EOSC EU Node Launch Highlights: Conversations with Stakeholders

Watch the interviews with key stakeholders to learn more about the EOSC EU Node launch and its potential impact on European research.

In this article, we delve into insights from key stakeholders, including:

• Peter Szegedi (Policy Officer at DG CNECT, European Commission)
• Pantelis Tziveloglou (Policy Officer at DG RTD, European Commission)
• Sara Garavelli (Member of the EOSC Association Board of Directors)
• Angeliki Adamaki (Project Manager at Lund University)
• Paolo Manghi (Chief Technology Officer at OpenAIRE)
• Levente Farkas (Cloud Solutions Architect at EGI Foundation)

These interviews provide valuable information about the Node's goals, challenges, and opportunities.

Key takeaways from the interviews:

• Peter Szegedi explained that the EOSC EU Node was established as a central, European-level access point to facilitate interdisciplinary research, making resources like data and software accessible and reusable across Europe. Its long-term vision is to expand into a Federation with various nodes at national and regional levels to enrich user access to EOSC resources. Future plans include integrating more services and resources, and creating a more robust, interconnected research ecosystem across Europe. Watch the full interview here.
• Pantelis Tziveloglou outlined that EOSC nodes should meet a number of general requirements to join the Federation, as set by the Tripartite Governance. Nodes should be public-benefit legal entities capable of delivering scalable, community-endorsed services. Compliance with rules, policies, standards, and monitoring capabilities is important, along with a sustainable approach to service continuity. Regarding the EOSC EU Node’s role in building the Federation, he noted that it serves as a blueprint for future nodes. It also makes available a massive amount of research resources – currently around 128 million items – for researchers to access and share. Watch the full interview here.
• Sara Garavelli emphasised the EOSC Association's work with the European Commission and Member States to guide the EOSC Federation's development, with the EOSC EU Node acting as a foundational model for future nodes. Its practices contribute to the Handbook, ensuring standardisation as the Federation grows. She noted that the EOSC EU Node provides researchers access to essential datasets, publications, and tools. While this access is a significant step, specialised resources from additional thematic, national, and institutional nodes will be needed to fully support diverse scientific needs across Europe. Watch the full interview here.
• Angeliki Adamaki discussed how the EOSC EU Node supports their research by enabling Open Science practices. The cloud services foster collaboration among distributed research groups, allowing them to share code and access diverse data, improving research workflows. The EOSC EU Node also facilitates cross-disciplinary collaboration by providing a unified virtual environment with shared services and data, ensuring proper documentation and data management, and mitigating risks of information loss and undocumented processes. Watch the full interview here.
• Paolo Manghi discussed OpenAIRE's role as a key contributor to the EOSC Federation, particularly through the OpenAIRE Graph, which supports publishing, discovering, and monitoring research outcomes. OpenAIRE provides valuable data to the EOSC EU Node, including usage statistics for tracking research products across Europe. Paolo also emphasised that OpenAIRE’s infrastructure is already fully integrated with the EOSC EU Node, with no major challenges in linking their systems for cataloguing, indexing, and monitoring. Watch the full interview here.
• Levente Farkas discussed EGI’s long involvement in EOSC, including its role in building the EOSC EU Node and contributing to its federated capabilities. EGI is currently part of two consortia that helped develop and run the EOSC EU Node, and contributes to defining standards, developing tools, and supporting researcher access to resources. EGI’s unique contribution lies in its expertise in data-intensive processing and analytics services tailored for Open Science. The EGI Federation aggregates services from various countries to support international research platforms, playing a key role in enhancing the federated capabilities of the EOSC EU Node and the future nodes, which are being supported by the EOSC Beyond project coordinated by EGI. Watch the full interview here.

Watch the full interviews to learn more about the EOSC EU Node and the different perspectives of its key stakeholders.