Launch of the European Open Science Cloud
The official launch of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) was organized in Vienna on 23 November 2018 under the auspices of the Austrian Presidency of the Council of the European Union. It took place at the Vienna University library with about 250 participants.
Proposed in 2016 by the European Commission (EC), the EOSC initiative aims to build a competitive data and knowledge economy in Europe. The EOSC will offer 1.7 million European researchers and 70 million professionals in science, technology, the humanities and social sciences a virtual environment with open and seamless services for storage, management, analysis and re-use of research data, across borders and scientific disciplines by federating existing scientific data infrastructures.
The introduction and welcome were given by Regina Hitzenberger, vice-rector, University of Vienna, Heinz Fassmann, Austrian minister for Education, Science and Research, Carlos Moedas (video message) EU Commissioner for Research Science and Innovation and Jean-Eric Paquet, Director General of the EC Directorate ‘Research and Innovation’ (RTD). During the session, a few keynote speeches on the importance of the EOSC were delivered, followed by testimonial speeches on the reasons why we need the EOSC.
The governance of the EOSC was introduced with the following members for its Executive Board. The Chair will be Karel Luyben, representative of CESAER, and the Vice Chair Cathrin Stöver, representative of GEANT. The other members are Ronald Dekker (CESSDA ERIC), Rupert Lück (EMBL), John Womersley (European Spallation Source ERIC), Natalia Manola (OPENAIRE), Juan Bicarregui (Research Data Alliance (RDA)), Stephan Kuster (Science Europe) with three individual experts, namely, Sarah Jones, Jean-François Abramatic and Jan Hrusak.
After a panel discussion on the future actions of the EOSC governance, a live demonstration of the new portal was made. Under the link https://eosc-portal.eu/about/eosc all the information on the EOSC governance, policy, services and resources can be found.
The highlight of the event was the reading of the Vienna Declaration on the European Open Science Cloud by Heinz Fassmann for the Austrian Presidency, Karina Angelieva (Deputy Minister) for the former Bulgarian Presidency and Ciprian Preda (Secretary of State) of the incoming Romanian Presidency.
The full declaration can be downloaded under https://eosc-portal.eu/news/vienna-declaration-european-open-science-cloud.
The closing remarks and outlook were given by Jean-Eric Paquet (EC DG Directorate-RTD) and Ciprian Preda (Secretary of State, Romania).
