Periodic Reporting for period 3 - FAIRCORE4EOSC (Core Components Supporting a FAIR EOSC)
Berichtszeitraum: 2024-06-01 bis 2025-05-31
FAIRCORE4EOSC, funded by the Horizon Europe Framework Programme, is a project contributing to the co-programmed European Partnership on the European Open Science Cloud. The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) is a flagship EU initiative to deepen Open Science practices across the European Research Area (ERA). As such it contributes to several actions of the ERA policy agenda (European Commission, 2022). EOSC is also recognised in the European strategy for data as the data space for science, research and innovation to be fully aligned with the other sectoral data spaces defined in the strategy (A European Strategy for Data, 2020).
The topics FAIRCORE4EOSC set out to adress were:
- Identifiers: Introducing new resource types; machine-actionable persistent identifiers (PIDs); establishing a PID meta-resolver; standardising PID graphs; PID compliance framework to ensure compliance to the EOSC PID policy and to ensure quality of service for PIDs;
- Metadata and Ontologies: Provide or embrace/stimulate existing registries of metadata schemas, ontologies and crosswalks, develop services that build on metadata registries and can facilitate the creation and sharing of crosswalks;
- Interoperability: Enable discovery of data sources available in different formats, making search tools available; Provide tools for quality validation of metadata records and of digital objects; Implement EOSC PID Policy;
- Research Software: metadata description standards for research software, automated deposit of new releases into a scholarly repository and Software Heritage.
As a Research and Innovation Action (RIA), FAIRCORE4EOSC developed nine new EOSC-Core components to support a FAIR EOSC and to enhance interoperability and discoverability of research outputs. Development activities of the components were carried out by utilising existing services and technologies, as far as possible. To ensure that testing and development of the components is driven by user needs, the project has carried out five user-centric case studies (WP7), documented in the “D7.2 Report on the Release of Case Studies”. The case studies also act as early adopters of the components in the communities they represent. While the case studies focus on immediate community benefit and integrating several new services, the demonstrator tasks in the work packages focus on demonstrating the utility of individual services in direct interaction with the service developers within the WP.
FAIRCORE4EOSC was intended to align closely with operational EOSC infrastructure, but the reconceptualisation of EOSC has complicated achieving project aims regarding the integration of the new FAIRCORE4EOSC components with the EOSC-Core. Due to the EOSC Federation and Node concept, introduced via the EOSC Procurement, the concepts of the Minimum Viable EOSC (MVE), the EOSC-Core, EOSC-Exchange and Federated Data as described in the “Solutions for a sustainable EOSC” -report from the Sustainability Working Group (2020) and used in the FAIRCORE4EOSC proposal and the project contract with the European Commission, became unclear. The project was affected negatively affected by the decisions taken by the EOSC Partnership and other actors in its capacity to carry out its original objectives fully, which were
Objective 1: Develop and operate new EOSC-Core components enabling a FAIR EOSC ecosystem
Objective 2: Integrate the new FAIRCORE4EOSC components within the EOSC-Core
Objective 3: Provide the EOSC ecosystem with a Compliance Assessment Toolkit whereby at minimum the EOSC PID Policy compliance can be measured, recorded and monitored
Objective 4: Co-design the new components with the relevant stakeholders and ensure their uptake
Objective 5: Contribute to the EOSC Partnership
Objective 6: Liaise with the HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01-05 project and the EOSC ecosystem
The topics FAIRCORE4EOSC set out to adress were:
- Identifiers: Introducing new resource types; machine-actionable persistent identifiers (PIDs); establishing a PID meta-resolver; standardising PID graphs; PID compliance framework to ensure compliance to the EOSC PID policy and to ensure quality of service for PIDs;
- Metadata and Ontologies: Provide or embrace/stimulate existing registries of metadata schemas, ontologies and crosswalks, develop services that build on metadata registries and can facilitate the creation and sharing of crosswalks;
- Interoperability: Enable discovery of data sources available in different formats, making search tools available; Provide tools for quality validation of metadata records and of digital objects; Implement EOSC PID Policy;
- Research Software: metadata description standards for research software, automated deposit of new releases into a scholarly repository and Software Heritage.
As a Research and Innovation Action (RIA), FAIRCORE4EOSC developed nine new EOSC-Core components to support a FAIR EOSC and to enhance interoperability and discoverability of research outputs. Development activities of the components were carried out by utilising existing services and technologies, as far as possible. To ensure that testing and development of the components is driven by user needs, the project has carried out five user-centric case studies (WP7), documented in the “D7.2 Report on the Release of Case Studies”. The case studies also act as early adopters of the components in the communities they represent. While the case studies focus on immediate community benefit and integrating several new services, the demonstrator tasks in the work packages focus on demonstrating the utility of individual services in direct interaction with the service developers within the WP.
FAIRCORE4EOSC was intended to align closely with operational EOSC infrastructure, but the reconceptualisation of EOSC has complicated achieving project aims regarding the integration of the new FAIRCORE4EOSC components with the EOSC-Core. Due to the EOSC Federation and Node concept, introduced via the EOSC Procurement, the concepts of the Minimum Viable EOSC (MVE), the EOSC-Core, EOSC-Exchange and Federated Data as described in the “Solutions for a sustainable EOSC” -report from the Sustainability Working Group (2020) and used in the FAIRCORE4EOSC proposal and the project contract with the European Commission, became unclear. The project was affected negatively affected by the decisions taken by the EOSC Partnership and other actors in its capacity to carry out its original objectives fully, which were
Objective 1: Develop and operate new EOSC-Core components enabling a FAIR EOSC ecosystem
Objective 2: Integrate the new FAIRCORE4EOSC components within the EOSC-Core
Objective 3: Provide the EOSC ecosystem with a Compliance Assessment Toolkit whereby at minimum the EOSC PID Policy compliance can be measured, recorded and monitored
Objective 4: Co-design the new components with the relevant stakeholders and ensure their uptake
Objective 5: Contribute to the EOSC Partnership
Objective 6: Liaise with the HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01-05 project and the EOSC ecosystem
Leveraging existing technologies and services, the FAIRCORE4EOSC development work resulted in nine nine services aimed to improve the FAIRness of an increased amount of research outputs:
1. EOSC Research Discovery Graph (RDGraph) to deliver advanced discovery tools across EOSC resources and communities;
2. EOSC PID Graph (PIDGraph) to improve the way of interlinking research entities across domains and data sources on the basis of PIDs;
3. EOSC Metadata Schema and Crosswalk Registry (MSCR) to support publishing, discovery and access of metadata schemas and creation and publishing of crosswalks and enable operationalisation of metadata conversions;
4. EOSC Data Type Registry (DTR) to provide user friendly APIs for metadata imports and access to different data types and metadata mappings;
5. EOSC PID Meta Resolver (PIDMR) to offer users a single PID resolving API in which any kind of PID can be resolved through a single, scalable PID resolving infrastructure;
6. EOSC Compliance Assessment Toolkit (CAT) to support the EOSC PID policy compliance and implementation;
7. EOSC Research Activity Identifier Service (RAiD) to mint PIDs for research projects, allowing to manage and track project related activities;
8. EOSC Research Software APIs and Connectors (RSAC) to ensure the long-term preservation of research software in different disciplines;
9. EOSC Software Heritage Mirror (SWHM) to equip EOSC with a mirror of the Software Heritage universal source code archive.
Each service except one reached TRL level 8 by the production release, indicating that the most of the services reached the needed maturity level. The sustainability plans have been detailed individually for each service developed within the project life-cycle.
1. EOSC Research Discovery Graph (RDGraph) to deliver advanced discovery tools across EOSC resources and communities;
2. EOSC PID Graph (PIDGraph) to improve the way of interlinking research entities across domains and data sources on the basis of PIDs;
3. EOSC Metadata Schema and Crosswalk Registry (MSCR) to support publishing, discovery and access of metadata schemas and creation and publishing of crosswalks and enable operationalisation of metadata conversions;
4. EOSC Data Type Registry (DTR) to provide user friendly APIs for metadata imports and access to different data types and metadata mappings;
5. EOSC PID Meta Resolver (PIDMR) to offer users a single PID resolving API in which any kind of PID can be resolved through a single, scalable PID resolving infrastructure;
6. EOSC Compliance Assessment Toolkit (CAT) to support the EOSC PID policy compliance and implementation;
7. EOSC Research Activity Identifier Service (RAiD) to mint PIDs for research projects, allowing to manage and track project related activities;
8. EOSC Research Software APIs and Connectors (RSAC) to ensure the long-term preservation of research software in different disciplines;
9. EOSC Software Heritage Mirror (SWHM) to equip EOSC with a mirror of the Software Heritage universal source code archive.
Each service except one reached TRL level 8 by the production release, indicating that the most of the services reached the needed maturity level. The sustainability plans have been detailed individually for each service developed within the project life-cycle.
Even though the context for the services has changed considerably, the primary FAIRCORE4EOSC outputs to support a FAIR EOSC have been released to the public (March 2025). All These services concretely contribute to improving the discoverability and interoperability of a continuously increasing amount of research outputs, even with a looser EOSC coupling. They are agnostic in discipline or geography and general in nature - and will surely gain further adoption both within and beyond EOSC. The plans for further service adoption are described in deliverable D7.3 “Final Plan for Dissemination and Exploitation Including Communication Activities”.