CLARIN, the Common Language Resource and Technology Research Infrastructure, has gained force and momentum over the last 10 years. It is being constructed as a distributed e-infrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences to enable sustainable access, exploitation and integration of Europe’s vast amount of language-based data and related technology. As stipulated by the ESFRI roadmap, CLARIN is now in the later part of its implementation phase. Indeed, the implementation is already far advanced in many aspects, among these the technical core elements of the infrastructure. However, at this crucial phase, several aspects need additional focused efforts. The 2013 ESFRI high level expert group assessment identified key areas where concentrated actions are needed in order to ensure the broadest possible success of CLARIN. Also following the recommendations of that report, CLARIN-PLUS proposes to accelerate the implementation and to strengthen and consolidate CLARIN in the following areas: 1) The central (technical) hub – Extend the Service Provider Federation; improve metadata quality; tighten webservice integration; improve infrastructure gateways. 2) The central office – Further the internal and external information platforms; work on a professional branding and a higher usability level. 3) Partnerships with other infrastructure initiatives – Beyond existing cooperations, coordinate and implement or strengthen joint services with EUDAT, GÉANT, DARIAH, RDA, Europeana and Hathi Trust. 4) Outreach – Work out a concrete value proposition and use it to attract new countries, centres and users; demonstrate the potential of CLARIN to new user groups. 5) Governance: Revise the statutes, perform a financial analysis and focus on sustainability. This project will help to adjust the balance between the national CLARIN consortia and centres and CLARIN ERIC, and will improve crucial aspects of CLARIN as a robust European infrastructure.

The European Digital Single Market, one of the main goals of Europe 2020, is still fragmented due to language barriers. European society is multilingual, the diversity of its cultural heritage is an opportunity, but hampers transborder eCommerce, social communication and exchange of (cultural) content. Languages without sufficient technological support will become marginalised. These barriers must be overcome by language technology (LT) like Machine Translation (MT) solutions, a need recognized by the future Connecting Europe Facility (CEF). To support these endeavours to reach an online EU internal market free of language barriers, it is necessary to join, benchmark the quality and facilitate the access to language resources. With this in mind LT Observatory's aims are: - Create a language resource repository stemming from national public sector parallel corpora (taking into account existing ones); check these resources with regard to their quality and benchmark them for most possible reliability and, interoperability including legal and standardization issues. - Identify national and regional funding sources, including Regional and Structural Funds - Continue with a LT News Observatory, started in the LT COMPASS project. - Foster cooperation across stakeholders through targeted dialogue events. - Create a roadmap for future needs to improve the quality of MT and for a high coverage of languages within the Digital Single Market. Based on achievements of former initiatives (e.g. FLaReNet, META), the LT Observatory will be implemented by a team with all the expertise needed: ZABALA (EU project management and with Europe-wide outreach), EMF (ICT Association with experience in outreach/social media, and funding, e.g. ESIF and combined funding), LT Innovate (the Forum of European LT vendors), CLARIN ERIC (LT resources and infrastructure, including a Virtual Language Observatory), and University of Vienna/InfoTerm, international information centre for terminology.

Over time, the study of language has taken many different forms, ranging from interpretation of literary texts to scientific experimentation and translation studies, but employment prospects for graduates in language-related disciplines (linguistics, foreign languages, language pedagogy, translation and interpreting) are still rather limited and mostly focused on teaching positions or positions as translators. This stands in stark contrast with their potential employability given the omnipresence of language and communication in society and the number of companies that make language their main business. Technology giants such as Google, Amazon, and Facebook all work with language data and the demand for research skills in language-related domains is constantly growing. University curricula, however, are rarely oriented towards skills needed for research and industry, focusing on describing rather than on predicting or explaining linguistic phenomena. As a result, students tend to be poorly prepared for research or industry careers.The central goal of our project is to identify and tackle these skills gaps and mismatches through the development of a new curriculum component and supporting materials to be embedded in existing programmes. The proposed strategic partnership will introduce an integrated research-oriented perspective into language-related programmes, with a focus on the BA level. This will enhance students’ employability by providing them with the critical skills needed to compete for a wider range of positions in the labour market. Our preliminary needs analysis shows that more forward-looking skills, such as problem solving, research design and project management are currently missing in language-related curricula, but are highly desirable in the relevant working environments. While several projects have focused on providing students with digital skills, there remain gaps which we have and will further identify. We will work together with companies to include real-world applications in the studies. We will integrate existing research into teaching by promoting inquiry-based learning, and by training the trainers in how to implement it. We will make use of innovative pedagogies such as online educational games. We will promote internationalisation between higher education institutions by offering a unified curriculum component across several countries and by spreading ideas through multiplier events aimed at participants from 20+ countries, and embedded intensive programmes with around 50 students and staff from the partner countries.Targeted participants in our activities are students (primarily those reading for a BA) in language-related disciplines at all full partners and associate partners (13,000), lecturers from the partner institutions (300) and beyond (120+), as well as industry staff members (15+). We plan to produce four intellectual outputs as a means of filling the identified gap. First, we will deliver a detailed needs analysis, a follow-up of the preliminary needs analysis carried out during the preparation stage. The second intellectual output, best practices for research-based teaching, will address the goal of integrating research into teaching from three different perspectives, academic and industry-based research, as well as the integration of research infrastructures. The third output, contents and materials, will aggregate existing resources (e.g. online courses, tutorials) and complement them where needed with new items (e.g. problem-solving case studies). The fourth intellectual output will be a set of educational games, whose contents and materials will be made available to all interested students and lecturers, as well as detailed manuals and guidelines. The delivery of each intellectual output will be followed by a multiplier event, where we showcase the project results and organise hands-on training for colleagues from language-related disciplines, and, where relevant, beyond. These events will be co-located twice with major conferences in our field to reach better visibility. Besides multiplier events, we will organise two train-the-trainers events, one concerning educational games and one concerning content creation. Finally, we will organise a summer school at the end of the project, where best performing students will work on highly challenging individual projects under the supervision of experienced researchers and professionals. We expect that the project will result in a new profile of graduates in language-related disciplines, who will fit well in modern working environments, both in industry and academia. We expect that our intellectual outputs will enable a wide spread of our learning model with an impact far beyond the members of this consortium. Ultimately, this will lead to better job prospects for students in language-related disciplines and beyond, a smoother transition to the world of work, and a better work force for industry and research.

EOSC Focus will support the co-programmed EOSC Partnership in delivering its mission of establishing Open Science as the “new normal” and achieving the key objectives, which are outlined in the Memorandum of Understanding between the European Union and the EOSC Association (EOSC-A). EOSC Focus is a collaboration of eight Members of EOSC-A and the EOSC Association AISBL itself – the hub of key stakeholders in the European research environment, which provides insights on overarching themes important for the realisation of EOSC. The consortium demonstrates excellent complementarity across the diverse regions and stakeholder groups needed to ensure appropriate coverage of countries and stakeholders. EOSC Focus will provide an effective EOSC stakeholder forum; consolidate and enhance existing monitoring frameworks; identify strategic gaps to inform future iterations of the SRIA; develop and test resourcing models for a sustainable EOSC; implement the EOSC Rules of Participation; and collaborate with other EOSC-related projects, other partnerships, and international initiatives. EOSC Focus is organised into six work packages: WP 1 Project Coordination; WP 2 Stakeholder Engagement and Management; WP 3 SRIA Update and Technical Development; WP 4 Monitoring and Impact Assessment, WP 5 Sustainability of EOSC, and WP 6 Communication, Dissemination & Stakeholder Forum. The combination of these work packages will help the sometimes divergent activities of the broader stakeholder community to focus on the big goal of delivering EOSC. The impact of EOSC Focus will contribute to the increased availability, accessibility, and re-use of data. It will make research results more accessible for citizens; it will increase the quality and outreach of science and thus lead to more results from science and its innovation up-take.

Research infrastructures (RIs) operate in complex innovation ecosystems where industry plays an increasingly important role. Pan-EU initiatives, such as the Innovation Union or the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures, revolutionise the way public and private sectors work together, and help to create structural frameworks which are needed to foster such collaborations. While initiatives of this type play a crucial role in enabling industry to become a full partner of research infrastructures whether it is as a user, a supplier, or a co-creator, they do not fully utilise or engage Industrial Liaison and Contact Officers (ILOs/ICOs) which could have a central role in boosting the RI-industry partnerships. To address this gap, ENRIITC will build a permanent pan-European network of ILOs and ICOs. This will be done in a community-driven, cross-functional, cross-sectoral, multiplier-based way which will be inclusive and enable all interested parties to actively participate. By supporting the establishment of strategic, cross-border partnerships between industry and research infrastructures, ENRIITC will enable win-win results for all parties. With a timeline of 36 months, 11 partners from seven countries, and a strong support from 61 Associates from around Europe, ENRIITC will 1) establish a sustainable European network of ILOs and ICOs which enables mutual learning, 2) map collaboration potential between research infrastructures and industry, 3) develop and refine strategies and best practices to foster these collaborations, 4) raise awareness among industry for collaboration opportunities at research infrastructures, and demonstrate impact. The consortium and Associates will jointly balance the need for expertise from diverse scientific areas, combine it with practical insights from establishing relations with various industries operating in different sectors and geographical contexts, and propagate it among their networks.