2019-02-22

EOSC-Nordic proposal awarded funding from the European Commission

We are delighted to announce that the EOSC-Nordic proposal has been awarded funding from the European Commission. NeIC will be the coordinator of the EOSC-Nordic project and also lead a Work Package on FAIR data.

On request from the five Nordic e-infrastructure providers NeIC coordinated this Nordic-Baltic proposal worth 6 M€ to an EC call on Support to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) Governance. The project proposal, named ‘EOSC-Nordic’, was submitted November 2018 by NeIC on behalf of a consortium of 24 partners.

The project will aim to foster and advance the take-up of the EOSC at the Nordic level by coordinating the EOSC-relevant initiatives taking place in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands and Germany. EOSC-Nordic aims to facilitate the coordination of EOSC relevant initiatives within the Nordic and Baltic countries and exploit synergies to achieve greater harmonisation at policy and service provisioning across these countries, in compliance with EOSC agreed standards and practices. By doing so, the project will seek to establish the Nordic and Baltic countries as frontrunners in the take-up of the EOSC concept, principles and approach. EOSC-Nordic brings together a strong consortium including e-Infrastructure providers, research performing organisations and expert networks, with national mandates with regards to the provision of research services and open science policy, and wide experience of engaging with the research community and mobilising national governments, funding agencies, international bodies and global initiatives and high-level experts on EOSC strategic matters.

Gudmund Høst, Director of NeIC says that “This award, and the excellent review report, is resulting from the skills, enthusiasm and hard work of a large number of colleagues. I am grateful for this opportunity to contribute to the European Open Science Cloud and look forward to planning and implementing the project.”

EOSC-Nordic Coordinator, Lene Krøl Andersen (NeIC Executive Manager and Head of DeiC eScience Center) also adds that “EOSC-Nordic is the result of a fantastic teamwork – the absolute prerequisite for putting EOSC into practice across Europe. EOSC-Nordic will catalyse the Nordic and Baltic uptake of the EOSC and ensure that we keep providing world-class research infrastructure and easy access to essential infrastructure services for all our researchers. I possess strong confidence in this successful birth of EOSC-Nordic and its path into becoming a reality – purely based on our strong consortium of experts and hardworking colleagues in a mixture of both researchers and research infrastructure providers. I look indeed forward to bringing EOSC-Nordic into life.”