On 3-4 March, the OSCARS consortium, its funded projects and Science Cluster representatives got together in Rome, for an engaging two-day meeting focused on networking, discussions and strategic planning. Sixty-eight participants joined us onsite, and nearly forty attended the event remotely.
The 1st OSCARS Annual General Meeting allowed everyone to share their perspectives on key challenges and topics that will guide our work moving forward.
Our key concept has been to strengthen community building through direct engagement, ensure alignment of expectations and activities, and identify gaps and requirements within the OSCARS consortium, between the consortium and the funded projects, and among the funded projects themselves.
After an introduction into OSCARS by the coordinator, Giovanni Lamanna,, Work Package (WP) leads presented the key milestones and achievements reached in their WP in the first year and their next steps:
- WP1 - Cluster Open Science Competence Centres (CLOCC) (Jordi Bodera)
- WP2 - Composable Research Infrastructure Services in EOSC (CRISE) (Sally Chambers)
- WP3 - Testing and Widening Uptake (TEWE) (Anca Hineola and Romain David)
- WP4 - Management, Communication & Open Calls (MACC) (Friederike Schmidt-Tremmel, Nicoletta Carboni and Rob Carrillo)
Presentations by OSCARS grantees followed in four dedicated flash-talk sessions across the two days of the event, where funded projects were grouped together on the basis of the challenges they are mostly addressing:
- Repositories
- Annotation of data & type of data
- Software, AI & tools
- Promotion of Open Science & community building beyond the clusters/RIs
Each project representative presented their project in a focused 3-minute format, detailing the specific challenges they aim to address, the proposed solutions, the expected outcomes, and the associated risks.
The flash talk sessions were combined with a set of interactive world café sessions, providing an opportunity for structured discussions in an informal setting. Participants engaged in small group conversations to answer sets of questions around common topics and challenges, exchange perspectives and report back on their results. Topics discussed included:
- Community-based Competence Centres
- Composable data services
- Mentoring and dashboard
- Communication and dissemination
- Common challenges and solutions in FAIR/data intense research, user engagement in topics such as in repositories / infrastructures / services,
- Sustainability of project results and implementation strategies
The input and feedback collected from all participants will be extremely valuable to refine upcoming work.
The event ended with a presentation by Science Cluster Board members, Andy Götz and Franciska de Jong, on the role of EOSC as a vehicle for sustainability, also exploring whether national funding could contribute to ensuring the continuity and impact of the project’s outcomes.
At the end of the 2nd day, the OSCARS General Assembly took place, to reflect on the OSCARS strategy and plan the next steps.
Looking ahead, the consortium will continue to build on the solid foundation laid during the first year. The next phase will focus on delivering the key planned activities, also reinforcing collaboration through synergistic actions across the work packages and the Science Clusters. The Consortium will engage with a wider range of stakeholders, and will strive to ensure the success of the 2nd Open Calls and the OSCARS funded projects to foster the uptake of Open Science in Europe, while contributing to advancing the European Open Science Cloud.
Overall, the event was a pivotal occasion for all involved to connect, reflect, and share knowledge.
We would like to thank all participants for their very valuable contributions and the collaborative work. We received a lot of ideas, inputs, and opinions, not only on the activities already planned but also, and especially, on future activities for the coming years.
The most widely agreed-upon conclusion was the need to maintain contact and foster cross-domain collaboration between the funded projects!