EOSC EU Node All Hands Meeting: Progress and Next Steps

Launched in October 2024, the EOSC EU Node has quickly taken shape as a recognised gateway in the European research infrastructures ecosystem. Just a few months later, an All-Hands Meeting, hosted by PSNC in Poznań, gathered the European Commission and the EU Node Contractors to reflect on progress and set priorities for the rest of 2025 and beyond. The discussions marked an important milestone, shifting focus from early operations to scale-up adoption, broadening engagement with researchers and contributors, as well as refining service onboarding and node enrolment modalities.

This meeting was more than a checkpoint, it was a moment to share insights, reinforce collaboration, and shape the EOSC EU Node’s evolution. The foundation is solid, but the ambition is bigger: to establish the EOSC EU Node as the reference of implementation for scientific service providers and other contributors to EOSC, ensuring researchers and their organisations can seamlessly access and use the resources they need. 

• EOSC EU Node in Action: Expanding Access and Usability
  • From a bold vision to an operational reality, the EOSC EU Node is no longer just an idea, it is working, growing, and enabling access to services at scale. The conversations in Poznań underscored how much has been achieved in just a few months. Researchers and providers can now connect to research objects and services more easily, leveraging a trusted, efficient environment designed to support cutting-edge science.
  • At the heart of this transformation are two key concepts. The first, Open Protocols, are breaking down technical barriers, offering a standardised and transparent way to access services. Meanwhile, the Credit-Based Model is redefining resource allocation, ensuring flexibility while maintaining a balanced and sustainable approach. These advances are more than just technical solutions, they are paving the way for a scalable, researcher-friendly ecosystem that continues to evolve.
• Bringing Researchers on Board: Empowering the Community
  • The EOSC EU Node is built for researchers, but adoption takes more than just awareness, it requires engagement, guidance, and trust. Throughout the meeting, a key theme emerged: ensuring researchers can seamlessly access and benefit from EOSC EU Node services from within their existing research environments, enabling them to collaborate across infrastructures without disrupting their established workflows. This means making services not only accessible but also intuitive and easy to use.
  • A suite of new support initiatives will help researchers navigate the EOSC EU Node with confidence. Step-by-step guides, video tutorials, and interactive training modules will offer clear pathways for users at every level, while targeted outreach efforts will ensure that more research organisations, research groups, and individual scientists understand the value of what the EOSC EU Node offers. The goal is clear: to make the EOSC EU Node a neutral and indispensable tool for European research, a core component of the EOSC Federation which will feature multiple nodes.
• Defining the EOSC EU Node’s Role and Refining Onboarding Mechanisms
  • As the EOSC EU Node matures, defining its role within EOSC remains a priority. The meeting sparked discussions on how onboarding mechanisms should be refined and aligned with the community’s needs, ensuring services are structured, transparent, and impactful.
  • Bringing in more services is not just about numbers; it’s about quality and delivering value. Participants explored ways to enhance usability and demonstrate, through real-world implementation, how the EOSC EU Node will shape the broader ecosystem.  The next phase will focus on putting these processes into action, with EOSC EU Node serving as both a gateway and a reference model for how services can be effectively made available while promoting good operational practices across scientific providers.
• Scaling Up for the Rest of 2025
  • The road ahead is clear: expand, refine, and engage. The rest of 2025 will focus on scaling onboarding processes, ensuring that an even broader range of services can be seamlessly provided also via an early federation of node candidates. Accessibility will take centre stage, with efforts to make services easier to navigate and use, while outreach will expand to increase researcher participation and adoption.
  • The momentum built at this meeting will carry forward, ensuring that the EOSC EU Node continues to grow as a trusted and widely adopted role model for European research.

Seeing the Future Up Close: The PSNC Data Center Visit

The discussions in Poznań came to life during a visit to the PSNC - Supercomputing and Networking Center, where parts of the EOSC EU Node operate at scale. Standing among the rows of high-performance computing servers, the technical infrastructure behind the EOSC EU Node became more than just a concept, it was real, powerful, and running around the clock to support research across Europe.

The tour was more than just an opportunity to see the physical infrastructure and the technology, it was a reminder of the impact the EOSC EU Node is striving to have. The investments, the coordination, and the strategic planning behind this effort all serve one purpose: to create an environment where researchers can access, share, and collaborate without barriers.