As a result of its past engagement and successful cross-disciplinary collaborations, CESSDA was solicited to participate in multiple EC project proposals. By the close of 2022, CESSDA had become involved in seven successful project proposals, all of which were submitted by early 2023. These successful projects are now starting, with their kick-offs scheduled for early 2024!

ERIC Forum 2

Following the successful establishment of the ERIC Forum, further efforts are needed to consolidate the integration of the ERICs (European Research Infrastructure Consortiums) in the European Research Area. For this purpose, the European Commission granted €3 million to expand coordination and cooperation among the ERICs.

CESSDA is proud to contribute across the entire project, which focuses on four crucial pillars:

• The development of an online monitoring and reporting platform designed to offer relevant data to the stakeholders and the general public.

• The reinforcement of the European research infrastructure policy and international cooperation and the strategic alignment of the ERICs with the European policy priorities.

• The implementation of the ERIC Regulation, the exploration of strengthening the capacities of the ERICS and the identification of possible shared services.

• The coordination and communication within the project, as well as improving engagement with external stakeholders.

CESSDA will be co-leading the policy-related activities and join important discussions across the different pillars. The project officially started in September 2023 and will run until August 2027. The ERIC Forum 2 Project represents a great opportunity for CESSDA ERIC not only for strengthening links with other ERICs and stakeholders but also for finding concrete pathways to challenges and bottlenecks that ERICs face, and creating a stronger and more sustainable ERIC for our members.

Infra4NextGen

The Infra4NextGen project (Providing research infrastructure services to support Next Generation EU) is a four-year €9,75 million project that aims to harness outputs from key social science RIs in Europe and other reliable sources to support the aims of the ‘Next Generation EU’ programme and to inform EU youth policy. The core of the project is a set of existing research ‘services’, which will be repurposed and customised to focus directly on the five themes: Make it Green; Make it Digital; Make it Healthy; Make it Strong; and Make it Equal. The project will start in March 2024 with the collaboration of 25 participating organisations across Europe.

The project will be co-ordinated by the European Social Survey (ESS ERIC) and includes CESSDA ERIC, the European Values Survey (EVS) and the Gender and Generations Programme (GGP) at its core.

CESSDA is actively engaged in the project, collaborating with three of its Service Providers from Germany (GESIS), Slovenia (ADP), and Austria (AUSSDA). Our involvement extends across the entire project, with a specific emphasis on:

• facilitating access to existing distributed european survey data through harmonisation and

• delivering training in the domains of the five NextGenEU themes in the social sciences.

You can read more about the project here!

O.S.C.A.R.S. 

OSCARS (Open Science Clusters’ Action for Research and Society) is a €25 million project that unites ESFRI and other world-class research infrastructures into five "Science Clusters": ENVRI-FAIR (environmental science), EOSC-Life (life science), ESCAPE (astronomy and particle physics), PaNOSC (neutron and light source science), and SSHOC (social science and humanities). Its goal is to enhance researchers' efficiency and productivity by offering open data services and infrastructures for discovering, accessing, and reusing data. 

The project seeks to merge individual cluster-based activities and forge new shared strategic pathways to achieve two major objectives: consolidating accomplishments from the five H2020 Cluster projects into enduring interdisciplinary services and practices, and spearheading the engagement of diverse research communities in EOSC through the development of new open science projects. Together, these efforts aim to drive the adoption of FAIR-data-intensive research throughout the European Research Area (ERA).

The project commences in January 2024 and runs until the end of 2027. CESSDA, representing the SSHOC Cluster alongside CLARIN and DARIAH, is contributing to OSCARS in collaboration with three Service Providers: AUSSDA (Austria), ADP (Slovenia), and DANS (Netherlands). The consortium comprises 15 participating organisations.

Cascading Grants in O.S.C.A.R.S. in 2024

The project's generous budget primarily aims to foster open science projects through a cascading grant mechanism. Approximately €16.4 million will be distributed in two public calls scheduled for March 2024 and November 2024. The goal is to consolidate FAIR services across the five Science Clusters, promoting excellent science and societal benefits through an Open Research approach. Both calls will be open for 60 days. For more information and application details, follow the CESSDA website in 2024.

OSTrails 

OSTrails (Open Science Plan-Track-Assess Pathways) aims to advance processes and instruments for Planning, Tracking, and Assessing scientific knowledge production beyond state-of-the art, working with various national and thematic contexts, improving existing infrastructure, and connecting key components.

CESSDA is participating is along a consortium of 38 partners with 2 of its Service Providers from Finland (FSD) and the UK (UKDS) across the following four stages of the project. 

The Plan stage will transform Data Management Plans into dynamic, interconnected "machine actionable" resources, enhancing their role in improving RDM quality. The Track stage will establish an open, interoperable Scientific Knowledge Graph ecosystem, elevating them as evidence of FAIR community implementations. The Assess stage will deliver modular FAIR tests with "machine actionable" metrics and user guidance embedded in research life cycle tools. The Adoption stage will integrate resulting methods, tools, services, guidance, and training into end-to-end solutions for all stakeholders. The project will start in February 2024 and will run until January of 2027.

EOSC Beyond 

EOSC Beyond (Advancing innovation and collaboration for research) unites 28 participants with the goal of providing new EOSC Core capabilities. These capabilities will enable scientific applications to discover, compose, and access various Open Science resources, offering them as integrated functionalities to researchers. The project advances the EOSC Core's state of the art and employs a co-design methodology, involving requirements elicitation, software development, and validation in collaboration with diverse use cases from EOSC national and regional initiatives and thematic research infrastructures across disciplines. 

CESSDA is represented by the Main Office and two Service Providers from Hungary (TARKI) and Greece (EKKE), togetehr representing the Social Sciences and Humanities RI. Their contribution focuses on enhancing the architecture of the EOSC Platform and co-designing and initially integrating the EOSC Nodes and Data Spaces. The project is scheduled to commence in April 2024.

EOSC-ENTRUST: A European Network of TRUSTed research environments

The aim of EOSC-ENTRUST is to establish a European network of trusted research environments for sensitive data and to drive European interoperability by jointly developing a common blueprint for federated data access and analysis. It brings together providers of operational Trusted Research Environments from 15 European countries with a shared goal to implement, validate, and promote their capabilities through a common European framework using shared standards and common legal, operational, and technical language.

CESSDA, along with its Service Providers from Hungary (TARKI), Germany (GESIS), and the UK (UKDS), represents the Social Sciences sector and will provide their trusted research environment capabilities and expertise to inform legal, operational, and technical specifications. They will also identify and promote common standards to enable sensitive data sharing by testing and expanding the framework set in past and present transnational projects such as SSHOC. The project is set to start in March 2024. 

QUANTUM (Quality, Utility and Maturity Measured; Developing a Data Quality and Utility Label for HealthData@EU)

QUANTUM will serve as a pilot project for CESSDA as part of its ongoing contribution to the health sector, following its initial involvement in the BY-COVID project. It aims at developing and implementing a label mechanism that could be ideally adopted in the future HealthData@EU. CESSDA is joining this initiative represented by three service providers - DANS (the Netherlands), UKDS (UK) and EKKE (Greece).

QUANTUM plans to develop a data quality, utility, and maturity label through various technical work packages. The first phase involves conceptualizing and providing technical specifications for the label. Subsequently, the second phase focuses on designing and testing the label on a small scale. Following successful testing, the third phase will implement the labeling mechanism in multiple data holders. The project will then proceed to engage with the data quality users' community and reach out to other interested parties, including initiatives contributing to HealthData@EU.

The project, involving a consortium of 28 beneficiaries, 11 affiliated entities, and 1 associated partner, aims to establish a common standard for evaluating datasets and data holders' maturity. 

Anticipated outcomes include technical specifications for the innovative QUANTUM label, a conformance checking tool, and an implementation report for the label mechanism. The project will also deliver recommendations for the widespread adoption of the QUANTUM label and introduce the QUANTUM Exchange Platform and Academy. These instruments are designed to foster capacity building and drive advancements in health data standards. 

Launching 2024 projects

We are looking forward to the opportunity to make meaningful contributions to each of these projects and will be keeping you informed and engaged with updates and insights across these intriguing and pivotal initiatives in the coming years. Stay tuned via CESSDA website and Newsletter for the latest developments and achievements as we collectively work towards advancing knowledge and innovation in these diverse and significant areas!