The European RI landscape is diverse (RI operators, managers, users (researchers, industry) decision makers, funders). Past efforts were directed towards gaining insight into available RIs, national RI road mapping practices, and planning of pan-European RIs. A catalogue of services for e-infrastructures is currently under development. A recent report by OECD Global Science Forum highlights that ”open digital platforms…can have substantial value for a wide range of stakeholders”. Responding to the needs of users of physical RIs, CatRIS will make available information about RI services offered in Europe. Such information will improve visibility of services, foster European and international collaborations, and enhance RI accessibility, usage, and impact. Currently, RIs provide information about their services mostly in free formats through websites with varying completeness and details. Existing initiatives will be analysed to identify best practices and to propose a service catalogue structure to respond to users’ needs. A prerequisite for the success of CatRIS is its integration in the European RI landscape and its different systems. Avoiding duplication of efforts and fostering interoperability is also essential. Although challenging, an interoperable system is the only sustainable approach that can be envisaged to keep information alive. In particular, CatRIS will follow closely the development of the EOSC to become an integrated part of it as an indispensable tool connecting RI users and managers. The active engagement of the whole RI community is critical and, being at the centre of the project, will provide specifications and drive for the development. Through the use of a rating system and feedback loops on its contents, CatRIS can also serve as a bottom-up tool to facilitate the identification of potential gaps of European RI services. CatRIS will thus operate as an open “network of networks” branching out to RI communities across borders and beyond.

EInfraCentral's mission is to ensure that by 2020 a broader/ more varied set of users (including industry) benefits from European infrastructures. A common approach to defining and monitoring e-infrastructures services will increase their uptake. It will also enhance understanding of where improvement can be made in delivering services. The challenge is to shift towards an e-Infrastructure ''market place'' to initiate new service offerings and to engage with a broader set of users and needs. This will be achieved through an exchange of know-how between e-infrastructures consultations with a broad range of existing or potential users. EInfraCentral will pursue 3 specific objectives: 1. Structure an open and guided discussion between e-infrastructures to consensually define a common service catalogue 2. Develop a one-stop shop portal for users to browse the service catalogue and enhance the monitoring of key performance indicators that focus on availability and quality of services and user satisfaction 3. Draw policy lessons for a future European e-infrastructure market place as an extension of the common service catalogue and portal (incorporating a larger number of e-infrastructures). Key highlights of the proposal are: 1.A multidisciplinary team combining technical knowledge & insights from the e-infrastructure community with independent expertise in community building consultation, policy and data mapping and monitoring 2. A co-design process that will involve funders, the e-research infrastructure community and a representative user group (incl. SMEs) 3. On-going user interaction will guide the design and development of the eInfraCentral portal (as the main entry point to European e-infrastructures services) in two phases: a prototype with a first set of services and a full release with a KPI dashboard 4. Reinforce collaboration between e-infrastructures and optimise access to and increase uptake of e-infrastructures services by end users.

EOSC Enhance pursues 4 objectives: 1: Enhance the service provider interface and incorporate new services and resources into the EOSC catalogue 2: Accelerate the deployment and uptake of EOSC services and resources 3: Increase user demand for EOSC services and resources via portal improvements and development 4: Enabling easier access to thematic clouds services and data EOSC Enhance will improve and enhance the discoverability of scientific services and data resources by further developing and widening the EOSC catalogue. This will be done through the integration of additional services and data resources (notably the ESFRI clusters and thematic and geographic clouds) as well as further technical enhancement of the functionalities for service providers (Open APIs, AAI) and users (search and comparison tools, etc.). Quality reports will be provided to service providers. We will facilitate interoperability and discoverability of services and resources across scientific disciplines by linking up thematic and regional/national service providers (public and commercial), gateways, aggregators and marketplaces. The EOSC Portal will apply the emerging EOSC Rules of Participation (RoP) and will focus on processes, specifications, guidelines, tools and APIs to support service and resource providers in making them interoperable. We will consolidate the EOSC Portal as the point of access for researchers through the facilitation and continuous enhancement of findability and discoverability -by appropriately design of the UI for example- inherent building blocks addressed in the EOSC Enhance project - that will make this possible. The critical technical aspects and features of the EOSC Portal will be discussed and agreed with ESFRI clusters to enhance interoperability and avoid frictions for users. The outcomes will be channelled to the EOSC Architecture WG in charge of submitting ideas for overall adoption of technical solutions by the EOSC Governance bodies.

Data and AI are the fuel of scientific discoveries, and Research Infrastructures (RIs) are at the forefront of this process, generating massive and increasingly more complex datasets. However, the growing size, diversity, and velocity of research data and software demand large-scale infrastructures and technical expertise from those on the user side. RI-SCALE will address this challenge by delivering Data Exploitation Platforms (DEPs). These scalable environments will co-host scientific data with preconfigured AI frameworks and models on powerful compute resources and unlock full data and AI potential for scientific users, RI operators and industry. RI-SCALE will design and develop the DEP technology with four RIs: ENES, EISCAT, BBMRI and Euro-BioImaging. DEP instances will be deployed for environmental and life sciences, validating the technology through 8 scientific and 4 technical use cases. These will run on national e-infrastructures from the EGI Federation and (pre)exascale machines from EuroHPC. RI-SCALE will collaborate with Destination Earth, EUCAIM cancer images data space, Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem, EOSC and Gaia-X to ensure interoperability within the broader landscape. The project will also facilitate industry and university collaborations, provide training and consultancy events to increase the uptake of AI technologies by additional RIs and explore sustainable DEP operation models for RI communities.

EOSC Future responds to INFRAEOSC-03-2020 call in order to integrate, consolidate, and connect e-infrastructures, research communities, and initiatives in Open Science to further develop the EOSC Portal, EOSC-Core and EOSC-Exchange of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). EOSC Future is structured around six thematic pillars that strategically group the work package tasks and activities and coherently present the key objectives and activities of the project to stakeholders: Pillar 1 on Policy & Strategy will coordinate and support a strategic vision for the future EOSC; Pillar 2 on Connection & Integration will connect and integrate EOSC infrastructures, data, and services; Pillar 3 on Excellent Science & Interdisciplinarity will extend the EOSC value Chain with scientific use cases; Pillar 4 on Growth & Innovation will grow and innovate EOSC with value-added services; Pillar 5 on Skills & Training will train users and providers of the EOSC ecosystem; and Pillar 6 on Engagement & Communications will engage the wider EOSC Community at a global level. EOSC Future will unlock the potential of European research via a vision of Open Science for Society by (1) bringing all major stakeholders in the EOSC ecosystem together under one project umbrella to break the disciplinary and community silos and consolidate key EOSC project outputs, (2) developing scientific use cases in collaboration with the thematic communities showcasing the benefits and societal value of EOSC for doing excellent and interdisciplinary research, (3) engaging the wider EOSC community and increasing the visibility of EOSC through communications campaigns, marketing strategies, and physical and online engagement events, and (4) including the EOSC community in developing the EOSC Portal (including the long tail of science, public and private sectors, and international partners) via co-creation open calls.