In May 2015, the European Commission proposed creating a European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) to the Competitiveness Council. The aim was to federate existing research data infrastructures in Europe and realise a web of FAIR data and related services for science, making research data interoperable and machine-actionable following the FAIR guiding principles.
In the initial development phase until 2020, the Commission invested money to start prototyping the EOSC through project calls in Horizon 2020 – the Commission's research and innovation funding programme.
In March 2018, the European Commission published the EOSC Implementation Roadmap detailing the main action lines of the first EOSC implementation phase until 2020.
A multi-layered, interim governance structure was established in November 2018 to steer and oversee the implementation of the EOSC from 2019-2020.
This interim governance was composed of EOSC Governance Board, EOSC Executive Board and EOSC Stakeholders.
2021-2027
EU countries and countries associated with Horizon 2020, represented in the EOSC Governance Board, agreed unanimously to run the EOSC as a co-programmed European Partnership under Horizon Europe from 2021.
Horizon Europe is the Commission's research and innovation funding programme, succeeding Horizon 2020 in 2021.
This is the best instrument to provide a framework for collaboration and the pooling of resources at European, national, regional and institutional levels.
The proposal for a candidate EOSC partnership was published in June following a process of co-creating its vision, including strategic and operational objectives to be achieved by 2027.
In July 2020, four organizations – GÉANT, CESAER, CSIC and GARR – set up the EOSC Association to provide a single voice for advocacy and represent the broader EOSC stakeholder community. In 2023, the Association is comprised of 142 Members and 85 Observers.
The Gdańsk University of Technology has been a Member of the EOSC Association since September 2020.
Each Member State or Associated Country with one or more organisations that are Members of the Association may appoint one Member to act as its Mandated Organisation to represent national interests.
In Poland, the Mandated Organisation with the EOSC Association is the National Science Centre (NCN).
The General Assembly is the supreme authority of the Association and is composed of one Delegate per Member with voting rights and one Representative per Observer without voting rights.
The current post-2020 EOSC governance model is based on a tripartite cooperation between:
- The EU, represented by the Commission,
- The European research community represented by the EOSC Association,
- EU countries and countries associated with Horizon Europe represented through a Steering Board set up in 2021 outside of the EOSC Association.