About us

What is EOSC EDEN?

The EOSC EDEN project (grant agreement nr.101188015) seeks to enhance digital preservation strategies at European and National level. At its core, the project will create a comprehensive framework to identify what data are candidates for digital preservation. This involves setting standards and protocols for long-term data preservation, which will be determined through an assessment of data usage, quality, and the data’s benefits to science and society. 

In addition to the framework, the EOSC EDEN project aims to develop a model for re-appraisal of data throughout its lifecycle. The model’s usability and practicality will be assessed through relevant communities (the early adopters), which will also help in developing tools and services to automate certain preservation actions. The model for re-appraisal will support the framework for digital preservation by ensuring that preservation efforts remain relevant over time.

How will this project contribute to the European Open Science Cloud?

All of this will be done in the context of EOSC, the European Open Science Cloud, which is developing a web of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data and services for science in Europe. Hence, the EOSC EDEN project will build a registry to integrate tools and services from trustworthy repositories into the EOSC, enhancing and developing new services to automate preservation and curation actions. The project will provide training and outreach activities to engage other relevant communities in testing and validating the project outcomes. 
 


“EOSC EDEN has the opportunity to become the reference point in Europe for digital preservation and curation practices. Different communities and scientific disciplines tend to have their own data quality standards, curation procedures and digital preservation methodologies. Our mission is to understand the current landscape, identify common standards and practices, and provide solutions and new approaches that help institutions in selecting and preserving high-quality FAIR research outputs. All this will also help to reduce the costs of preservation and increase the future re-usability of data,”

says Anu Märkälä, EOSC EDEN Coordinator and Project Manager, CSC.
 


The EOSC EDEN consortium is a diverse assembly of 16 organizations that have expertise in digital preservation, data quality, curation, and FAIR data management and services. Additionally, seven scientific disciplines are represented in the consortium: Climate Simulations; Earth and Environmental Sciences; Food Sciences; High-Energy Physics; Life Sciences and Bioinformatics; Linguistics; and Social Sciences. 
 

Learn more about EOSC EDEN on the CORDIS Portal

Led by TIB with contributions from CSC, KNAW, UiT, KU Leuven, UESSEX-UKDA, CERN, DKRZ, SURF, UBREMEN, CODATA, Arkivun, PMT and SIB, WP1 has the core focus of developing and establishing a data and process framework for long-term digital preservation. The work package develops processes as requirements for implementation, supporting the work of WP2, as well as community adaptation, which in turn supports the work of WP3 and WP4. The framework developed by the work package targets to identify candidates to digital preservation based on use, benefit and quality.
Overall, the tasks of the work package are as follows:

  • Perform a landscape analysis of existing frameworks, guidelines and practices for identification, selection, and appraisal of data for long-term preservation.
  • Collect and transform user needs into requirements.
  • Develop and establish a framework to identify what data are candidates to long-term preservation based  on use, benefit, and quality.
  • Develop a model for re-appraisal points along data lifecycle and test usability.

 






 

Led by KNAW with contributions from CSC, TIB, UiT, KU Leuven, CERN, SURF, UBREMEN, Arkivum and PMT, WP2 uses input from WP1 and WP3, and transforms the created requirements into system specifications. The work package focuses on services and tools that are used for long-term access and preservation services.
Overall, the tasks of the work package are as follows:

  • Transform collected requirements into systems specifications, taking inputs from WP1 and WP3 into account.
  • Create a registry to expose long term preservation services to the EOSC Federation and to guide users to select the ones that fit their needs.
  • Ensure that trustworthy repositories established as a network by the FIDELIS project, are easily found, identified, and characterised in the registry.
  • Create and/or enhance services to automate curation and preservation actions and ensure that they are harmonised and standardised and are available as a machine-actionable resource for the community.
  • Identify and define standards and protocols to submit and exchange candidate information packages for long-term preservation.
  • Implement and test the developed services through use cases.








 

Led by UiT with contributions from TIB, KNAW, UESSEX-UKDA, CERN, DKRZ, SURF, UBREMEN, PMT PL, PMT and SIB, WP3 links the project to discipline and data-type specific requirements and needs. The work package supports the work of WP1 and WP2 by iteratively providing requirements for long-term preservation and data quality  and by testing and validating key outputs delivered. 
Overall, the tasks of the work package are as follows:

  • Define and iteratively provide discipline-specific,cross-disciplinary, and data-type specific requirements for long-term preservation and data quality to WP1 and WP2.
  • Validate and enhance the new long-term preservation framework (WP1) and fit-for-purpose tools (WP2) via user journey maps and pilot testing.
  • Provide a support-kit to empower discipline and data type-oriented communities to adopt, extend and use the new long-term preservation framework (WP1) and fit-for-purpose tools (WP2).





 

Led by KU Leuven with contributions from CSC, TIB, KNAW, UiT, UESSEX-UKDA, CERN, DKRZ, SURF, UBREMEN, CODATA, OPFNL, Arkivum, PMT and SIB, WP4 supports the other work packages in engaging with communities and experts. The work package supports the other WPs by focusing on increasing awareness, knowledge and also uptake in the EOSC ecosystem, and highlighting EOSC EDEN’s outputs to a wider audience.
Overall, the tasks of the work package are as follows:

  • Support the other WPs in effectively engaging with communities and experts gathering input and feedback during the development, testing and validation cycles of the data and process framework (WP1), the services and tools (WP2), and discipline-specific requirements, validation, and future use (WP3) concerning long-term preservation.
  • Establish an expert curation and specialist network with diverse organisational representations. Read more here.
  • Increase awareness, knowledge and uptake of long-term preservation actions and processes in the EOSC ecosystem to ensure that digital objects remain understandable and usable to their community of users as time passes.



     

WP5 is the project coordination and management work package, led by CSC with contributions from TIB, KNAW, UiT, KU Leuven, UESSEX-UKDA, CERN, DKRZ, SURF, UBREMEN, CODATA, Arkivum, PMT and SIB. The work package makes sure that the project is progressing timely and according to expectations. The work package also ensures the strategic alignment of EDEN activities with other relevant initiatives and its sister project FIDELIS. WP5 steers the technical tasks of the project and provides a sustainability and exploitation plan for the project results. 
Overall, the tasks of the work package are as follows:

  • Project management (incl.finances, internal communication, project governance etc.)
  • Steer and coordinate the technical activities of the project
  • Ensure the effectiveness of the interaction with the EAB and incorporate its input
  • Ensure strategic alignment with the EOSC Partnership and other relevant strategic initiatives in Europe (including the EOSC-01-03 project), also via the EAB.
  • Define sustainability and exploitation of the project results beyond the project duration.







 

What is the FIDELIS project?

The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) aims to develop a web of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data and services for science in Europe. The FIDELIS project (grant agreement no. 101188078) will enhance the sustainability of EOSC, by establishing a network of healthy, vibrant and self-sustaining trustworthy digital repositories (TDRs).

Within its three-year lifetime, FIDELIS project establishes and operates a European network of TDRs, fostering their harmonisation and interoperability across repositories.It will provide a framework to support repositories in becoming and remaining trustworthy and FAIR-enabling over time. FIDELIS also contributes to the upskilling of repositories and expansion of TDR network, by offering a series of training and financial support programme. 



“FIDELIS represents a significant step forward in ensuring the long-term sustainability and trustworthiness of digital repositories within the European Open Science Cloud. By harmonising standards, fostering interoperability, and building a resilient network of trusted repositories, FIDELIS will lay a solid foundation for preserving Europe’s research data assets for generations to come. This initiative not only strengthens EOSC’s capacity to support data-driven science but also advances open science practices on a European and global scale,”

says Damien Lecarpentier, FIDELIS Project Coordinator and Director of International Collaboration and Partnerships Unit at CSC.

 

The FIDELIS consortium is composed of 24 organisations from across Europe that cover generic digital repositories at national level in Finland, France, Norway, and Serbia and discipline-specific repositories from Social Sciences and Humanities, Biomedical Sciences, Environmental Sciences and Physical Sciences. Several FIDELIS partners offer expertise in research outreach, stakeholder engagement, capacity building and policy making.

Learn more about FIDELIS on the CORDIS portal

Join our Zenodo Community!
 

Led by CSC, with contributions from KNAW-DANS, Sikt, TAU-FSD, and Trust-IT, Pillar 1 ensures the project is well-organised and progressing as planned. The Pillar manages the day-to-day administration, maintains co-working tools, defines and monitors quality and risk management procedures, and facilitates and oversees reporting to the European Commission. It also organises project meetings and tracks progress to keep the consortium aligned.
Pillar 1 establishes and supports the project’s governance bodies, including the General Assembly and Project Management Board, and coordinates the External Advisory Board to provide expert guidance and strategic advice.
Through these activities, Pillar 1 creates a strong management framework, ensures compliance with requirements, and enables partners to focus on delivering the project’s objectives.

*CSC = CSC – IT Center for Science Ltd.
**KNAW-DANS = The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science - Dutch national centre of expertise and repository for research data
***Sikt = Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research
****TAU-FSD = The Finnish Social Science Data Archive at Tampere University
 

The goal of Pillar 2 is to establish a network of trustworthy digital repositories (TDRs) in a way that is sustainable in the long term, so that the network can remain active and valuable for the TDRs that are part of it, even after the end of the FIDELIS project. The goal of this network is to connect TDRs within Europe so that they can learn of and from each other. Moreover, membership gives access to other benefits such as trainings and webinars catered to the members of the network.

Trustworthy digital repositories (TDRs) are a critical element in EOSC and also in the wider research ecosystem. TDRs provide sustained access to FAIR research data and other digital objects. Pillar 3 fosters harmonisation and interoperability across TDRs to support federation of repositories in the context of EOSC. 
Pillar 3 has developed the Transparent Trustworthy Repository Attributes Matrix (TTRAM) as a reference model for alignment and cooperation. The TTRAM is designed to harmonise, inform and validate existing TDR criteria, not to replace them. Pillar 3 will support repository benchmarking and provide building blocks for technical and organisational federation as well as recommendations for best practices. For example, possibilities for semantic interoperability are explored through use cases. In all areas of work, Pillar 3 will collect and incorporate community feedback. 
Pillar 3 is led by TAU-FSD and Sikt, with contributions from UKDS-UESSEX, KNAW-DANS, CSC, UiT, GESIS, ELIXIR, INRAE, DKRZ, UBREMEN, CU, UNIPD, SIB, and ESFR.
 

One of the main objectives of the FIDELIS project is to strengthen the upskilling of repositories and expansion of the Network through an active training and support programme. Pillar 4 is responsible for the creation and delivery of all training and support activities in the project. Three different types of training and support are identified: Support for the Adoption of Solutions, a peer-to-peer mentoring programme, and open training activities. Support will include a mix of cascading grants, expert guidance, and peer exchange and cover topics that can be mapped to the different Activities and Functions of Pillar 3’s TTRAM. More information on the training and currently available opportunities can be found in the website’s Training and Support Area.
Pillar 4 is led by KNAW-DANS, with contributions from TAU-FSD, UEDIN-DCC, GESIS, UoB, CLARIN, CSIC, TUGdansk, SIB, UiT, MESR, ESRF, CU, and Trust-IT. 
 

Pillar 5 brings together all the other pillar activities, by ensuring effective communication to the widest audience and raising awareness of the project activities. Whether supporting and promoting the set up of TDR Network, or mentoring and training activities,  Pillar 5 also ensures that open calls run smoothly and in full transparency. Additional activities involve the set up of mechanisms to ensure dialogue with the EOSC Partnership and the broad network of data intensive projects.
Pillar 5 is led by Trust-IT, with contributions from DANS-KNAW, CSC, and CESSDA.