EuChemS welcomes the move by EU ministers to endorse the European Commission’s roadmap on the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), whose aim is to ‘support EU science in its global leading by creating a trusted environment for hosting and processing research data’. The EOSC is one of several central issues covered by the Open Science Policy Platform (OSPP) of which EuChemS is a member, represented by Wolfram Koch.

Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, Carlos Moedas, has called for commitment and ambition, calling the Cloud a ‘game changer for science in Europe’. Next steps: the incoming Austrian Presidency of the Council will gather research and innovation ministers to give the go ahead to the governance structure and launch the first version of the EOSC portal on 23 November 2018. The full Commission press release is available here.

On 22 April, the OSPP also adopted a set of ‘prioritised actionable recommendations’ regarding the eight Open Science ambitions put forward by Commissioner Moedas. The recommendations are to be seen as the next step towards the longer-term vision articulated by Open Science consultations and expert groups. The eight priorities are:

• Rewards and Incentives
• Research Indicators and Next-Generation Metrics
• Future of Scholarly Communication
• European Open Science Cloud
• FAIR Data
• Research Integrity
• Skills and Education
• Citizen Science

You can read the full recommendations here.