New study to identify alignments between US and EU Open science strategies

The creation of an open science community for Europe has many different facets. This task is lead by the EOSC (European Open Science Cloud) secretariat and is directly supported by its governance structures and working groups (WG). Each working group has been designated specific tasks to be ironed out on the road to a functioning EOSC.

A lot of work has already been done in open science space and it is the job of the Landscape WG to identify areas of convergence and alignment from current initiatives and infrastructures already existing. The WG, at the recent EOSC consultation day workshop, updated participants on its current work finalising the “EOSC related infrastructures and initiatives landscape report”.  A number of taskforces have been set up to make it easy for the community to actively participate and to make sure that their expertise is best utilized and a new draft designed for input is due to be published soon.

The EOSCsecretariat.eu co-creation fund is to be used in the pursuit of a viable EOSC and in the case of the Landscape WG, a study has been funded on the “Alignment of EOSC Strategic Implementation Plan with US NIH Strategic Plan for Data Science” carried out by independent expert Carlos Luis Parra-Calderón. The study will map the alignment of the European landscape with the US NIH landscape.

The NIH Strategic Plan for Data Science describes NIH’s Overarching Goals, Strategic Objectives, and Implementation Tactics for modernizing the NIH-funded biomedical data-resource ecosystem. Adherence to FAIR principles is a key element in this strategy as well as in the European Union's EOSC Strategy.

The NIH Plan develops eight strategic objectives. The EOSC funded study aims to identify the similarities and differences between the separate levels of NIH plan (Overarching Goals, Strategic Objectives and Implementation Tactics) and the EOSC Strategic Implementation Plan. Once the similarities and differences have been identified, the details of these will be explained, and a set of actions will be proposed for collaboration and strengthening of the plans.

There are many benefits to the study, such as facilitating the development of the EOSC Strategic Implementation Plan, accurately aligning the activity of its working groups.

Specifically, to the working groups the benefits are as follows:

• Landscape WG: the expected result will be a mapping of the European landscape with the NIH landscape.
• Rules of Participation WG: the expected result will be a proposed revision of the rules according to the knowledge obtained from the rules in the field of the NIH.
• Architecture WG: a comparison of the proposed NIH Plan with the NIH Data Commons.
• FAIR WG: a proposal for the use of the HL7 FHIR standard for EOSC based on NIH experience.
• Sustainability WG: a preliminary proposal for sustainability according to NIH criteria.

The study, commenced on 01/04/2020 and due to be completed by 30/11/2020 will identify synergies between the EU and US strategies to open science and will be highly valuable to the work of the Landscape WG.