OpenAIRE AMKE Partnership in European Commission procurement on “Managed Services for the European Open Science Cloud Platform”

We are thrilled to announce that we have been selected as a core partner in the European Commission public procurement tender titled "Managed Services for the European Open Science Cloud Platform (EOSC)". Together with our esteemed consortium, led by Athena Research & Innovation Center, the EGI Foundation, and Net Company, we will have the privilege of managing LOT1 of the procurement: Core federation services for the EOSC EU Node. This partnership will play a crucial role in driving the advancement of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), facilitating seamless collaboration and access to research resources for the scientific community.

OpenAIRE AMKE with support from its members, including the Institute of Information Science and Technologies of the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (ISTI-CNR), University of Warsaw (ICM), and University of Minho (UMINHO) will be responsible for providing and operating core technical services for the EOSC. These services include the EOSC Service Catalogue, the EOSC Knowledge Graph, the EOSC Provider Dashboard, and the EOSC Research Product Accounting. We will also be offering OpenPlato as the LMS for training material related to the EOSC EU Node, and will be establishing the processes for populating the EOSC Traininng Catalogue.

More specifically, OpenAIRE AMKE will:

• Oversee the EOSC Service Catalogue, which enables EOSC providers to onboard various research-related services into the EOS ecosystem and empowers EOSC users to easily find, access, compose, and order these services. The service UIs offer detailed insights for representatives from provider organizations, allowing them to gain a comprehensive view of their service offerings within the EOSC Marketplace and to integrate them with EOSC Helpdesk, Monitoring, and Accounting added-value services.
• Be responsible for the provision of the EOSC Knowledge Graph, assisted by technical expertise from ISTI-CNR, an aggregation of metadata records and semantic links from the OpenAIRE Graph, the EOSC Service catalogue, and other relevant European Commission databases and publishing platforms, including Open Research Europe (ORE). Through the EOSC Knowledge Graph, researchers can discover, navigate, and monitor an up-to-date global map of science, including valuable information about EOSC research products, including publications, data, and software. 
• Oversee the onboarding of EOSC Data Sources (e.g., thematic, catch-all, and institutional repositories, CRIS systems, journals) as metadata sources for the EOSC Knowledge Graph via the PROVIDE portal, assisted by University of Minho.
• Operate the EOSC Accounting for Research Products service via the OpenAIRE UsageCounts service, aims to collect, process, and publish usage statistics for research products from EOSC providers. Adhering to the standard specifications of the COUNTER Code of Practice, this service offers aggregated metrics about metadata views and item downloads. These metrics serve as quality indicators, supplementing traditional impact measures such as citation counts.

Such services will be co-hosted at the ICM's Ocean Data Centre, which will act as a resource hub for all three services. Its robust capabilities will ensure the smooth operation and maintenance of these services over time, enabling researchers to access and utilize EOSC resources efficiently.

"Our core partnership in the European Commission's EOSC procurement marks a significant milestone in our commitment to advancing open science and research collaboration. Together with our consortium and esteemed members, we are excited to contribute to the development of the EOSC, empowering researchers across Europe and beyond with enhanced access to an extensive range of research resources. Stay tuned for more updates as we embark on this exciting journey towards a future of open and collaborative research!"

Paolo Manghi, CTO of OpenAIRE AMKE, Senior Researcher at the Institute of Information Science and Technologies of CNR, Pisa, Italy

Furthermore, leveraging our extensive experience in training services and with the support of the University of Minho, OpenAIRE will persist in the ongoing efforts of EOSC Future to establish guidelines for including training material in the EOSC Training Catalogue and the hosting of training material pertaining to the EOSC EU Node in OpenPlato.