Stakeholders and Resources

Stakeholders

Through the EOSCpilot Engagement activities, we have established a range of different stakeholder who would participate in and would both benefit from and provide benefits to the EOSC¹. Any effective governance structure would need to involve and take input from all these stakeholders. The key classes of stakeholder identified with the community is outlined in Table 3.

Stakeholder Group	Description
Researchers	The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) will offer Europe's researchers and science and technology professionals a virtual environment to store, share and reuse the large volumes of information generated by the ‘big data’ revolution. EOSC, as a functional embodiment of the European Cloud Initiative, will support data-driven innovation and contribute to the creation of a Digital Single Market in Europe. Science and industry will obviously benefit from these developments.
Service Providers	Service Providers are the heart of EOSC's value proposition Service Providers functioning nationally or at a larger scale, with commercial, non-profit or public status, can have 2 roles in the EOSC: builders or providers.
Research Producing Organisations, Academic Institutions and Research Libraries	Research producing organisations, Academic Institutions and Research Libraries will be the core users of the European Open Science Cloud. Research libraries, archives, academic institutions, university departments and, generally, organisations that are significantly involved in promoting, supporting and enabling research-production activities, play an essential role in the research and scholarship ecosystem
Learned Societies, Research Communities, Scientific and Professional Associations	Learned societies, research communities, scientific and professional associations are key allies to build, use and promote the EOSC
Enterprise	Enterprises relate to the EOSC in multiple ways. EOSC’s target group is categorized into a wide range of categories such as Small and Medium sized (SMEs), large enterprises, dynamic European start-ups and entrepreneurs-to-be, researchers, developers, deployers, providers, distributors, etc. Additionally, many sectors can benefit or contribute to the EOSC, for example healthcare, transportation, energy, manufacturing, education, analytics, etc.
Research Infrastructures	The notion of Research Infrastructures refers both to traditional large physical installations, as well as to distributed facilities which “include networked resources and skill / capacity building initiatives. These resources use advances in information and communications technology and the big data revolution to underpin new collaborative methods of research”. Research infrastructures may be based at a single location, distributed across several sites and organisations, or provided via online platforms. Europe hosts several large-scale research infrastructures operating across national boundaries. Research Infrastructures are the base on which the future federated EOSC will be built. They provide several types of services to the EOSC, including data services and expertise. Research infrastructures are often very experienced in providing cloud services to researchers, and as such, are key players in the specification and the set-up of the EOSC. Close cooperation with other research infrastructures and e-Infrastructures within the EOSC will increase the capability of research infrastructures to combine and integrate data and resources in a common environment.
E-infrastructures, VREs and other pertinent H2020 projects	E-Infrastructures, VREs and other H2020 projects are key building blocks of the European Open Science Cloud The EC Digital Single Market refers to E-Infrastructures as ways of addressing needs of European researchers for digital services in terms of networking, computing and data management. They foster the emergence of Open Science and support the circulation of knowledge in Europe online and therefore constitute an essential building block for the European Research Area. Virtual Research Environments (VRE) help researchers from all disciplines to work collaboratively by managing the increasingly complex range of tasks involved in carrying out research on both small and large scales, and consists of the tools and technologies needed by researchers to do their research, interact with other researchers (who may come from different disciplines, institutions or even countries) and to make use of resources and technical infrastructures available. Some examples of VREs are EVER-EST1, a VRE for research on Earth-science; VRE4EIC2, supporting a multi-disciplinary approach to research on climate change and energy sustainability; D4Science3, a Data Infrastructure hosting over 100 VREs; and BlueBridge4, a gateway to over 60 VREs.
General Public / Citizen Scientists	The EOSC project will create a cross-border and multi-disciplinary open innovation environment with the aim of delivering its benefits to citizens as well. Democratisation of science and open access to scientific data are indirectly providing their beneficial results to civil society. The activities and achievements of the EOSC and open science initiatives need to be linked with the everyday challenges, that citizens are sensitive to, such as public investments, new services and new job opportunities.
National, Regional or Local Government Agencies	Public authorities and government agencies, specifically in their capacity as organisations performing monitoring activities and using research, shall be able to fully exploit the possibilities around Big Data as EOSC will allow them to move, share and reuse data seamlessly across European borders, among institutions and analytical facilities and between different research and data disciplines
Research Funding Bodies	Research funding bodies are key stakeholders for the development of the EOSC. In recognition of this, they were among the first to be involved in extensive discussions with the European Commission’s High-Level Expert Group in 2016 with a view to contribute to the initial recommendations on the realization of the EOSC. Several bodies at the European level make research grants available to researchers regardless of their nationality or field of research. This includes programmes supported by the EU under the Research and Innovation Framework programmes – including for example the direct actions of the Joint Research Centre, or the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions or the actions managed by the European Research Council. Other European funding programmes are managed by the European Science Foundation, the European University Institute, the European Association of National Metrology Institutes (EURAMET), etc. Many European countries have one or more national agencies responsible for research, science and/or technology development. The policies and mandates of these agencies will inevitably be different from country to country, but they are essential drivers of Open Science and it is vital for the EOSC to engage in a common platform with these stakeholders.

Table 3 - EOSC Stakeholders

The framework concentrates on three stakeholder roles, understanding that different stakeholders can play multiple roles, or different roles are different points in the research lifecycle or within their organisation. These are outlined in Table 4 (the stakeholders listed are indicative and not meant to be exhaustive or exclusive).

Table 4 - EOSC Primary Stakeholder Roles

In addition, there are some additional roles which are covered by the above stakeholders, but worth explicitly articulating – these are detailed in Table 5.

Table 5 - EOSC Supplementary Stakeholder Roles

Resources

Definition of EOSC Resource

EOSC Resource = Services + Data + People

At the centre of EOSC are the EOSC Resources themselves – the EOSC Resources cover the range of services and facilities needed to support Open Science and Research. These include technical services such as analytics and computational services, cloud services, thematic services tuned to particular research disciplines, e-infrastructure and middleware services such as access identity management; but also knowledge resources such as datasets, storage, digital library and archives; access services such as a service catalogue and portals; scientific instruments and facilities; and facilitation activities such as training, software development support and consultancy.

Compliance and Compatibility

It is envisaged that most of the EOSC resources will be fully compliant with the Rules of Participation and, where applicable, compatible with the technical architecture. However, it is likely that, at least initially, there will be resources which are not fully compliant but are merely technically compatible with the EOSC but are still of value to the EOSC Consumers. Such resources might meet the needs of specific disciplines only, or may be currently in the process of becoming compliant, or transitioning into the EOSC.

There may also be some resources which may not be fully technically compatible with EOSC resources nor fully compliant with the Rules of Participation, but which nevertheless are of value to EOSC consumers. These would still be usable by EOSC consumers as recommended by the HLEG that “It should be clear that non-EOSC approved players are free to explore any role in the Open Science ecosystem they wish, even if they do not adhere to the Rules of Participation. They will just not be able to brand their services as EOSC approved/certified”.

This is illustrated below in Figure 6. The EOSCpilot has co-developed an initial set of Rules of Participation² with the community, as well as developed a technical architecture³, which provide more precise definitions of compliant and compatible.

Figure 6 - EOSC Resource Model: Rules of Participation

Open Market and Financial Flows

To function, there will need to be some Core Resources underpinning the EOSC analogous to services underpinning the internet such as domain naming services etc. . Such resources might include the EOSC service catalogue, access and identity management, etc. The need for Core Resources was also identified by the OSPP EOSC Working Group⁴ whose definition is “set of services and processes that are needed to integrate and enable access to the various resources federated in the EOSC”. The Core Resources will need to be directly commissioned and financially compensated. The Executive should have the primary responsibility, in discussion with the Strategic and Stakeholder layers, to determine the requirements of these core resources, and decide how they will be delivered.

In order to meet the objective of “free at the point of use”, resource provision will need to receive Compensation and financial support by other means⁵. Various models of this compensation could include contribution of resources by member states and institutions, direct commission by the Executive or compensation based on usage using mechanism in the Framework Programmes (such as Transnational or Virtual Access instruments⁶) or new mechanisms such as “Cloud Coins” or other credit mechanisms. Facilities and services to enable such credit mechanisms will need to be provided by the EOSC Core Resources.

To ensure that the EOSC remains relevant and to encourage innovation, it will be necessary to identify any Resource Gaps which may exist may in provision. Gaps may be identified by the Stakeholder or Executive layers and notified to the Executive and Strategic layers. The Executive will need to develop mechanisms to fill any such gaps in provision, either by directly incentivising the development of new resources and services or through advocacy to the Strategic layer and the Framework Programmes. This may also need to include incentives to transition existing resources into the EOSC, may providing mechanisms to help resource providers meet the technical requirements and Rules of Participation.

To ensure that EOSC remains an Open Market “open to all players, public and private, European and non-European” (as required by the first HLEG report⁷), there may also be resources within EOSC which will not be directly compensated through EOSC, but through other means (including commercial resources paid directly by researchers or their institutions), but which nevertheless meet the requirements to be EOSC compliant or compatible and are of value to the community.

In summary (as illustrated in Figure 7):

• An EOSC Resource is Compliant if it meets the Rules of Participation for the EOSC.

• An EOSC Resource is Compatible if it meets the technical requirements as defined by the EOSC technical architecture.

• Some resources which are needed to integrate and enable access to the various resources federated in the EOSC will be Core Resources (which, by definition, will need to be Compliant).

• Compliant resources will be eligible to be part of EOSC; resources neither Compliant nor Compatible will be external to EOSC; Compatible only resources might be borderline (if, for instance, they are transitioning into EOSC).

• EOSC resources (both commercial and non-commercial) might be compensated for their usage via mechanisms within EOSC; some EOSC resources might be funded via other means, including commercial models.

Figure 7 - EOSC Resource Model: Economics