Supporting the UK’s future role in open science infrastructure

Exploring UK alignment with EOSC

The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) is developing a federated environment to support open and collaborative research across Europe. It aims to connect data, infrastructure and digital services to help researchers access, share and reuse research resources more effectively.

The UK already has significant strengths in digital research infrastructure, including trusted research environments, data services, high-performance computing and open research expertise. UK organisations have also contributed to the development of EOSC through previous European collaboration projects.

PATH2EOSCUK is funded by EOSC Gravity and will explore how existing UK capabilities and infrastructure could align more closely with EOSC and support future participation in the evolving open science ecosystem.

The project will also help build a clearer picture of the UK’s existing digital research infrastructure landscape and identify opportunities for collaboration, interoperability and future engagement.

What we aim to achieve

Through PATH2EOSCUK, we will:

• Map UK digital research infrastructure against EOSC federation requirements
• Identify opportunities and potential pathways for a future UK EOSC node
• Develop a national node charter and explore priority use cases
• Support awareness and understanding of EOSC across the UK research community
• Engage research-performing organisations and stakeholders in shaping future participation
• Strengthen collaboration between UK and European open science communities

This work will help create a stronger understanding of how UK organisations could engage with EOSC while supporting future collaboration across research infrastructure, services and data environments.

Our approach

The project is organised around two core activity areas.

Infrastructure mapping

We will review existing UK digital research infrastructure, services and capabilities against EOSC federation requirements.

This work will help identify:

• Areas of alignment
• Gaps and opportunities
• Potential development priorities
• Practical next steps for future participation

The project will also map UK-related EOSC activity and contribute to a clearer understanding of the UK research infrastructure landscape.

Community engagement

Alongside the technical and strategic work, we will deliver a programme of engagement and communications activities to raise awareness of EOSC across the UK research community.

This will include:

• Stakeholder engagement
• Workshops and consultations
• Development of use cases
• Communications and awareness activity
• Opportunities for community input and feedback

Insights gathered during the project will inform recommendations, future collaboration opportunities and potential next steps for UK participation in EOSC.