EOSC Symposium: A Milestone in the EOSC Development Process
The EOSC Symposium is one of the largest EOSC events, organized every year. It is co-organized by the EOSCsecretariat project and the main ICT eInfrastructures initiatives: EOSC-hub, GEANT, OpenAIRE and PRACE in collaboration with the EOSC Governance Board, Executive Board and its Working Groups. The event, taking place from November 26 to 28, 2019, in Budapest, Hungary will see three intense and stimulating days for all stakeholders to contribute to the discussion on the implementation of the EOSC.
"The European Open Science Cloud will change the way Europe does science and the EOSC Symposium is one of the EOSC flagship events that allows all the stakeholders of EOSC to meet and help steer the direction of the EOSC's development," Co-Chair Karel Luyben, Co-Chair of the EOSC Executive Board said.
The Symposium is an event where more than 40 EOSC-related projects gather. It will bring together the shakers and makers in the growing EOSC community to provide answers to the most frequently asked questions about EOSC, including “What is EOSC going to give me that I don’t have today?”, “Is EOSC really contributing to the grand societal challenges addressed by science?” or “What is the role of national and thematic research infrastructures in the EOSC arena?”.
The EOSC Symposium also represents a fundamental milestone in the EOSC roadmap. On one hand, it marks the first anniversary of the launch of EOSC. Since then, the EOSC Executive Board and its Working Groups have been running in full swing, new EOSC projects have been launched, and efforts are being further consolidated across thematic and national levels.
On the other hand, it is a flagship event for EOSC that will allow stakeholder participation in shaping the EOSC, supporting the work of the governance boards and contributing to the direction EOSC will take. Various use cases of EOSC and how it can contribute to various societal challenges are going to be presented or showcased during the Symposium.
The selection of Budapest as the venue of the Symposium has a symbolic meaning. "In recent years, we have started to see Eastern Europe become more involved and active in open science efforts. Hungary itself has shown its backing to EOSC through the NKFIH [Nemzeti Kutatási, Fejlesztési és Innovációs Hivatal – National Research, Development and Innovation Office]. We need to encourage this further and it is initiatives such as the EOSC that can help bridge gaps," Cathrin Stöver, Co-Chair of the EOSC Executive Board said.
The Symposium is the second major event of EOSC this year: the event The International Research Data Community contributing to EOSC took place on October 22, 2019 in Helsinki and provided a voice to the research data community of stakeholders in a global setting on the EOSC progress and early results as well as an exchange between the different players to provide some preliminary results on the Working Group activities. The event also offered an open platform for policy-makers and representatives from academia and research to discuss open science and data commons initiatives.
