EOSC Platform Early Adopter Programme

Powered by: EOSC Future, C-SCALE, DICE, EGI-ACE, OpenAIRE Nexus, Reliance, ARCHIVER

Introducing the programme

The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) is federating services so that researchers can find, combine and process data from different scientific disciplines and communities. At this stage of implementation, EOSC already provides a powerful tool for solving complex data-processing challenges in a variety of domains.

The EOSC Platform Early Adopter Programme offers a rich set of resources and expertise to research communities and service providers. It specifically looks to support use cases in need of EOSC resources from different disciplines or e-infrastructures and the integration of new services into the EOSC-Core.

What is the programme about?

Through this programme, EOSC Future aims to:

• increase the adoption of EOSC by providing expertise and resources to researchers
• gain insight into user needs and possible EOSC use cases (e.g. examples of data analysis in a large, federated environment to leverage different advanced technologies like data transfer, orchestrator, data management, etc., services)
• bolster confidence in the capability and capacity of EOSC
• foster a culture of co-operation between researchers and EOSC providers
• integrate new services and resources into EOSC to enrich its overall functionality
• place users at the centre of developing an intuitive and fit-for-purpose environment that responds to the actual needs of researchers in all domains.

Who is it for?

• Providers looking to integrate their services into the EOSC-Core to make them available to the research community at large.
• Research communities aiming to address cross-disciplinary, societal or complex research challenges by using EOSC resources from different disciplines or e-infrastructures.

What is in it for you?

As part of the EOSC Platform Early Adopter Programme, you will be able to access a number of services and resources that will support your community or institution/organisation throughout the entire research life cycle. You will also receive constant support from our experts, who will help you identify, access and use the services and resources that best fit your requirements.

If you are operating services, our experts will support you with ‘onboarding’ them into EOSC. This will allow you to not only offer your services to the broader EOSC community but also benefit from EOSC-Core services (i.e. AAI, Helpdesk, Monitoring, Accounting, etc.), a series of capabilities that can simplify access to your services and reduce operational costs.

What is expected from you?

By participating in this programme, you will play an active role in EOSC development, helping EOSC Future and partners create an EOSC that can better serve European researchers.

The offer – ‘Early Adopter Projects’

The selected applications will be organised into ‘Early Adopter Projects’ with well-defined work plans and objectives (e.g. onboarding a service into EOSC, running a data analysis workflow, etc.).

Each project will have a duration of 3, 6 or 12 months, depending on the nature and level of complexity.

The Early Adopter Projects will receive support in the following areas:

• Projects will receive input on the technical infrastructure needed to execute the use case. This may consist of federated EOSC resources (data, services or other research products) that span the whole research life cycle (publishing services, data analytics, data management services, orchestrators, etc.), including IT resources such as storage space, CPU/GPU.
• Technical support will be directed to installing and optimising software and other services from EOSC Future providers and partners (see table below: EOSC Future and partner offers).
• Projects will get assistance identifying suitable EOSC services and resources to support the project for those available in the EOSC Marketplace.
• Expert staff from EOSC Future and partners will support and assist the applicants in integrating their projects within EOSC.

The resources assigned to each selected project will be established on a case-by-case basis, in collaboration with the applicants and the resource/service providers during the technical assessment of the proposal, to guarantee an adequate piloting of the project.

Taking note of the above, the Early Adopter Programme aims to provide valuable technical support from the EOSC Future project and partners; however, it does not include direct financial support to applicants.

In a second stage, successful projects will have the possibility to scale up their project in capacity and capability, thus moving further towards a full-scale production environment.

Keep in mind, you should be able to demonstrate the research outcomes of your project to the EOSC community, in turn, stimulating further uptake.

EOSC Future and partner offers

Who can apply?

The programme is aimed at:

• Service providers willing to offer their services through EOSC for the community at large. The programme specifically targets those providers that are looking to integrate their services with the EOSC-Core (AAI, Helpdesk, Monitoring, Accounting) while benefitting from state-of-the-art technologies, research infrastructures and services in the EOSC-Exchange that are not available in their current research environment (e.g. workflow engines, orchestrators, data management services, access to large amount of IT resources).
• Researchers who want to take advantage of federated EOSC resources (data, services or other research products) from different disciplines or e-infrastructures to enable and improve data visualisation, data reduction and data analysis workflows, ideally enabling interdisciplinary research.

Do you need support for a more targeted use case? Then the calls for use cases by the different INFRAEOSC-07 projects might me better suited to your needs.

How to apply

Submissions can be made any time, following the instructions below. There will be a cut-off deadline every 2 months, whereby applications submitted up to that date will be evaluated. 

Applicants will be informed of the evaluation committee's decision within 1 month following the cut-off date.
Next cut-off date: 15 May

Please consult the selection criteria and application form below for more information.

Selection criteria

The EOSC Early Adopter Programme is intended for projects that have a well-defined scientific purpose and need a federated environment to combine and analyse research data.

Applications will be evaluated by a team of technical experts from EOSC Future and partners according to the following criteria:

• impact of the project and likelihood of a successful outcome
• adequacy of the available technical infrastructure for the needs of the proposed work (specific guidance is provided in the application form)
• technical support required from EOSC and available competencies existing within the project team
• maturity level of the project
• likelihood that the technical integration and the project can be realistically completed within the available timeframe (from 3 to 12 months) with the proposed technical support from the applicant and EOSC
• potential of the project to become a future EOSC service for the community at large or exploit EOSC resources to address cross-disciplinary, societal or complex research challenges
• commitment to Open Science Practices
• publication of project outcomes via EOSC.

The programme is supported by the EOSC Future consortium and the INFRAEOSC-07 projects: C-SCALE, DICE, EGI-ACE, OpenAIRE Nexus, Reliance, ARCHIVER

Application Form