Following our first article on the activities of WP1 – Cluster Open Science Competence Centres (CLOCC) – the work package continues to strengthen the network of Community-based Competence Centres (CCCs) across the five Science Clusters, with a growing focus on their maturity, operationalisation, and long-term sustainability .
Throughout the past months, WP1 has held regular meetings with all CCCs, gathering an overview of what is working, what is not, and which best practices can be adopted across the domains and which challenges should or could be addressed together. This exercise, captured in a dedicated Lessons Learnt overview, fed directly into a dedicated CCC meeting which took place on 9 March 2026 in Seville, preceding the project's 2nd Annual General Meeting (AGM) held in Seville from 10 to 12 March 2026. A delegation from each of the five CCCs met face-to-face to discuss the outcomes of the Lessons Learnt exercise and to identify ways to further improve how the CCCs work, and insights were gathered to inform the WPs’ next steps for the project’s third year.
The discussion on the maturity of the CCCs and on the roadmaps needed for their further development continued in dedicated World Café sessions at the 2nd AGM, bringing together OSCARS and Science Clusters members, as well as representatives of the OSCARS funded projects. Five priorities emerged: operationalising the CCCs, including defining a clear entry point and accountability for tasks such as responding to community queries; agreeing a minimum viable Competence Centre, with requirements harmonised across the five Clusters; building the user community, from raising awareness and driving engagement to identifying needs and gaps through bottom-up co-design; securing strategic buy-in from Research Infrastructures and Clusters, including agreement on a shared owner for each CCC; and planning for sustainability beyond OSCARS. These outcomes will directly inform the roadmap that WP1 is now taking forward.
In continuation of the earlier LS-RI CCC paper, WP1 has also been collaborating with WP3 on a joint paper, "Competence Centre designs in EOSC Framework", which brings together perspectives from all five Science Clusters as well as the broader EOSC community. The paper aims to (i) provide an overview of the current status of the CCCs, (ii) assess the development stage and maturity of each CCC, and (iii) propose a maturation and implementation roadmap for Competence Centres across domains.
On the terminology front, the WP1/WP3-led Glossary Task Force met in Vienna on 2 October 2025 to continue its work towards an overview of relevant glossary and vocabulary initiatives, helping to avoid duplication of effort across the EOSC landscape and supporting newcomers in navigating it, and is set to publish the first version of the OSCARS Glossary in the 2nd half of 2026.
WP1 has also contributed to D3.2, reinforcing the links between the work package's terminology and competence-building activities and the wider testing and uptake work carried out under WP3.
Looking ahead, WP1's priority is to focus on CCC maturation and to devise a roadmap for their operationalisation, while keeping track of recent CCC activities to support the project's coming periodic report.
Work has also started towards D1.2 - CCCs Functioning Report, due in November 2026. A WP1 workshop has also been decided for early 2027.
Together, these efforts continue to lay the foundation for sustained Open Science adoption across Europe's research landscape, driving harmonised and scalable practices within and across the Science Clusters.