Focus on Open Science

Chapter XXI: Graz

Dr. Ignasi Labastida i Juan, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain

Ignasi Labastida has a PhD in Physics. He is the Head of the Research Unit at the University of Barcelona's Learning and Research Resources Centre (CRAI) where he also leads the Office for the Dissemination of Knowledge. He is currently chairing the Board of SPARC Europe and he is a member of the Steering Committee of the Info and Open Access Policy Group at the LERU (League of European Research Universities). He is the co-author of the LERU Roadmap for Research Data and the LERU Roadmap on Open Science

Presentation:

Paving the way for adopting FAIR Data in a university

Researchers are being aware of the need to share their research data but there is still a lot of misinformation about how to do it. Universities should provide information, training, infrastructure and services to make it possible. It is not just a question of posting some spreadsheets in a repository it goes far beyond. The FAIR principles set some criteria that can be followed by researchers and institutions to reach the ultimate goal: to have research data publicly available to be reused by others to reproduce results and to build upon them.

Dr. Marta Teperek, TU Delft, The Netherlands

Marta did a PhD in molecular biology at the University of Cambridge. In 2015 she joined the Office of Scholarly Communication at the University of Cambridge and led the creation and development of the Research Data Management Facility, which supported researchers in good management and sharing of research data. In 2017 Marta moved to TU Delft in Netherlands, where she is leading the Data Stewardship project. Marta serves on the Editorial Board of the Data Science Journal and Co-Chairs the Research Data Alliance Libraries for Research Data Interest Group. She regularly publishes blog posts and peer-reviewed publications on topics of data management and open science and is professionally active on Twitter.

Twitter: @martateperek

ORCiD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8520-5598es.

Presentation:

Towards FAIR data: what’s FAIR and what’s unfair?

Who hasn't heard about FAIR? FAIR data has become the new buzzword within research communities: funders, publishers, research institutions... all require that researchers make their research data FAIR: Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable. But what do researchers think about FAIR? What does FAIR really mean to them in practice? I will use a case study from TU Delft to talk about institutional support for FAIR data and reflect on some FAIR and unFAIR approaches to support the research community in their transition to the FAIRer world.

Paolo Budroni, University Library of Technical University of Vienna

Paolo Budroni, member of staff of University Library of Technical University of Vienna, in charge of International Projects and Change Management. Member of the EOSC Secretariat, Sub Task Researchers Engagement, based at TU-Wien. Counselling Partner of University of Vienna, H2020 Project EOSC Pillar. He holds a PhD in Philosophy, Art History, and Romance Philology and an education degree in Foreign Trade at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU). 

Among his areas of expertise are research data management, the architecture of digital asset management systems, current research information systems and cost development in life cycle management of data. He is also advising research institutions in Europe in data management policy development and alignment. Paolo Budroni is Austrian National Delegate in the E-Infrastructure Reflection Group (E-IRG) , member of board of the Austrian RDA National Node , chair of the General Assembly of E-Infrastructures Austria, member of board of Open Education Austria (advanced library services) , registered TAIEX Expert, coordinator of the Austrian Open Science Support Group (AOSSG). He represents the TU Wien at COAR (Confederation of Open Access Repositories).

Presentation:

Towards the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC): reflections on a local basis for domestic infrastructures

In November 2018, the European Commission launched the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) at the University of Vienna. The EOSC is a process of making research data in Europe accessible to all researchers under the same conditions of use and usage;  it gives a strong push in Europe towards a culture of open research data that are findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR);  it fosters networking within the existing European data infrastructures, integrating high-capacity cloud solutions, and in due course, widening the scope of these services to include users from the public sector and industry.

Understanding the EOSC structure is a first step in recognizing the opportunities offered by the newly launched EOSC. This presentation offers some reflections for a better understanding of the realization of the EOSC at the present stage, including the activities of the newly established EOSC Secretariat and the so called “5b-EOSC Supporting Projects” (with special focus on EOSC Pillar). 

Dr. Stefanie Lindstaedt

Stefanie Lindstaedt is the Head of the Institute for Interactive Systems & Data Science (ISDS) at Graz University of Technology and CEO of Know-Center (www.know-center.at), Austria‘s leading Research Center for Data-driven business and Big Data Analytics. Stefanie earned her habilitation in Computer Science from Graz University of Technology (Austria), where she has been teaching undergraduate and graduate courses since 2002. She holds an M.S. and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Colorado at Boulder (USA).  She has a strong background in computer science, especially artificial intelligence. Her research focus is the integration of data-driven approaches (e.g., machine learning, neural networks) with knowledge-based models (e.g., ontologies, engineering models) and human computer interaction. 

Presentation:

Researcher-led FAIR services at TU Graz

Researchers’ perspectives on Research Data Management (RDM) are diverse and often discipline specific, but there are many issues which occur across contexts. This talk will discuss TU Graz’s researcher-led approach to implementing FAIR data services, as part of the Digital TU Graz project, to: (i) enable FAIR data through efficient research data management, (ii) develop state-of-the-art disciplinary and cross-disciplinary tools and services and (iii) boost the impact and reputation of TU Graz by increasing international visibility and re-usability of research. The talk will detail and reflect upon progress-to-date at TU Graz, from knowledge-gathering (survey/interviews) and policy development to the conception and implementation of open source tools including InvenioRDM and CyVerse. 

Dr. Tiziana Ferrari

Tiziana is Technical Director at the EGI Foundation, the coordinating body of EGI, the federated e-Infrastructure set up to provide advanced computing services for data-driven research and innovation. Through its partners at European and international level and strategic collaborations with research infrastructures, EGI leads innovation in high-throughput computing, cloud, data management and security.

Since January 2018, she is project coordinator of EOSC-hub, the EC funded project bringing together an extensive group of national and international service providers and research infrastructures to create the EOSC Hub: a central contact point for European researchers and innovators to discover, access, use and reuse a broad spectrum of resources for advanced data-driven research. Tiziana was formerly Chief Operations Officer of EGI, taking care of the operations coordination of the technical infrastructure, one the largest computing platforms for research in the world.

She is a promoter of the Open Science Commons and participated in the definition of the EGI governance and service portfolio in the framework of the EGI_DS project. Tiziana holds a PhD in Electronics and Data Communications Engineering from the Universita’ degli Studi in Bologna.

Presentation:

The Ascent of Open Science and the European Open Science Cloud

Open science is becoming more and more part of the daily practice in conducting science. Around the world, researchers are increasingly aware of the value and importance of open science. As scientific research becomes highly data-driven and dependent on computing, scientists are conscious of the growing need to share data, software and infrastructure to reduce wasteful duplication and increase economies of scale. In an ideal world, every step of the research process would be public and transparent – the full methodology and all the tools used, as well as the data, would be accessible to the public and all groups without restriction, enabling reproducibility and refinement by other scientists.

This presentation will show case a number of success stories indicating how federated digital infrastructure, that have been sustained by the member states and the European Commission, have become an indispensable tool to enable collaboration and sharing.

The European Open Science Cloud was launched by the European Commission in 2016 aiming to (1) increase the ability to exploit research data across scientific disciplines and between the public and private sector, (2) interconnect existing and new digital infrastructures in Europe and (3) support open science.

After 3 years from the launch the EOSC-hub project (https://www.eosc-hub.eu/) - the first and the largest of the EOSC implementation projects of the H220 funding programme, has succeeded in delivering some of the building blocks like the EOSC portal and Marketplace, tools and processes for federating data and services providers, harmonized policies, a federated AAI infrastructure, Competence Centres to support research infrastructures in their complex digital needs, interoperability guidelines and the Early Adopter Programme to provide expert support and service capacity to research projects.

The presentation will conclude with an overview of the EOSC roadmap towards a fully operational entity.