Expanding and deepening the EOSC Federation (EOSC Partnership)

Expected outcomes

• The topic does not say whether all outcomes must be addressed; treat them all as relevant.
• For each outcome (EO1 to EO3), name who will use or adopt your results (a specific group, not “industry” or “society”), how they get them, and the indicator that shows the change, with baseline, target and date.
• Use the topic's own words for each outcome, so the evaluator can tick it off.

What the scope asks for

Evaluators check the proposal against these sentences of the scope. Answer each one visibly, in the call's own words.

• “In order to carry out typical research workflows, researchers need to use a broad range of digital services such as data storage, computing, applications, and collaboration tools.”
• “Proposals should cover the following activities:. 1) Provide seamless, user-friendly access to EOSC users to digital services for typical research workflows such as data storage, computing, applications, and collaboration tools, through a fully integrated EOSC Federation-wide system.”
• “These activities should be fully concerted and aligned with related parallel activities carried out by the EOSC Federation. 2) Support the broadening, integration and structuring of the participation of research communities in the EOSC Federation through. the development and establishment of intra-Node coordination mechanisms and organisational models to enable EOSC Nodes to effectively represent broad communities and multiple organisations in…”
• “Proposals should implement the activities through the organisation of joint calls that provide grants to third parties.”
• “The joint calls should be open to organisations that participate or are interested to participate in the EOSC Federation either by operating an EOSC Node or by onboarding their identified resources to the EOSC Federation, in line with the relevant criteria set by the EOSC Federation.”
• “Proposed activities should be driven by current gaps and needs of scientific communities, digital infrastructures and service providers.”
• “Proposals should clearly demonstrate how they will contribute to addressing these needs and increasing the uptake of the EOSC Federation by researchers.”
• “The activities should comply with and contribute to the continuous update and upgrade of related EOSC Federation policies and standards, including technical and interoperability standards, the use of open standards, harmonised access and use policies, and cybersecurity.”
• “Proposals should include a robust and credible plan for the long-term, beyond the project’s duration, sustained operation of the services that they will make available in the EOSC Federation, and any other relevant project results.”
• “For what concerns provision of access to digital services by third parties funded under the joint calls, proposals should include a list of the digital services that will be supported through the joint calls.”
• “The third parties funded under the joint calls should identify the specific digital services that they will provide for access and the amount of access made available to EOSC users, allocating budget according to users’ demand and making use of the Federation-wide resource management and accounting system.”
• “These third parties should also fulfil further conditions and requirements described in the ‘Virtual Access Activities’ part of the ‘Specific Features for Research Infrastructures’ section of this Work Programme, for what concerns publicity of the access offered, determining the access costs, and setting criteria for access by EOSC users in line with the EOSC Federation access policies.”

Conditions that shape the proposal

• Other Eligible Conditions: “Subject to restrictions for the protection of European communication networks.”
• Evaluation and award: Submission and evaluation processes: “The following additions to the general award criteria apply: For the ‘Impact’ criterion, the following aspects will also be taken into account: The extent to which the proposed work incorporates the necessary coordination efforts and resources with other relevant projects and the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC)…”
• Legal and financial set-up of the grants: “Beneficiaries may provide financial support to third parties. The support to third parties can only be provided in the form of grants. Financial support provided by the participants to third parties is the primary activity of the action in order to be able to achieve its objectives. Given the type of action and its…”
• Legal and financial set-up of the grants: “The funding rate is 50% of the eligible costs. This is justified as the provision of digital services to users of the EOSC Federation and the broadening and integration of research communities in the EOSC Federation are activities with strong European added value that are typically not supported by national funding…”
• Legal and financial set-up of the grants: “At least 20% of the total financial support to third parties must be open to entities eligible for funding as described in the General Annex B, therefore it must not have any additional geographic restrictions for eligibility for funding.”
• Legal and financial set-up of the grants: “Beneficiaries will be subject to the following additional access rights: Each beneficiary must grant royalty-free access to its results to the EOSC Association for monitoring and developing policies and strategies for the European Open Science Cloud. Each beneficiary must also provide directly to the EOSC Association…”

Impact pathway and traps

• The scope expects pilots or demonstration. Name the sites, the partners who run them and what is measured there.
• Open science or data practices are named. Make the data management plan concrete: which data, which repository, when.
• Market uptake is part of the scope. Evaluators look for a credible route to market with named first adopters.
• Keep outputs, outcomes and impacts apart: what you deliver, what changes when others use it, and the long-term effect.
• Link your outcomes to the destination's expected impacts in the Work Programme. Destination impacts are long-term effects, not project deliverables.
• Name the barriers outside the project (regulation, markets, user behaviour) that could block uptake, and what you will do if they do.
• Section 2.3 (the summary canvas) is optional on this call; the old split into scientific, economic and societal impact is no longer required.