Federation with the EOSC EU Node

The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) is building a federated ecosystem that enables researchers to discover, access, combine, and reuse research data and services across disciplines, institutions, and national borders. The German EOSC Node serves as Germany’s national gateway to this federation, as EOSC is organized as a federation of interoperable nodes rather than a single infrastructure. An EOSC Node is a collection of services provided by research infrastructures and institutions, accessible through common authentication, trust relationships and federation mechanisms for European researchers.  TA2-M1 is the KonsortSWD’s contribution to establishing sustainable participation in the EOSC EU Node as the operational platform of the EOSC Federation in order to increase the visibility of KonsortSWD research data and services in Europe. The measure will explore, design and implement a technical federation of selected Research Data Centers (RDCs) or data search engine providers (e.g., GESIS search engine) with the EOSC EU Node. To reduce complexity, the focus will be on the mapping of metadata schema available within KonsortSWD onto the EOSC EU Node metadata schema. Based on the results, the search indexes on both sides, KonsortSWD data providers and EOSC EU Node, can be extended. In addition to technical aspects, we will also cope with the rules for participation, access policies, etc. as defined in the EOSC Federation handbook.

Why is EOSC EU Node federation important?

Research data infrastructures have evolved independently. Europe’s challenge is not the lack of research data but the fragmentation of data across institutions, countries, disciplines, and legal frameworks. EOSC seeks to overcome these barriers by enabling secure, trustworthy, and interoperable access to distributed research resources while respecting values such as data protection, transparency, and data sovereignty.

EOSC addresses this fragmentation through a federation model based on shared interoperability principles across four complementary interoperability dimensions: Technical, Semantic, Organizational, and Legal.

TA-M2 focusses on increasing the visibility of KonsortSWD research data on the European level.

Who benefits?

TA2M1 serves organizations responsible for providing research data and digital research services, such as Research Data Centers (RDCs) from KonsortSWD NFDI4Society and across NFDI consortia.

Researchers benefit directly through improved discoverability of the data they are looking for, interoperability, and cross-border access to research resources.

What is available today?

• Although the German EOSC Node is still under development, several foundational outputs are already being produced.
• Strategic roadmapp of the NFDI: a structured roadmap for NFDI services to participate in the EOSC Federation.
• Metadata analysis and mapping: Current work analyses the compatibility between KonsortSWD metadata and EOSC metadata models, including OpenAIRE as a foundation for interoperable metadata exchange.
• Pilot implementations: Initial implementation through prototype services, metadata harvesting, OAI-PMH interfaces, and Knowledge Graph integration, providing early validation of the proposed approach.
• Governance and coordination: TA2M1 actively contributes to the EOSC Working Group’s coordination and other NFDI sections.

Added value

Instead of requiring every organization to independently interpret EOSC documentation, negotiate technical standards, and design onboarding procedures, TA2M1 develops reusable solutions that can be adopted across multiple infrastructures and reducing duplication of implementation effort.

The work provides value by increasing the visibility of German research data within Europe, improving interoperability between independent infrastructures, supporting FAIR implementation, enabling participation in the EOSC Federation without requiring organisations to redesign their existing infrastructures, strengthening collaboration between NFDI consortia and European partners.

Problems addressed

TA2M1 responds to several challenges faced by research infrastructures, such as complex interoperability requirements due to the heterogeneity of the metadata schemas used. TA2M1 responses by developing mappings, onboarding guidance, and implementation recommendations aligned with the EOSC Interoperability Framework.

Current phase

The current phase focuses on establishing the foundations required for federation. Activities include:

• analysing EOSC interoperability requirements;
• developing metadata mappings;
• developing APIs through which rich metadata records from KonsortSWD will be harvested by EOSC (such as an OAI-PMH endpoint to OpenAIRE which is regularly harvested by EOSC)
• guidelines for KonsortSWD RDCs on how can metadata can be improved to achieve more visibility at EOSC
• designing onboarding workflows;
• supporting the German EOSC Node prototype;
• coordinating stakeholders;
• validating integration approaches through pilot implementations.

Expected outcomes

By the completion of the current implementation phase, TA2M1 aims to provide:

• Exploration: Analyse the EOSC EU Node metadata schema, APIs, protocols, and federation requirements.
• Conceptualization: Develop a Metadata Mapping Concept describing how metadata of selected KonsortSWD RDCs map to the EOSC EU Node metadata model, respectively its interoperability framework.
• Implementation: Deploy the metadata mappings for selected RDCs, following the EOSC Federation Handbook, and update the relevant search indexes.
• Evaluation & Guideline: Evaluate the implementation and produce an Evaluation Report and Implementation Guideline to support other NFDI consortia and RDCs in connecting to the EOSC EU Node.