European Open Science Cloud Advances FAIR Data Principles
The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) initiative continues to drive the federation of research data infrastructures across Europe. The effort focuses on operationalizing FAIR data principles—Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable—to make research data more machine-actionable.
- The EOSC is steered by a tripartite governance model involving the European Commission, the Member States and Associated Countries in the EOSC Steering Board, and the research community represented by the EOSC Association. This structure aims to align national policies and investments with European-level strategy. - The EOSC Association’s members have committed to investing €500 million in EOSC-related activities between 2021 and 2030; combined actual and planned in-kind contributions for the first four years of the partnership (through 2025) have already reached €1.3 billion. - A major operational milestone was the launch of the EOSC EU Node in October 2024, which serves as the first live component of the EOSC Federation and provides a core set of services for researchers. - The strategic direction is guided by the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA), which defines the framework for research and development activities and informs the Horizon Europe work programmes. - In November 2025, a Memorandum of Understanding was established to create a shared operational framework for the first wave of 13 candidate EOSC Nodes, laying the groundwork for a scalable and interoperable European research data commons. - The architecture is a "system of systems," federating existing national, regional, and institutional infrastructures rather than creating a single, centralized platform. Key e-infrastructures like EGI, EUDAT, GÉANT, and OpenAIRE are central to providing services. - The OpenAIRE Graph is a critical component of the EOSC, providing an interconnected index of over 400 million metadata records from more than 100,000 trusted sources, including publications, data, software, and grants. - The EU-funded EOSC Gravity project is currently focused on developing strategic recommendations for the governance and funding model of the EOSC after 2027 to ensure its long-term sustainability.
