At the OSCARS webinar on “EOSC Federation and the Science Cluster EOSC Nodes & Hubs: Onboarding of Services”, Alberto Iess, Technical Coordinator of the ESCAPE Science Cluster, presented how ESCAPE supports the integration of astronomy, astroparticle and particle physics services within the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).
ESCAPE is one of the five Science Clusters and brings together major research infrastructures in astronomy and particle physics. While the cluster itself is not formally an EOSC node, one of the signatories (CERN) of its collaboration agreements operates a thematic EOSC node, ensuring alignment with the broader EOSC Federation.
Supporting the uptake of Open Science in Europe
ESCAPE deploys cooperative actions and supports a work programme towards the uptake of Open Science in Europe.
Through dedicated working groups with expertise in scientific research software, interoperability standards in astronomy, virtual research environments, and citizen science, and the newly established community-based Competence Centre , ESCAPE provides mentoring and technical pathways to help OSCARS-funded and other EOSC-related projects in the task of making their results FAIR – findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable – within EOSC.
Built as a community on Zenodo, a service hosted by CERN and onboarded in EOSC, the ESCAPE Open-Source Scientific Software Repository (ESCAPE OSSR) provides a sustainable, open-access repository for sharing scientific software, datasets, digital libraries for data analysis, publications and other project outputs in a FAIR manner. An eOSSR Python library and software guidelines and recommendations are also provided, as well as a validation tool for software metadata, while a structured review process ensures quality and compliance before publication.
The ESCAPE Virtual Research Environment (VRE) hosted at CERN and selected as a pilot in the EOSC Federation, allows sharing containerised software to run analyses and make them discoverable. The VRE, which is built upon a number of layers, also provides a notebook interface, access to federated distributed storage, and computing resources, allowing researchers to access ready-to-use environments across infrastructures and communities. More specifically, it includes:
- A federated and reliable AAI – Authentication and Authorisation service;
- The ESCAPE Data Lake (Rucio), a federated distributed storage solution, providing functionalities for data injection and replication through the Rucio Data Management framework;
- A computing cluster supplying the processing power to run full reproducible analyses with REANA;
- CVMFS, a read-only file system designed to distribute software, and more;
- JupyterHub, a notebook interface with containerised environments to hide the infrastructure’s complexity from the user.
Moreover, the Virtual Observatory working group supports access to large astronomy data catalogues, tools and services through established interoperability frameworks. To attain this goal, the VO organizes dedicated technology forums and training events for scientists and data providers.
Finally, another working group with Citizen Science expertise provides mentoring for the design and implementation of citizen science activities, engaging the general public to achieve results of high scientific impact.
A pathway to more Open Science for OSCARS funded projects
Through its working groups and competence centre, ESCAPE supports OSCARS-funded projects, which are seeking to expose their services within EOSC. By supporting FAIR software publication, containerisation, interoperability standards, and sustainable repository integration, the cluster provides a clear pathway to Open Science practices, from project results to discoverability within the EOSC ecosystem.
If your project develops services for astronomy, particle physics, or in related cross-domain areas, get in touch with the ESCAPE Competence Centre to identify a clear route from results to long-term impact.