Strengthening European Research Software through new partnership
We are happy to share news about a significant collaboration between the EVERSE and FAIRCORE4EOSC projects (see descriptions below), alongside the launch of the new EOSC-A Opportunity Area Expert Group, OA7: Research Software. Through this collaboration, we are committed to recognizing software as a first-class output, advancing the broader objectives of Open Science, enhancing the EOSC (European Open Science Cloud) ecosystem, and ensuring the sustainability of research software infrastructures.
Introducing OA7: Research Software
The newly formed EOSC-A Opportunity Area Expert Group, OA7: Research Software, aims to tackle the unique challenges and opportunities surrounding research software within the EOSC framework. This group recognizes software as a crucial element in research—as a tool, outcome, and object. OA7 will focus among others on ensuring the curation, quality, preservation, and adoption of best practices for research software, emphasizing the need for recognition and credit for developers.
The primary objective of this Expert Group is to address the challenges and opportunities around research software in the context of the EOSC framework.
The EOSC-A OA7 Expert Group will build on prior EOSC work to promote all aspects of research software, including metadata, quality, preservation, and reproducibility of research software. By collaborating with global initiatives like the SciCodes consortium, the Research Software Alliance (ReSA) and the Research Data Alliance, OA7 aims to advance research software as a first-class citizen in science.
Introducing OA7: Research Software
EVERSE aims to develop a framework for research software quality, driven by the research community, to support research software excellence across Europe. FAIRCORE4EOSC focuses on creating essential components for a FAIR research lifecycle within the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).
The collaboration aligns with EOSC's Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA), fostering best practices for software archiving, curation and citation using standards like CodeMeta and Software Hash intrinsic identifiers (SWHID).
We will work together to improve support for Research Software, focusing on making tools and frameworks more accessible and sustainable through community effort.
Conclusion
This collaborative effort represents a step forward in creating a more interconnected and standardized European Research Software landscape. By combining forces, EVERSE, FAIRCORE4EOSC, and OA7 will elevate the quality and impact of Research Software, aligning with broader goals of Open Science.
If you’re interested in the future of Research Software and actively contributing to Opportunity Area 7, then don’t miss out - express your interest in the form on this link to get involved: https://eosc.eu/eosc-opportunity-area-expert-groups/
Stay tuned for updates as these initiatives progress, paving the way for a unified approach to research software in Europe.
The FAIRCORE4EOSC project, launched in June 2022, is dedicated to developing and realizing core components for the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).Work Package 6 (WP6) focuses on implementing services and tools to archive, reference, describe, and cite research software, aligning with the recommendations and strategic plan outlined in the SIRS (Scholarly Infrastructures of Research Software) report. The project is actively developing and maintaining Research Software APIs and Connectors (RSAC) to ensure the long-term preservation of research software across various disciplines within the Software Heritage archive. The FAIRCORE4EOSC components also include the SWHM, a mirror of the Software Heritage universal source code archive for EOSC in Greece, operated by GRNET.
To accomplish these objectives, Software Heritage and INRIA is leading the WP6 collaboration with a panel of partners, including CERN (InvenioRDM, Zenodo), LZI (Dagstuhl), FIZ (swMath), GRNET, OpenAire, KNAW-DANS (DataVerse), IES-Inria (Episciences), GWDG, and DataCite.
Initiated in March 2024, the European Virtual Institute for Research Software Excellence aims to elevate the recognition of research software professionals in Europe and beyond. To achieve this EVERSE is creating the RSQkit, a toolkit on Research Software Quality that contains guidelines, advise and best practices; a reference model for research software; a recognition and reward framework to effectively capture contributions on training and research software activities; and finally a Network where all the collected EVERSE expertise are curated together with the communities (life sciences, environmental sciences, photon & neutron science, astronomy & particle physics, social sciences & humanities). EVERSE is coordinated by CERTH and BSC and comprises 18 partners representing 10 countries across Europe.
