legal person created and recognised as such under national law, EU law or international law, which has legal personality and which may, acting in its own name, exercise rights and be subject to obligations, or an entity without legal personality.
• Beneficiaries and affiliated entities must register in the Participant Register before submitting their application, in order to get a participant identification code (PIC) and be validated by the Central Validation Service before signing the grant agreement. For the validation, they will be asked to upload the necessary documents showing their legal status and origin during the grant preparation stage. A validated PIC is not a prerequisite for submitting an application.
• Specific Cases
  • Affiliated entities — Affiliated entities (i.e. entities with a legal or capital link to a beneficiary which participate in the action with similar rights and obligations to the beneficiaries, but which do not sign the grant agreement and therefore do not become beneficiaries themselves) are allowed, if they are eligible for participation and funding.
  • Associated partners — Associated partners (i.e. entities which participate in the action without signing the grant agreement, and without the right to charge costs or claim contributions) are allowed, subject to any conditions regarding associated partners set out in the specific call conditions.
  • Entities without legal personality — Entities which do not have legal personality under their national law may exceptionally participate, provided that their representatives have the capacity to undertake legal obligations on their behalf, and offer guarantees to protect the EU’s financial interests equivalent to those offered by legal persons.
  • EU bodies — Legal entities created under EU law including decentralised agencies may be part of the consortium, unless provided for otherwise in their basic act.
• To become a beneficiary, legal entities must be eligible for funding.
• To be eligible for funding, applicants must be established in one of the following countries:
  • the Member States of the European Union, including their outermost regions: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden
  • the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) linked to the Member States: Aruba (NL), Bonaire (NL), Curação (NL), French Polynesia (FR), French Southern and Antarctic Territories (FR), Greenland (DK), New Caledonia (FR), Saba (NL), Saint Barthélemy (FR), Sint Eustatius (NL), Sint Maarten (NL), St. Pierre and Miquelon (FR), Wallis and Futuna Islands (FR).
  • countries associated to Horizon Europe; Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Faroe Islands, Georgia, Iceland, Israel, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine.

For more information, visit EC.