Updates on the transition to the EOSC EU Node
March 12, 2024The EOSC EU Node is expected to go live in the second half of 2024. A lot of time and significant effort has gone into consolidating and bolstering the EOSC community, and these efforts will be continued to maintain their engagement.
This article presents the state of play and practical impacts for EOSC users and providers.
State of play: The EOSC Future project
The EOSC community is expansive, and throughout the EOSC Future project, thousands of users per month have come together to discover, exchange and use leading-edge research and digital services on a shared virtual platform (the EOSC Providers Portal and EOSC Catalogue & Marketplace).
At the start, the EOSC Future project aimed to test and develop EOSC Core services. Over the course of the project, the EOSC Future platform has experienced a repletion of resources and services, organised with smart search and personalised filtering tools:
- More than 5 million resources (including data, software, publications, training materials, and more)
- Around 330 service providers
- 475 service offerings
- Over 30 ‘EOSC in practice’ use case testimonials
All in all, the EOSC Providers Portal and EOSC Catalogue & Marketplace have laid the technical foundations for testing and prototyping discovery, interoperability, authentication and cataloguing systems – all according to FAIR principles. EOSC Future expanded these capabilities, following a legacy of projects such as EOSC Enhance, EOSC-hub, and many others.
Portals, Platforms, Nodes…oh my!
Starting this year, the European Commission will develop the EOSC architecture through the EOSC EU Node, which will be Commission-managed and operated, building on EOSC Future and its precursors (see December 2023 announcement). As EOSC Future ends on 31 March 2024, a handover process is being organised with the Commission to ensure a smooth transition for users and service providers.
What does this mean for the current platform and the information contained on it? Practically, the option to onboard new services via the EOSC Providers Portal will be disabled as of 15 March 2024. Service providers will be contacted to facilitate their transition to the EOSC EU Node, in particular for transferring contact details to the owners of the new EOSC EU Node.
As part of this transition to the next phase of EOSC, the current EOSC platform, including the EOSC Providers Portal and the EOSC Catalogue & Marketplace, will be phased out by mid-April 2024. A more detailed timeline will be communicated shortly. The EOSC EU Node will maintain discoverability and findability functions of existing resources through a transfer of the current public catalogue from EOSC Future from mid-April on. Full features of the EOSC EU Node are expected to go live in the second half of 2024.
Next steps
Practical next steps on how to engage with the EOSC EU Node, for example concerning onboarding of resources, will be communicated through the EOSC EU Node front-office directly. EOSC Future will communicate when and where the official information from the EOSC EU Node is available.
To reiterate, the Commission and the relevant project partners are following a phased, gradual approach – starting with the pause of onboarding to the Providers Portal. In the meantime, it is important to recognise the effort and dedication of the EOSC community. The overarching goal of EOSC remains: seamless access across research infrastructures, institutions and among different research communities in different countries. For users and providers, as long as you, your services or data are FAIR, you will be a part of the next phase of EOSC.