Which Rules of Participation for EOSC?

Regarding the APIs and, more generally, the topic of exposure and access of data between automated systems, the “1st Report of the EOSC project on Data Interoperability” underlines the need for a balance between the multiplicity of solutions found in the context (pag 22: DCAT, OAI-PMH, RDF, Open Geospatial Consortium, RESTful API) and the opportunity to indicate a shared methodology (p 14: produce a set of guidelines and a data interoperability architecture proposal).

Intellectual property rights relate to the legal protection offered to innovative and creative materials. Given that if we speak about Open Data the IPR issue on data is in conflict with the openness we are tending to.

An interesting aspect to be explored in EOSC is the role of the Blockchain communication protocol that identifies a technology based on the logic of the distributed database with the data stored on multiple machines linked together, considered as nodes. This methodology could play an important role in research inside EOSC at beyond the current paradigm of scientific communication understood as it is today. Platforms like Ethereum and hyperledger3 allow developers to build applications on a blockchain infrastructure.

Please find attached the comments on the EOSC-report.

Kind regards,

Ron Dekker

Director CESSDA

Detailed comments on the EOSC Rules of Participation on behalf of the TU Delft Library are available on the Open Working blog: https://openworking.wordpress.com/2018/08/03/comments-on-the-european-open-science-cloud-rules-of-participation/

The RCN believes that it is important to implement business models that ensure the long-term sustainability, development and maintenance of well-functioning and demanded services. The report presents the following three models; direct support, pure EOSC voucher and hybrid consisting of a combination of direct funding and EOSC vouchers. The RCN supports an extended hybrid model which also include different types of business models in addition to direct funding and EOSC vouchers.

The RCN thinks that the report “Prompting an EOSC in practice” contains innovative ideas on financing that contributes to “funding the operational costs of the EOSC Gateway/marketplace and the provision of key open data sets.” It proposes to compensate providers of data sets according to usage. Furthermore, the idea of "EOSC coins/vouchers" should be further investigated. It is important, though, to ensure that EOSC coins do not encourage the development of several providers offering more or less  the exact same services.

It is important that ESFRI Forum and other relevant bodies are strongly involved in the implementation of EOSC.

In line with recommendation 3 "stimulate the supply side of EOSC" it is important to establish mechanisms that ensure collaboration between national and European services and service providers. The integration and interoperability between existing infrastructures is a critical point and it is important to facilitate synergies and avoid overlap and duplication of services.

The RCN thinks that it is important to create career-enhancing incentives for researchers (in line with recommendation 1 "Engagement") and in line with DORA. Practicing open science should be merited when e.g. applying for project funding.  The development of a common set of career-enhancing incentives and mechanisms is strongly encouraged, including measures to evaluate open science activities.