Periodic Reporting for period 2 - NI4OS-Europe (National Initiatives for Open Science in Europe)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2021-03-01 do 2023-02-28
In the area of South East Europe, in last 20 years, a number of coordinated and complementary electronic Infrastructure initiatives were crucial for enabling high-quality research and ICT developments. They have helped to reduce the digital divide and brain drain in Europe, by ensuring access to infrastructures and services to the region. Despite the success of the previous initiatives, the catchment area of the project is still relatively underprivileged compared to Western Europe: its partners are rarely in the leading seat when coming to pan-European developments in European Open Science Cloud (EOSC)-related initiatives, and its infrastructures and services are not widely included in the current EOSC offering. NI4OS-Europe pooled the existing electronic infrastructures, as well as thematic services and digital open data and publications repositories, to reduce fragmentation and promote further federation of services within a wider EOSC. Overall objective of NI4OS-Europe was to support the development and inclusion of the national Open Science Cloud initiatives in 15 Member States and Associated Countries in the overall scheme of EOSC governance; spread the EOSC and FAIR principles in the community and train it; and provide technical and policy support in on-boarding of the existing and future service providers into EOSC, including generic services (compute, data storage, data management), thematic (domain-specific) services, repositories and data sets.
Key data on Open Science Cloud status is maintained throughout the project, starting with an online survey on stakeholder analysis and mapping which provided an insight into the local capacities and needs, including information about Open Science initiatives, infrastructures, services, policies and stakeholders in the 15 partner countries. https://ni4os.eu/os-stakeholders-map/.
The establishment of 15 National Open Science Cloud initiatives in all partner countries was one of the key objectives of the project. To achieve this goal many preparatory actions, continuous support and sustainability related activities were needed.
The project also worked on the establishment of the NI4OS-Europe pre-production environment. A set of elements was developed, continuously maintained and upgraded, including service catalogue, AAI, monitoring, accounting, help desk, data collection, technical wiki, code repository and training and webinar platform, referred to as NI4OS Federating core. The developed tools enable the partners to achieve integration of their services (general and thematic) and repositories necessary for the EOSC onboarding.
46 repositories, 35 thematic, 22 generic, and 8 core registered services provided by 64 registered resource providers were on-boarded and registered within the Agora catalogue and integrated with the pre-production environment. Demonstration and testing of the services participating in the on-boarding was conducted by the four flagship scientific communities of Life Sciences, Climate Sciences, Digital Cultural Heritage and Computational Physics. The catalogue is also one of the pioneering regional catalogues that have been fully integrated with the central EOSC portal.
An open call for the productional use of the on-boarded resources was launched. During the call, research teams of the accepted projects practically tested the complex EOSC environment hidden behind the resource catalogue, verifying the seamlessness of the access, FAIR management, and reliable reusability of research data.
Specific recommendations were developed; legal, technical and procedural tools were mapped and the curated catalogue of tools was established supporting open data, ORDM and FAIR. Best practices for on-boarding services and related policies and recommendations for HPC centers on-boarding were produced.
Training plan was defined and training portal has been created together with training materials. 8 train-the-trainer events, 13 national-level trainings, 15 Capacity Building Training Events, as well as 15 End-Users’ Training Events were hosted. Moreover, each country participating in NI4OS-Europe identified an “EOSC promoter” with a mission to act as EOSC ambassador as well as a translation officer to translate training material to mother tongues, which proved to be a useful tool for EOSC promotion in all countries.
Although COVID-19 situation was a major obstacle during a large part of the project, online schemes were proposed, a series of useful webinars were presented and material was distributed, in order to help partners organize successfully their local marketing and dissemination events in new formats. Finally, 1 regional and 22 national dissemination events were organized during project with more than 1500 participants; 28 scientific publications were written, 8 newsletters were produced and 197 presentations given. The project was presented at 37 related external events and its scientific results were presented in more than 200 slots (presentations, posters, boots, etc.) Approximately 5000 different stakeholders were engaged in this context. Promotional package has been produced and distributed and NI4OS-Europe web site, training portal, Wiki and NI4OS-Europe section vs COVID-19 along with social media and additional online tools were maintained and used. EOSC Regional Event, which was held in Budapest, September 2022, counted more than 200 participants.
In the context of Liaison with EOSC governance and related EOSC initiatives “Collaboration Agreements” were signed by all INFRAEOSC-05 projects in the form of a multi-party MoU, detailing how synergies will be identified and fully exploited. NI4OS-Europe has been among the co-organisers of all joint actions that took place. NI4OS-Europe partners joined the EOSC Association Task Forces, where presented and discussed the project results.
The establishment of 15 National Open Science Cloud initiatives in all partner countries was one of the key objectives of the project. To achieve this goal many preparatory actions, continuous support and sustainability related activities were needed.
The project also worked on the establishment of the NI4OS-Europe pre-production environment. A set of elements was developed, continuously maintained and upgraded, including service catalogue, AAI, monitoring, accounting, help desk, data collection, technical wiki, code repository and training and webinar platform, referred to as NI4OS Federating core. The developed tools enable the partners to achieve integration of their services (general and thematic) and repositories necessary for the EOSC onboarding.
46 repositories, 35 thematic, 22 generic, and 8 core registered services provided by 64 registered resource providers were on-boarded and registered within the Agora catalogue and integrated with the pre-production environment. Demonstration and testing of the services participating in the on-boarding was conducted by the four flagship scientific communities of Life Sciences, Climate Sciences, Digital Cultural Heritage and Computational Physics. The catalogue is also one of the pioneering regional catalogues that have been fully integrated with the central EOSC portal.
An open call for the productional use of the on-boarded resources was launched. During the call, research teams of the accepted projects practically tested the complex EOSC environment hidden behind the resource catalogue, verifying the seamlessness of the access, FAIR management, and reliable reusability of research data.
Specific recommendations were developed; legal, technical and procedural tools were mapped and the curated catalogue of tools was established supporting open data, ORDM and FAIR. Best practices for on-boarding services and related policies and recommendations for HPC centers on-boarding were produced.
Training plan was defined and training portal has been created together with training materials. 8 train-the-trainer events, 13 national-level trainings, 15 Capacity Building Training Events, as well as 15 End-Users’ Training Events were hosted. Moreover, each country participating in NI4OS-Europe identified an “EOSC promoter” with a mission to act as EOSC ambassador as well as a translation officer to translate training material to mother tongues, which proved to be a useful tool for EOSC promotion in all countries.
Although COVID-19 situation was a major obstacle during a large part of the project, online schemes were proposed, a series of useful webinars were presented and material was distributed, in order to help partners organize successfully their local marketing and dissemination events in new formats. Finally, 1 regional and 22 national dissemination events were organized during project with more than 1500 participants; 28 scientific publications were written, 8 newsletters were produced and 197 presentations given. The project was presented at 37 related external events and its scientific results were presented in more than 200 slots (presentations, posters, boots, etc.) Approximately 5000 different stakeholders were engaged in this context. Promotional package has been produced and distributed and NI4OS-Europe web site, training portal, Wiki and NI4OS-Europe section vs COVID-19 along with social media and additional online tools were maintained and used. EOSC Regional Event, which was held in Budapest, September 2022, counted more than 200 participants.
In the context of Liaison with EOSC governance and related EOSC initiatives “Collaboration Agreements” were signed by all INFRAEOSC-05 projects in the form of a multi-party MoU, detailing how synergies will be identified and fully exploited. NI4OS-Europe has been among the co-organisers of all joint actions that took place. NI4OS-Europe partners joined the EOSC Association Task Forces, where presented and discussed the project results.
NI4OS-Europe supported the 15 partner countries, all belonging in the South-East part of Europe, to mature Open Science principles and set-up National Open Science Cloud Initiatives. The NOSCIs establishment ensured the alignment of technical and policy priorities on the national level to long-term European vision of EOSC governance.
The on-boarding of unique services of pan-European interest, following best practices and guidelines, enhanced competitiveness and innovation capacity of service providers from the region in the open EOSC environment and allowed for spreading the know-how to the rest of the countries of the target area and bring them to a level with the rest of Europe. Participating to and shaping outreach activities motivated and encouraged further collaboration and knowledge transfer.
From the socio-economic point of view, interconnecting the scientific and research community to overall EOSC landscape, enables it to carry out collaborative and innovative research of high excellence. Similarly, the on-boarded EOSC-relevant services from the area indirectly supports the ICT sector in the region by involving a number of actors in the process, providing them with equal opportunities. These initiatives are crucial in easing the "digital divide" that separates the countries from the core of Europe, as well as in providing opportunities to the region’s human capital and reducing the brain drain locally and in Europe. Easing of the digital divide not only empowers the citizens of the region, but also eventually contributes to the stability, peace and further development of the area.
The on-boarding of unique services of pan-European interest, following best practices and guidelines, enhanced competitiveness and innovation capacity of service providers from the region in the open EOSC environment and allowed for spreading the know-how to the rest of the countries of the target area and bring them to a level with the rest of Europe. Participating to and shaping outreach activities motivated and encouraged further collaboration and knowledge transfer.
From the socio-economic point of view, interconnecting the scientific and research community to overall EOSC landscape, enables it to carry out collaborative and innovative research of high excellence. Similarly, the on-boarded EOSC-relevant services from the area indirectly supports the ICT sector in the region by involving a number of actors in the process, providing them with equal opportunities. These initiatives are crucial in easing the "digital divide" that separates the countries from the core of Europe, as well as in providing opportunities to the region’s human capital and reducing the brain drain locally and in Europe. Easing of the digital divide not only empowers the citizens of the region, but also eventually contributes to the stability, peace and further development of the area.