What is the EOSC already?
The acronym EOSC is widespread in the world of open science. However, this subject is questioning and is not always precisely identified.
Antony Fornes (Research Data Valorisation Officer at the Université Côte d’Azur) and Aline Grand (Research Data Administrator at the University of Strasbourg), involved in the Communication working group of EOSC France, as well as Gilles Matthieu (Deputy Director of 'Recherche Data Gouv'), propose to dissect the main concepts relating to the EOSC to better understand the whole.
EOSC, in one (long) sentence
The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) is an initiative that aims to strengthen the European research data ecosystem by creating a federated infrastructure for sharing and reusing FAIR data.
Head of EOSC
The governance of EOSC is tripartite. It is composed of:
a) the European Commission (Directorates-General for Research and Innovation and Communication Networks, Content and Technology)
b) the EOSC Association, a Brussels-based non-profit organisation representing the entire EOSC stakeholder community
c) the EOSC Steering Committee, a group of experts from the European Commission, whose members are representatives of EU Member States and countries associated to Horizon Europe.
Good to know: In France, the EOSC-France College represents the French member organisations of the EOSC Association.
The nodes : EOSC main modus operandi
The EOSC acts by mobilising specific reference communities (national, regional or thematic) or broad collaborations at European level (e.g. digital infrastructures, science hubs, etc.). These federated communities are called EOSC nodes. An EOSC node can be set up by a single organisation or by a consortium of organisations, each with its own internal governance structure and providing resources and services to the Federation. EOSC nodes must be represented within the Federation by a legal entity and comply with the decisions, rules and policies of the Federation.
But that is not all, the EOSC is also deployed through projects.
EOSC projects, another way to move forward together
An EOSC project is a concrete and dated object: a consortium of organisations, funded (most often by Horizon Europe, via calls from the "Research Infrastructures" cluster / INFRA-EOSC topics), with a fixed duration, a budget, contract deliverables and a coordinator.
The EOSC Association works closely with Horizon Europe projects that contribute to the development and deployment of the EOSC; a number of European projects work in direct support of the implementation of the EOSC, while others are carried out in parallel. These projects do not build the EOSC ‘in general’: Each develops a specific brick (a service, a standard, a case of disciplinary use, a competency framework...) that then fits into the ecosystem.
Some examples of EOSC projects
- EOSC Data Commons, whose mission is to contribute to the establishment of the EOSC as the European Research Commons,
- EOSC Beyond, which aims to advance open science and innovation in research, in the context of EOSC,
- or EOSC-ARENA, centered on a sovereign generative and agentic AI environment.
Others cover digital preservation (EOSC EDEN), the creation of secure environments for sensitive data (TITAN, SIESTA), deposits in trusted repositories (FIDELIS), or the creation of a European Quality Reference Framework for Code and Research Software (EVERSE).
The concrete services offered by the EOSC
The EOSC does not function as a single portal that would host all services. It is a federation: each existing brick (national, thematic, disciplinary infrastructure) can offer services. EOSC nodes act as entry points for the various services offered within the EOSC Federation.
The basic logic is mutualization - to avoid redeveloping the same service several times, share the costs of hosting, calculation and management, and ensure that everything is interoperable (FAIR logic). The EOSC EU Node is the nucleus/model of the federation, whose role is to offer a number of common services to the entire federation. Specifically, these are the six generic services: file sharing/synchronisation, interactive notebooks, large file transfer, virtual machines, cloud containers, massive data transfer - the minimum technical base that any European researcher must be able to access. To better understand these services, see this presentation and this Couperin decryption note (in french).
Beyond this common foundation, each actor within the Federation keeps its own services, adapted to its community. EOSC brings together already existing offers, each meeting the specific needs of its field or country. Specifically, for example:
- Data Terra, selected as a thematic node for Earth and environmental sciences, brings its own tools for accessing data and software on the Earth system - built long before the existence of the EOSC, but now made accessible via the federation.
- On the humanities and social sciences side, GoTriple, resulting from the TRIPLE project coordinated by Huma-Num, has become a service supported by the OPERAS infrastructure (led by OpenEdition): a multilingual discovery tool designed specifically for SHS research needs.
And Recherche Data Gouv in the EOSC?
Recherche Data Gouv is a national service, both in terms of its scope and its missions. Its services are mainly offered to the French community. Getting involved at European level has three objectives:
- Positioning Recherche Data Gouv at the European level. By offering services with high added value beyond our borders, the offer is more visible, gaining influence, while facilitating technical interoperability and international cooperation within a sovereign framework.
- Facilitate access to EOSC for the community: By increasing the visibility of the services available via EOSC for researchers, but also by facilitating their support through the European network.
- Use the EOSC lever to improve at the national level. The ecosystem then benefits from the high level of EOSC ‘standards’ to position its services at a high level of demand. In addition, it paves the way for future European funding.
Specifically, Recherche Data Gouv is currently involved in three INFRAEOSC projects:
- FIDELIS, which builds the European network of trusted warehouses (started in January 2025)
- GenAI4earth, which deploys trusted Generative Artificial Intelligence tools and models for the interdisciplinary exploitation and valorisation of Earth System scientific data within the EOSC ecosystem (started in September 2026).
- EOSC-Connect, which aims to federate about twenty national nodes of the EOSC federation (starting in September 2026)
In addition to these projects, Recherche Data Gouv is also involved in the construction of a French national node, a future candidate for integration into the EOSC federation.
Find out more
In June and July 2026, the ESR Research WG and the EOSC-France College organised a series of 3 webinars on the EOSC (in french):
- Bilan sur la stratégie politique : retour sur cinq années au sein de l'EOSC Steering Board
- Retour sur les services EOSC
- Recherche Data Gouv et EOSC : pourquoi et comment envisager la dimension européenne pour un service national