Since 2016, the Schools of Research Data Science (SRDS) have been hosted by ICTP in Trieste annually, welcoming early career researchers from across the world and mainly from low- and middle-income countries for a summer school about fundamentals in data science interwoven with the principles of Open Science. The SRDS have produced a curriculum which has garnered praise and is an RDA official output which is freely available to reuse. After a two-year hiatus from being able to host the school physically due to the Covid pandemic, this year was the first time back in Trieste since travel restrictions were eased. Twenty students participated in person while 40 joined this year's SRDS online and was a welcome return.

The SRDS currently has eight co-chairs who participate in the summer school as instructors, while there are several others who are invited as instructors. They represent a wealth of knowledge in data and open science, and training related to these, at a global level. Keeping this in mind, this was why the co-chairs were approached as a focus group to discuss training activities in the EOSC Future project.

Describing EOSC and EOSC Future – and how this relates to training for EOSC

EOSC Future WP9 Leader and OpenAIRE’s Training Officer, S. Venkataraman (Venkat), provided an overview of the EOSC Future project and how this fits into European research activities. What is EOSC and its objectives? How is it seeking to improve the uptake of its services and data? Who are the different stakeholders and how are EOSC Future proposing to engage them? And how might this also fit the more global picture?

Many aspects of EOSC in general, including technical, were discussed with the focus group and compared with past and present attempts to do similar things elsewhere such as the XSEDE project which is an initiative that was already familiar with some of the focus group members.

Gathering comments and feedback – results from the focus group

As part of two brainstorming sessions, the focus group evaluated the training that had been described, and how it could be improved. Some of what is being planned in the training can be found here.

Venkat provided some written questions and asked the focus group to answer them, if applicable/possible, and emphasis was given to EOSC “consumers” (i.e. end-users such as researchers) and “providers” (i.e. those wishing to contribute to EOSC with their data and/or services). These are likely to be the largest cohorts of EOSC users and thus warranted the most attention, and the focus group would be more familiar with them as well. Reassuringly, many of the answers were in line with what EOSC Future’s planning had already found and this validation will help shape EOSC Future’s training work, and indeed they provided some extra insight.

Some highlights included:

• Clear instructions for joining: e.g. AAI (authentication and authorisation infrastructure); some potential EOSC users may not even know they are eligible and how they sign up; documentation for IT staff for when a researcher signs on to explain what to do.
• Data discoverability – how do you find data and do you make your data discoverable?
• How is AI going to be implemented?
• The need for foundational training in EOSC, maybe as part of a wider programme in institutions, and alongside Open Science, RDM and FAIR.
• Researchers think in terms of workflows and this should be reflected in the way training is delivered to researchers.
• Who owns the data, especially if there is going to be data from outside Europe? What are the legal implications?
• Can assurances be given on data security, especially sensitive data?
• Are there going to be templates that a data or service provider will need to fill out and if so is there documentation for this? And what about the quality of metadata and FAIR compliance?

What next?

After this opportunity to meet with the SRDS co-chairs physically and online and be able to leverage their expertise, the training and skills work in EOSC Future is evaluating the comments from the focus group and will take them into consideration alongside other evaluations that have been done. This will provide a pathway to better implementation of the training through the remainder of the EOSC Future project.