The ESFRI Clusters at RDA House of Commons

Debating commonalities and collaboration for thematic services, training and governance towards the European Open Science Cloud

One and a half years after the RDA session in Helsinki, the five ESFRI cluster projects, the RDA community, and European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) representatives come together again, to discuss the past, present and future of their collaboration during the journey of integrating thematic services into EOSC. 

We want to beat your Zoom fatigue and engage you in a spiked house-of-commons styled debate. The debate will look at the commonalities and collaboration in the ESFRI clusters, when contributing to the European Open Science Cloud on three pillar topics: 

• Thematic data services, 
• Connecting to end-user communities 
• Governance

For each of these topics, the ESFRI cluster projects will ask for input from members of the international RDA community, the ESFRI community, EOSC ecosystem and data experts and domain researchers being the end-user community. Input from these stakeholder groups will be collected through their involvement in the debating team and the active audience engagement. 

The ESFRI Clusters at RDA House of Commons Debate. How does it work?

Each debate topic will have two teams, making their point : 

• the green team in favor of defending the statement and
• the red team arguing against the statement made.

Both teams will map the current situation of commonalities of data services, training and governance in the ESFRI cluster projects contributing to the EOSC ecosystem. Participants will discuss the barriers and accelerators for the work ahead and collaborate in contributing to EOSC.  You, the audience, will be engaged actively through the statement voting system and opportunities to provide live contributions in the house-of-commons style debate. The debate will be recorded and captured in a joint report, with practical recommendations on commonalities and collaboration for thematic services, training and governance towards EOSC to take back to the ESFRI cluster projects and future EOSC projects and initiatives. 

Three topics, three debates

Debate 1: Thematic data services: Within the five cluster projects, ENVRI-FAIR, EOSC-life, ESCAPE, PANOSC and SSHOC we see different aspirations between infrastructure initiatives prioritising stable general data management services, and the research communities prioritising long-term user-driven data workflows. Obviously, the need for research data services to be findable and usable by projects and users is common to both groups, and in this regard, there is much to be learned from the international research data community. This debate will be driven by Eva Mendez (FAIRsFAIR and RDA Europe 4.0 ambassador for interdisciplinary research), with the statement

“Metadata. Everyone thinks it's a great idea, but no-one wants to use someone else's”. 

Debate 2: Onboarding Communities and End-Users: In the context of EOSC discussions, the ESFRI cluster projects are in an excellent position to represent the interests of the research communities and claim and provide for an EOSC infrastructure that meets the required specificity and flexibility. An important aspect of connecting to communities and the success of EOSC are training, workshops, demonstrations and awareness raising efforts in the research communities. In this discussion we’ll be looking at how the ESFRI clusters can use the existing commonalities to bridge the gaps for collaboration on onboarding communities towards EOSC. We’ll be learning from the best practices in the international RDA community and FAIRsFAIR champions community. The debate will be driven by RDA Secretary General Hilary Hanahoe. She will kick the debate off with the statement

“Onboarding the communities and end-users to EOSC still lacks a clear grassroot, bottom-up approach.” 

Debate 3: Governance: Which models for shaping future collaboration and result exploitation have been identified as a suitable vehicle for the consortia involved in the current cluster projects? Which impact will the establishment of EOSC have on the interest from countries in funding European RIs? What are the best practices for formal collaboration with RIs outside of Europe? This debate will be driven by Franciska de Jong (director of CLARIN ERIC and member of the EOSC sustainability Working Group).

“In the EOSC governance model, there is no clear link with disciplinary research communities.” 

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Agenda