The digital revolution has transformed the way in which data, information and knowledge are acquired, managed, repurposed, analysed, used and disseminated. We are at the threshold of an era with unprecedented opportunities for cross-disciplinary and cross-border collaboration for research and innovation. A new research paradigm is emerging which applies increasingly automated approaches and Machine Learning, and which harnesses the most advanced computing facilities and software, to handle huge and disparate cross-disciplinary data. The advanced infrastructure needed for this new paradigm and Open Science is emerging: it needs to be on demand, as a service, ubiquitous and seamless. In pursuit of this vision, infrastructures are beginning to emerge at institutional, national and regional levels, such as the show cases in European Open Science Cloud from European Commission, the CSTCloud from Chinese Academy of Sciences, the ARDC e-infrastructure in Australia, the African Open Science Platform, etc.
Is it possible to share experiences and make a global framework to align and federate such Open Science clouds and platforms? Is there a way to better support research collaborations across continents to resolve global science challenges, such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), climate change, infectious diseases and pandemics, COVID-19, coordinated and global disaster risk reduction, and so on? At the moment, a global, fully connected digital infrastructure is not in place, making it difficult for scientists to access digital resources across countries and continents.
The idea of a Global Open Science Cloud (GOSC) was initiated during the CODATA 2019 Beijing conference. The mission of GOSC is to connect different international, national and regional open science clouds and platforms to create a global digital environment for borderless research and innovation. It aims to provide better ways to harness digital resources from around the world, help bridge the division in infrastructure, technique and capacity building among different countries, support global science collaborations and foster truly international science.
There are many challenges and difficulties, i.e., inconsistent access policies from country to country; lack of common standards for building a global-level data and e-infrastructure federation; differences in language and culture; highly varied funding schemes, etc.
The workshop will gather representatives of international initiatives, research communities and public digital infrastructure providers, to review the existing work in GOSC, and to develop consensus about an initial concept model, framework, and roadmap for GOSC. We will discuss the needs and typical use cases from research community representatives, examine available resources and possible contributions from international e-infrastructure providers, identify the key barriers in policy, governance, standard and technique, and identify possible funding opportunities.
We welcome all GOSC stakeholders to join and contribute to the discussion. We invite attendance by:
Research community and research infrastructure representatives with needs and experience supporting global collaborations;
Digital infrastructure representatives open to participating in a global resource federation;
Experts on standards and technology developing and operating solutions for federated access to data, computing, software and applications;
Policy researchers and policy makers who can identify the key policy barriers and provide plausible solutions;
Funders who have the vision and interests of investment in the implementation of GOSC.
Participants are highly recommended to attend the session "Open Science Policy in Europe: state of play and EGI contribution", 3rd Nov, 9:45- 11:00, to have a good review about the Policy aspect of Open Science.
Note: Attendees would need to have formal registration to the main conference, so that you will get updates and notification of the conference: