The EOSCpilot project will support the first phase in the development of European Commission’s flagship initiative, the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC): a trusted and open environment for the European scientific community to share, store and re-use scientific data. The project brings together stakeholders from research infrastructures and e-Infrastructure providers and will engage with related funders and policy makers to create an open environment to use research data, knowledge and services.

EOSCpilot is coordinated by STFC and involves 33 participants in total, including the EGI Foundation on behalf of the EGI community.

The kick-off meeting of the EOSCpilot took place in Amsterdam, from the 17th to the 18th of January.

Goals of the EOSCpilot

The main objectives are:

• to develop a number of pilots that integrate services and infrastructures to demonstrate interoperability in a number of scientific domains
• to establish the governance framework for the EOSC and contribute to the development of European open science policy
• to engage with stakeholders and research communities for an open approach to scientific research

EGI’s contribution to the project

EGI’s ambition is to help with the realisation of the EOSC by contributing services, knowhow, policies, and the requirements of large-scale international user communities.

EGI will co-lead the WP5 (Services) contributing to the definition of the EOSC federation model, of its overall architecture and the rules of participation as service provider. Within WP5 Services EGI will lead the service pilots task participated by European e-Infrastructures and Research Infrastructures.

EGI will also bring its experience in community engagement, community application integration and training within WP4 (Science Demonstrators) and WP7 (Skills).

EGI is involved in five initial pilots:

Pan-cancer analysis of whole genomes

EOSCpilot goal: accelerate genomic analysis on the EOSC

How: improve the computing competencies and include VM deployment and data management to be easily used

The photon-neutron community

EOSCpilot goal: improve the community’s computing facilities

How: by creating a virtual platform for all users (e.g., for users with no storage facilities at their home institutes)

The ICOS infrastructure

EOSCpilot goal: enable a comparable data access across multiple research communities

How: by working on data integration and harmonised access

The Parthenos project

EOSCpilot goal: enable an advanced text-based service based on shared semantics

How: by developing new software to enable a semantic enrichment of text sources and make it available on the EOSC.

The High-Energy Physics community (HEP)

EOSCpilot goal: a long-term preservation and larger-scale use of physics data

How: deployment of HEP data in the EOSC via a webportal and open it up to other research communities.

The European Open Science Cloud for Research will bring together the European IT infrastructures and will create an open network for sharing research data and knowledge. The EOSCpilot project is the first step towards reaching this goal.

EGI involvement in the EOSCpilot

WP4 Science Demonstrators

Objective: to develop Science Demonstrators in domains that will show the relevance of the EOSC Services and how they enable data reuse. EGI is involved in 5 use cases (see text for details).

WP5 Services

Objective: to develop service pilots to underpin the science demonstrators and serve as reference implementations for future EOSC services. EGI is involved in the definition of the EOSC service portfolio and the service management framework.

WP7 Skills

Objective: to develop an EOSC education and training strategy and coordinate its delivery. EGI will be involved in developing training material and workshops on the EOSC services.