Following our first article on the activities of WP3 – Testing and Widening Uptake – the work package continues to broaden Open Science adoption and FAIR data implementation across the research community, while strengthening its ties with the other OSCARS work packages.
WP3 has submitted D3.2 - EOSC Competence Networks, reinforcing the links between terminology and competence-building activities and the wider testing and uptake work carried out under the work package. Work on terminology also continued at the International Data Week 2025 (IDW2025) at the RDA 25th Plenary, where WP3 contributed by organising a session on "Data management terminologies: from challenges to community recommendations". This work is feeding into a paper on data management terminologies - from challenges to community recommendations - which is currently taking shape as a rolling, collaboratively-drafted set of notes. Building on this work, WP3 is also contributing to broader discussions on research data quality, metadata harmonisation and reproducibility that are driven by several international initiatives, including EOSC, the Research Data Alliance (RDA) and other international Open Science communities.
Reflecting its cross-cutting role, WP3 has contributed to activities led by other work packages: the Glossary Task Force under WP1, the Composability Workshop under WP2, and the Open Science article series under WP4. WP3 has also contributed to the manuscript "Competence Centre designs in EOSC Framework", developed jointly with WP1.
To better understand funded projects’ needs, WP3 prepared and shared a form collecting feedback on FAIR and Data Management practices across funded projects.
In parallel, WP3 developed common guidance for Competence Centres, covering maturity assessment, minimum metadata requirements, and reusable Data Management Plans, and supporting a more consistent adoption of FAIR practices . These activities contribute to the long-term vision of Competence Centres as sustainable entry points for FAIR support and EOSC adoption as well as a more harmonised, interoperable and coherent FAIR ecosystem across the Science Cluster community and beyond.
Discussions around the implementation of the Data Steward Registry have been carried out with the Zenodo team at CERN - a key step towards discovering, connecting and recognising data stewards across Europe, providing contacts, roles and expertise. The functional specifications of the registry have been further refined, with the objective of improving discoverability of expertise and strengthening networking between data stewards across the science community and supporting the uptake of FAIR data stewardship practices. (The document will be available on Zenodo in September).
WP3 also coordinated the work towards publication of a White Paper drawing on insights from the 1st AGM, and took part in the 2025 Coordination meeting of EOSC-related projects funded under Horizon Europe, contributing to the wider dialogue across the EOSC project landscape. WP3 further contributed to cross-project collaboration through the preparation of a persistent identifier article and continued exchanges with EOSC and international initiatives working on FAIR implementation, interoperability, governance and Competence Centre sustainability.
In recognition of her expertise, Anca Hienola, WP3 co-lead, was appointed a member of the IPCC Task Group on Data Support for Climate Change Assessments. WP3 also further strengthened its engagement in international Open Science initiatives, including active participation in the EOSC Task Force on FAIR Metrics and Digital Objects, the RDA Technical Advisory Board (TAB), and the co-chairing of the RDA Professionalising Data Stewardship and Sensitive Data Interest Groups.
WP3 also boosted its visibility within the international Open Science landscape. A Birds of a Feather session entitled "Data Quality: Towards Cross-domain Harmonisation, Provenance-aware Approaches, Uncertainty Management and Interoperable Practices" was accepted for the 27th RDA Plenary in October 2026, further extending OSCARS' contribution to community discussions on FAIR implementation, interoperability and data quality across scientific domains.
In parallel, WP3 developed several complementary outputs, including guidance on Competence Centre maturity, scientific software sustainability and interoperability, reinforcing the long-term impact of the work package beyond its formal deliverables. These activities also contribute to the definition of sustainable models for Competence Centres beyond the lifetime of individual projects.
As an example, WP3 contributed to the Sustainable Scientific Software (S³) School by delivering training and coordinating the collaborative development of a practical checklist through a radical collaboration approach bringing together researchers, Research Software Engineers and data stewards to support sustainable research software practices. The resulting community manuscript is currently being finalised for submission.
On the publications front, D3.3 - Support activities & collaborations for EOSC Science Clusters Report has been published, mapping how Open Science support activities are organised across Horizon Europe projects and the five Science Clusters – covering training, FAIR data and metadata support, interoperability, governance and EOSC Node integration. The deliverable states that coordination across the ecosystem is relatively well established, particularly at policy level, while integration remains more limited, uneven and dependent on specific initiatives or individual efforts. It identifies four structural gaps: duplication of support activities, fragmentation of support structures, wide diversity in onboarding pathways, and differing FAIR and terminology practices across domains. The document also highlights what already works well: Competence Centres, composable services, and cross-cluster initiatives, such as the Glossaries Task Force, which all show that structured collaboration around shared objectives delivers concrete, reusable outcomes. Rather than pointing to new concepts, D3.3 argues for upscaling and stabilising these existing approaches, and exploring mechanisms such as a Support Activities Coordination Forum to boost more continuous alignment across projects and clusters.
OSCARS D3.6 - Interim Policy Briefing on the future of EOSC, has also been published. Using as a starting point the signature of the EOSC Federation MoU in November 2025, which made the European Open Science Cloud operational, D3.6 turns to the next challenge: how existing efforts can connect, integrate and outlast the projects that created them. Drawing on operational experience from OSCARS' cascading grants and Community-based Competence Centres across the five Science Clusters, the briefing identifies three priorities - interoperable onboarding pathways, explicit support for integration, and systematic reuse of existing resources - framing EOSC's challenge going forward not simply as growth, but as functioning as a coherent, federated ecosystem that researchers and communities can realistically navigate, use and sustain over time.
Overall, WP3 increasingly acts as a bridge between OSCARS, EOSC and international Open Science initiatives, helping to align community practices, strengthening interoperability and maximising the long-term uptake of project outcomes.