EOSC Federation launched
The annual EOSC Symposium takes place this year between the 3rd and 5th November, in Brussels, Belgium. This year’s event marks a very particular milestone: the launch of the long-awaited EOSC Federation. Through the Federation, EOSC (European Open Science Cloud) will become a more integrated network of operational nodes, providing data, tools, and services for researchers across Europe.
As research is international and CSC wants to offer user-centric services, we have been building a pilot node to ensure future interoperability and access for researchers across both domain and regional borders. This entails a broader service catalogue, as well as allowing users from different organisations to access shared digital resources using their own institutional credentials without extra logins. These are the first core capabilities developed in the EOSC Federation and will soon be fully implemented.
The EOSC Federation is governed by a tripartite collaboration and coordinated by the EOSC Association and EOSC Nodes. Thirteen nodes have been in development across Europe since March 2025. The 14th node is provided by the European Commission. This Monday in Brussels, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed, setting out the collaboration principles and governance.
Improving resource availability
The EOSC Finland candidate node demonstrates how researchers can gain easier access to Finnish datasets, tools, and publications, improving resource availability. The visibility of research outputs will be improved, enhancing dissemination of new data and new findings. The node will make it easier to find datasets and tools related to one’s research discipline, through service catalogues. During the symposium, many interesting cross-node workflows were demonstrated; the future direction of the federation is to make it easy for users to work across nodes.
In 2026, the EOSC Finland team will be working to strengthen collaboration with the LUMI AI Factory and EuroHPC. The national onboarding policies and guidelines are being developed in a national open science working group, which is welcoming new members. The EOSC Finnish Forum continues to engage national stakeholders, coordinated through the forum committee. The national engagement and benefits have been ensured through a governance that spans over both the national open science coordination and reference architecture implementation.
Photo: Adobe Stock.
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Jessica Parland-von Essen
Jessica Parland-von Essen coordinates the implementation of the FAIR data principles and the strengthening of research data management capabilities.
Ulriika Vihervalli
Ulriika Vihervalli coordinates open science projects in CSC’s international collaborations and strategic partnerships unit.
