- Johanna Laiho Kauranne

"Our stakeholders have warmly welcomed the EU OSTrails national pilot in Finland. It has brought together many research data management experts from the Finnish academia. Through online webinars, we are addressing crucial questions on leveraging machine-actionability to support researchers and research groups. I am confident that, with increased cooperation with DMP tool providers and following the Salzburg Manifesto, we will achieve significant advancements in research data management with machine-actionable DMPs." 

-Can you briefly introduce your organisation? How does it contribute to EOSC?

CSC is a prominent leader in research data management and computing ecosystems, with a multifaced and impactful contribution to the EOSC framework. Leveraging its expertise, international cooperation, and infrastructure, CSC promotes the use of large datasets, AI methods, and high-performance computing, while supporting national objectives and the European Green Deal with low-carbon solutions. 

In addition, it actively contributes to EOSC goals, by participating in numerous projects (e.g. FAIRCORE4EOSC, FAIR-Impact, Skills4EOSC, COARA, and OScARS), supporting EOSC in providing FAIR data services, and mainly by incorporating EOSC aims into its strategic targets. The key outcome of this engagement includes the EOSC Secretariat studies on Innovative business models, rules of participation, and framework for sustainable governance as well as EOSC-Hub integration and management system comprised of a catalogue of services, software and data from the EGI Federation, EUDAT CDI, INDIGO-DataCloud and major research e-infrastructures.

CSC helps its customers open and disseminate their data and data resources for use by research and education, individuals and society as required by the nature of the data. Our services are used to make open data available, protect sensitive and licensed data, manage continuous data flows, and store unique data so that it is properly accessible. We provide support for securing the quality of data throughout its entire lifecycle.

-What are you most excited about in OSTrails? What are you looking forward to?

OSTrails brings together 38 partners and affiliates from 17 EU countries to work on developing tools for FAIRness in EOSC. We are excited about the opportunity to co-create machine-actionable Data management plans (maDMPs) together with the tool providers benchmarking the national, science specific and EU Horizon needs. This intensive co-development is needed and will facilitate better controlling and empowering support for research.

We are looking forward to benchmarking with the national pilots (15 in total) and linking also with the 9 thematic pilots across scientific fields on the use cases and implementation of machine actionable DMPs. We consider it is also important to note that there is a Horizon Europe pilot on the project. The co-development of the pilots and the development of infrastructure and technical tools will be exciting, and the start of the project is already very promising, as we are confident, we will reach our goals within the 3 years. We are also thrilled that there will be a greater increase in awareness of the SKG graphs and further development of FAIR metrics.

-OSTrails is all about planning, tracking and assessing research. How are these being realised in your country?

Planning and tracking are conducted in various ways depending on the research performing institutions, requirements by the funding instruments and scientific areas. Research organizations have their own support services, and CSC facilitates generic support e.g. for data stewards. Also, linkages to large research programmes have their specific tracking and assessment procedures.

There is genuine interest in enhancing the machine actionability and interoperability of systems to decrease the amount of manual reporting in tracking and assessing research thus lightening the administrative load.

The Finnish Research Information Hub has been created to provide high quality data for the needs of science policy and help funders and research organizations to gain access and report research outputs and activities. Research.fi, offered by the Ministry of Education and Culture, collects and shares information on research conducted in Finland. The service improves the findability and reuse of research information and experts on research and increases the visibility and societal impact of Finnish research. Submitting information is mainly voluntary. Only the submission of publication information is mandatory for higher education institutions. Ongoing efforts by Research.fi are underway, seeking to enhance the quality and interoperability of metadata and to include new data sources. Currently, a planned project aims to better integrate all funding, activities, and results related to research projects in Finland.

-Can you provide some details on the main actors, services and priorities of your pilot? How will the results of OSTrails be adopted by your pilot?

The ambition of the National Pilot in Finland is to develop a national machine-actionable data management plan (maDMP) template for national funders and local infrastructure (PIDs, CRIS, repositories) taking into account EU DMP templates (e.g. ERC, Horizon and Science Europe) as well as RDA standard. Our target is that 60 national organizations will find the usage of the maDMP template to bring efficiencies in research data management. 

To succeed in this, we engage openly all Finnish Academic research organisations in our National Pilot in Finland. We collect use cases to digitalize the research data management process to better serve researchers, research institutes and research funders. We also assess the RDA maDMP Standard and examine if there are essential areas that should be included and better highlighted, and more importantly what data could be structural to support efficient flow of information.

We have already presented the OSTrails project and pilot in the FAIR-Impact National Roadshow event in Finland on the 17th of May, and it is time to review it and head towards planning future actions.

Now, we are planning the next national pilot webinar in Finland that will take place on the 6th of June, in which we will have presentations from our national partners on the development needs for maDMPs and interactive sessions for clarifying information content of maDMPs.

Setting the scene 

At the dawn of 2024, just two weeks after OSTrails kicked off, the core Data Management Plan (DMP) service providers of the project, namely ARGOS, DAMAP and DSW, published the Salzburg Manifesto on machine-actionable Data Management Plans (maDMPs). This manifesto proudly presents the shared commitment of the major DMP service providers in the EU, US, and UK to continue collaborating and optimising data management planning through common standards and automations.

Why It Matters

In today’s digital research landscape, the need for efficient and streamlined data management practices has never been more critical. Recent developments reveal the community’s need for seamless and automated exchange of scientific information across (Research Data Management) RDM services. DMP platforms support this need at the planning stage and have the potential to lead the acquisition of new competences and harmonising best practices across the RDM lifestyle while stimulating cultural change and innovation. 

About the Manifesto

Emerging from a longstanding collaboration in the context of the Research Data Alliance’s Active DMPs IG and DMP Common Standard WG, the manifesto portrays the DMP providers’ and users’ common vision and commitment to driving progress and innovation in the field of research data. It calls for endorsement by the global scientific community to collectively turn DMPs from static .pdfs to active and “living” documents.

OSTrails enriching the European Open Science Cloud with maDMPs

Representing the European landscape, managers of ARGOS (OpenAIRE, ARC, CITE), DAMAP (TU WIEN), and DSW (CTU in Prague, Codevence) who co-chair the RDA groups, led the authorship of the Salzburg Manifesto providing input from the OSTrails project that reflects the EOSC priorities and directions towards a “Web of FAIR data and services”. Their efforts seek to align with other regions to standardise the DMP practices, gazing at a future where data management is not just a requirement but a catalyst for groundbreaking discoveries and strong collaborations.

OSTrails aims to advance the planning, monitoring, and evaluation of scientific knowledge production in EOSC by promoting FAIR principles, connectivity, and machine actionability throughout the research lifecycle. To achieve this goal at the planning stage, the project leverages the DMP Common Standard and the consortium’s expertise and participatory spirit to improve the efficacy of DMPs and transform them into machine-actionable resources serving the diverse needs of national and thematic RDM communities. 

Through this involvement, OSTrails is participating as a pioneer in the genesis of a community of practice that thrives on mutual consultation and creates an open space where expertise can be freely shared and valued.

Resources:

Join the community by signing the Salzburg Manifesto: ActiveDMPs 

Zenodo record: Salzburg Manifesto on machine actionable Data Management Plans

The occasion

On May 7th 2024, OSTrails was in Madrid for the 1st Symposium of Research Infrastructures (RIs) organised by the RICH Europe project. The event complemented the project’s activities to strengthen and standardise the services of Research Infrastructures National Contact Points (NCPs) across Europe. It highlighted Horizon Europe's support for Open Science and broader access to RIs, showcasing funded projects, educating NCPs, and fostering global dialogue on RIs.

Supporting EOSC and Open Science Policies

During the Symposium, a session was held to reflect on the project's lessons learned and gather feedback that would enhance the Open Science policy landscape in Europe. Pilar Castro, Head of the Open Access, Repositories and Journals Unit at FECYT, a beneficiary of OSTrails, moderated the session and Elli Papadopoulou, deputy coordinator of OSTrails, provided an overview of the project activities contributing to enhancing the EOSC infrastructure and policies for open science. 

OSTrails has set the ambitious goal of delivering a FAIR-enhanced, interconnected and machine actionable environment along with the pathways to navigate scientific information shared across services that enable and support planning, tracking and assessing research activities. To achieve this, the consortium consists of major service providers of data management plans (DMPs), FAIR assessments and scientific knowledge graphs (SKGs) who collaborate to ensure interoperability and develop common methods, standards and tools for integrating and harmonising best practices. 

Complementary to the technical work, 25 pilots serve as the backbone of the project ensuring that the results are fit-for-purpose and pragmatic, respecting the diverse research ecosystems of the 15 national infrastructures and the 9 Science Clusters RIs that they represent. In this endeavour, the user communities, research funders and local stakeholders are engaged to co-define and validate the outcomes of the project in different countries and domains reflecting on and supporting their open science policies. Finally, a pilot on the Horizon Europe framework programme aims to scale up the adoption of OSTrails results leveraging the OpenAIRE Graph data.  

Key takeaways

All presentations of the dedicated policy session emphasised the importance of community involvement in driving progress -> “by community, for community”. Furthermore, the discussion highlighted the opportunities arising by infrastructures in strengthening data sharing and eliminating market failures similar to the scientific publishers phenomenon, and they challenged the implementation of Open Science which is different at macro and micro levels (European vs national vs institutional). Overall, it underscored the use of curated data, transparent indicators, and knowledge graphs, such as the OpenAIREGraph, to inform policymaking effectively, and exuded hope towards initiatives such as CoARA that have the ability to accelerate Open Science adoption targeting the much needed shift of the research culture today.

Resources

• The presentation is available at the OSTrails Zenodo community. 
• The recordings of the symposium can be found on YouTube: RICH Europe 1st Symposia. "The role of the RIs in the Open Science and the ERA implementation" (youtube.com)