EOSC Enhance unveils new and improved major release of the EOSC Portal
This release features the new EOSC model for the description of providers and resources, more automated processes especially in onboarding resources to the Portal, allowing providers to have more control over their resources, enriches the information for each resource allowing users to make better choices, and supports users with more information such as tutorial and documentation areas for providers. EOSC Enhance Project Manager Carmela Asero said, “This is a very important step for the evolution of the EOSC Portal towards a richer and easier to use universal EOSC gateway for providers, researchers and a wider number of heterogeneous users. EOSC Enhance is fully committed to continuing working with other projects and with the new EOSC Governance, to bring additional improvements also in 2021.” Improved Catalogue and Marketplace Significant changes were implemented to the EOSC Portal Catalogue and Marketplace to create an intuitive user interface leveraging the new data curated in the Resource Profile 3.0. Users now have the ability to immediately compare multiple resources side-by-side and understand whether the resource is open access or needs to be ordered. Existing offers within each resource are also exposed at the search level allowing users to make quick shortlists from the many EOSC Portal offerings. To enhance resource presentation, EOSC Enhance enriched and re-organised the information presented for each resource. The resource page is now divided into five main sections. The “main” section provides a snapshot of the resource, including links to its main website, helpdesk, and training material. The “about” section offers a brief, high-level, and non-technical description of what the service or resource does, its functionality, what it enables access to and the benefits. The “classification” section allows users to understand who the resource is intended for, with information on its domain, category, target user, location available and languages supported. The full details of each resource are now available in the “details” section. Empowered providers through new functionalities Having a rich catalogue of resources that addresses the long-tail of science requires an EOSC Portal populated by a wide range of providers and resources. To make the Portal more provider-friendly, significant technical changes have been implemented. EOSC Enhance has unified the previously separate databases of resources from eInfracentral, the EOSC Portal Marketplace and EOSC-hub service catalogue into a single EOSC Portal database. EOSC Enhance also introduced the Provider and Resource Profiles 3.0 and the EOSC Portal Marketplace and Catalogue has been updated to be compatible with them. The new onboarding process allows providers to register their organisation aside from their resources, and then collaboratively work with the EOSC Portal Onboarding Team to offer their resources on the Portal. Providers are now also able to directly manage their onboarded resources and update them through the newly-released Provider Dashboard with less manual intervention from the onboarding team. The EOSC Portal’s API component now allows the registration of resources from existing external catalogues and to retrieve data from the EOSC Portal, allowing for a more efficient and automated onboarding of a large number of resources. Tutorial and documentation sections Based on user feedback and analysis of visitor recordings and behavior, a “Using the Portal” section has been added to the EOSC Portal Content Component, housing material on how to use the EOSC Portal. The "Providers Documentation" section allows the onboarding team to provide technical information for providers interested in becoming part of the EOSC Portal. Use cases, news and events can now be submitted via a new channel and then approved by the EOSC Portal Editorial Board. A webinar series will introduce the new EOSC Portal release, starting on 3 December at 11:00 CET.
Keywords
Open Science, EOSC