The EOSC Interoperability Framework is a set of guidelines which promote standards and community best practices within EOSC. The focus is on technical operability of services and semantic operability related to data, to allow communities, EOSC services and research products to interoperate across research infrastructure and e-infrastructure boundaries, based on their interoperability features. The framework breaks down silos; prevents lock-in; supports reuse, reproducibility and collaboration; and enhances value-for-money of research outputs.
The EOSC Interoperability Framework (EOSC-IF) comprises Governance and the EOSC IF registry, which describes a collection of Interoperability Guidelines for the Exchange and for the EOSC-Core, that interoperability capabilities and prerequisites (e.g., API protocols, metadata formats, and possible declinations). Which promote standards and community best practices within EOSC. As EOSC is a system of systems infrastructure, interoperability is essential to deliver services to users and enable sharing and composability of resources. The focus is on technical interoperability of services and semantic interoperability related to data, to allow communities to interoperate.
The Framework supports the collection of guidelines (some existing already, some being developed) whose uptake as EOSC guidelines will be promoted; a registry to list the guidelines and who supports them and governance to manage them. The EOSC-IF supports interoperability with the EOSC Core (i.e. how to interoperate with an EOSC Core service) as well as with the EOSC Exchange i.e. guidelines that promote interoperability across domains and communities).
Target groups
- service providers
- data catalogue managers
- resource providers
- resource users
State of play
- EOSC-IF Registry and its associated inclusion criteria and onboarding procedures have been delivered.
- 8 EOSC-Core Interoperability Guidelines have been registered.
- 16 EOSC-Exchange Interoperability Guidelines have been registered.
- Implemented Interoperability Framework governance for the life of the EOSC Future project.
- The long-term governance structure has been established for beyond the end of the EOSC Future project.
Key benefits/impact for EOSC
The EOSC-IF breaks down silos; prevents lock-in; supports reuse, reproducibility and collaboration; and enhances value-for-money of research outputs. By promoting the adoption of existing standards and best practices rather than creating new ones it will make it easier for research collaborations to share their resources.
The Execution and Interoperability Framework functions will provide:
- interoperability frameworks, supporting the formats, methods, processes and procedures which allow for the exchange of (meta) data across disciplines and resources (e.g. metadata, PID, AAI, resources, monitoring, accounting, etc.)
- an execution framework that enables the orchestration and/or engineering of complex solutions on the basis of resources complying with the EOSC Interoperability Framework. These can then be offered to users via the portal as a set of initial curated solutions, each including multiple resources.
By the end of the project:
- more than 200 resources integrated in EOSC