European Open Science Cloud - EOSC

Supporting the EU’s Policy of Open Science, the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) aims to give the EU a global lead in research data management and ensure that European scientists enjoy the full benefits of data-driven science.

EOSC is also part of the European Data Strategy, aiming to make the EU a leader in a data-driven society. It will provide seamless access and reliable re-use of research data to European researchers, innovators, companies and citizens through a trusted and open distributed data environment and related interoperable services.

The priorities for building EOSC are set jointly by the European Commission and the EOSC Association through the co-programmed European Partnership (the EOSC Partnership) in the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA). Horizon Europe continues to support building EOSC on basis of the baseline that started in the Horizon 2020 programme.

The future funding of EOSC is under discussion in the context of the next Multi-Annual Financial Framework (FP10) preparations.

EOSC EU Node in action

The EOSC EU Node service platform, owned by the European Commission, was publicly released in October 2024. It is the first production node of the EOSC Federation, providing a set of data, tools and services to researchers across Europe. It also serves as reference node promoting open science principles and facilitates the interconnection of other nodes in the EOSC Federation.

In the first two years of operations the EOSC EU Node gathered more than 5500 registered users who can search across 180+ million research products (data, publication, software) and able to execute research workflows (data analytics, simulations, visualizations, code execution, etc.) supported by interoperable productivity tools such as file sync and share, collaborative editing, automated application deployment and large file transfer services in a multi-disciplinary research context. 

The EOSC EU Node has an open architecture concept, uses open-source software, and is only the first node of the federation. National, regional and/or thematic service providers as well as autonomous EOSC Nodes can connect to the federation via the established interoperability frameworks and policies guided by the EOSC Federation Handbook.

EOSC EU Node framework procurement in 2026

The EOSC procurement 2026 – as foreseen in the Horizon Europe Research Infrastructures Work Programme 2026-2027  “Managed services for the EOSC Platform (EOSC EU Node)” – is to takeover and ensure the incremental improvement and continuous operation, maintenance and support of the integrated suite of managed services that constitute the EOSC EU Node platform in production, as a service owned by the European Commission. It is designed as a 4-year framework within which the Commission can call-off the necessary managed services and development work to best serve the evolving EOSC Federation, its operational nodes, end-users and other stakeholders. 

More on this procurement

EOSC EU Node has initially been procured in 2022

To capitalise on the considerable research and innovation effort, a fully operational enabling infrastructure node for EOSC has been procured by the European Commission as part of the Horizon Europe, Research Infrastructures, Work Programme 2021-2022 provisions.

Details of the public procurement action 2022

Background

The Commission intends to unlock the reuse potential of different types of data and facilitate its free flow across borders to achieve a European digital single market, for the benefit of the economy and society.

EOSC is a fundamental enabler of open science and of the digital transformation of science. It offers the possibility to access and reuse all publicly funded research data in Europe, across scientific disciplines and countries. By federating existing research data infrastructures, EOSC leverages national investments and adds value in terms of scale, interdisciplinarity and faster innovation.

The EOSC Core and Exchange services, initially piloted by the former EOSC Portal, have been developed by a series of flagship research and innovation actions funded under the INFRAEOSC destination of the Horizon Europe Work Programme for Research Infrastructures. Horizon Europe keeps funding the development of the next generation of EOSC functionalities and services while also providing a fully operational EOSC infrastructure node (referred as the EOSC EU Node) in production as the result of the public procurement action launched in 2022. The EOSC EU Node is being re-procured in 2026 to ensure the continuous improvement, operations, maintenance and support of the managed services facilitating the EOSC Federation and providing access to a rich portfolio of FAIR data and professional quality interoperable services.