EOSC-Nordic

The vision of the European Union’s Open Science Cloud (EOSC) is to give Europe a global lead in scientific data infrastructures to ensure that European scientists reap the full benefits of data-driven science. In line with this ambitious objective, the EU-funded EOSC-Nordic project will organise initiatives to support and develop open science and open innovation in Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Netherlands, and Sweden.

Their aim is to facilitate the coordination of these initiatives within the Nordic and Baltic countries and exploit synergies to achieve greater harmonisation at policy and service provision across these countries. The project aims to catalyse the Nordic and Baltic uptake of the EOSC to maintain world-class research infrastructure.

H2020-EU.1.4. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Research Infrastructures

The specific objective is to endow Europe with world-class research infrastructures which are accessible to all researchers in Europe and beyond and which fully exploit their potential for scientific advance and innovation.

Research infrastructures are key determinants of Europe's competitiveness across the full breadth of scientific domains and essential to science-based innovation. In many fields research is impossible without access to supercomputers, analytical facilities, radiation sources for new materials, clean rooms and advanced metrology for nanotechnologies, specially equipped labs for biological and medical research, databases for genomics and social sciences, observatories and sensors for the Earth sciences and the environment, high-speed broadband networks for transferring data, etc. Research infrastructures are necessary to carry out the research needed to address major societal challenges. They propel collaboration across borders and disciplines and create a seamless and open European space for online research. They promote mobility of people and ideas, bring together the best scientists from across Europe and the world and enhance scientific education. They challenge researchers and innovative companies to develop state of the art technology. In this way, they strengthen Europe's high-tech innovative industry. They drive excellence within the European research and innovation communities and can be outstanding showcases of science for society at large.

Europe must establish, on the basis of commonly agreed criteria, an adequate, stable base for building, maintaining and operating research infrastructures if its research is to remain world-class. This requires substantial and effective cooperation between Union, national and regional funders for which strong links with the cohesion policy will be pursued to ensure synergies and a coherent approach.

This specific objective addresses a core commitment of the flagship initiative 'Innovation Union', which highlights the crucial role played by world-class research infrastructures in making ground-breaking research and innovation possible. The initiative stresses the need to pool resources across Europe, and in some cases globally, in order to build and operate research infrastructures. Equally, the flagship initiative 'Digital Agenda for Europe' emphasises the need to reinforce Europe's e-infrastructures and the importance of developing innovation clusters to build Europe's innovative advantage.