The Global Open Science Cloud Initiative
Preamble
The major global scientific and human challenges of the 21st century (including COVID-19 and future pandemics, anthropogenic climate change, sustainable development, and disaster risk reduction) can only be addressed through cross-domain research that seeks to understand complex systems through machine-assisted analysis at scale. The digital revolution can accelerate such research by means of the Open Science paradigm comprising the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) Principles, rigorous scientific transparency, and intelligent openness. A number of governments and research funders have adopted policies promoting or requiring Open Science and the FAIR Principles. Notably in this regard, UNESCO has delivered a Recommendation on Open Science.
Open Science Cloud (OSC) Initiatives
State-of-the-art research infrastructures are needed. A number of initiatives are underway or emerging that aim to provide holistic support for Open Science and FAIR. These include, but are not limited to, the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), the China Science and Technology Cloud (CSTCloud), the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC), the Malaysian Open Science Platform, the African Open Science Platform, the planned broadening of LA Referencia in Latin America, as well as Canada’s NDRIO and Germany’s NFDI. Going by slightly different names, these initiatives share common features, including: achieving scientific benefits and economies of scale through shared e-Infrastructure; facilitating the adoption of Open Science practices and the implementation of the FAIR Principles; and enhancing existing domain infrastructures, while breaking down silos and facilitating cross-domain research to address pressing societal and planetary issues.
The GOSC Initiative
The Global Open Science Cloud (GOSC) initiative aims to encourage cooperation, and ultimately alignment and interoperability, between these and similar initiatives. The benefits of Open Science/Research Cloud/Platform/Commons initiatives such as those listed in the preceding paragraph are likely to be significant: the benefits will be even greater if alignment can be achieved on a global scale.
With the aim of encouraging cooperation, and ultimately alignment and interoperability, among these and similar endeavours, the Global Open Science Cloud (GOSC) initiative has progressed as an integral part of the ISC CODATA Decadal Programme ‘Making Data Work for Cross Domain Grand Challenges’. The vision for a global coordinating activity emerged from a number of discussions, including those at the 2019 CODATA Conference in Beijing, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has granted seed funding for CNIC to help launch the initiative. A series of subsequent meetings and workshops, including the 2020 EGI, CNIC, and CODATA GOSC Workshop, and the GOSC Panel and GOSC Parallel Session during the International FAIR Convergence Symposium 2020, have helped validate and enrich the GOSC concept. A CODATA GOSC Steering Group was established to help develop the foundations for the initiative and to ensure that it is fully international.
GOSC has pursued its activities through thematic Working Groups addressing a number of challenges shared by Open Science Clouds. These include:
- Governance and Sustainability: sharing experiences and good practice.
- Policy and Legal Dimensions: aligning principles, policies and exploring legal issues.
- Technical Infrastructure: including network connectivity and protocols, secure Authentication and Authorization Infrastructure (AAI), mechanisms for federation of computing , data and other services.
- Data Interoperability: including identifiers, semantic services, rigorous contextual and provenance metadata, analytical tools and virtual research environments.
GOSC also developed Case Studies of domain and cross-domain research supported by different Open Science infrastructures. Four Case Studies were planned: Incoherent scatter radar data fusion and computation, Biodiversity and ecology information platform, SDG-13 climate change and natural disasters, and Sensitive data federation analysis model in population health. The Case Studies provided a concrete grounding and exemplars for the topics listed above.
An overview of the GOSC initiative is available in this flyer published in May 2023.
The GOSC initiative invited participation from the Open Science infrastructures described above, from international research communities and from the major global data organisations. CODATA, GO FAIR, the Research Data Alliance (RDA), and the World Data System (WDS) have developed the Data Together partnership in order to enhance their collaboration ‘to optimize the research data ecosystem’. The RDA Global Open Research Commons IG is ‘working on a set of deliverables to support coordination amongst organizations that are building commons, including a roadmap for global alignment to help set priorities for commons development and integration’. The GOSC initiative collaborated with and built on that work, as described in the Data Together statement ‘Fostering Cooperation Among Open Science Platforms’.
The GOSC initiative completed its initial workplan and is now developing future plans for funding and activities.
This page last reviewed: 2024-11-06.