Science Library Pad: Open Science Cloud launched by European Commission

April 20, 2016

On April 19, 2016 the European Commission announced many initiatives under the umbrella of “Digitise Europe”. Some are related to open science.

As of 2016: creating a European Open Science Cloud
2017: opening up by default all scientific data produced by future projects under the €77 billion Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme
The public and private investment needed to implement the European Cloud Initiative is estimated at €6.7 billion. The Commission estimates that, overall, €2 billion in Horizon 2020 funding will be allocated to the European Cloud initiative. The estimation of the required additional public and private investment is €4.7 billion in the period of 5 years.

Previously open scientific data was just a pilot in Horizon 2020, now it will become a requirement.

This is only one element of the larger open science initiative https://ec.europa.eu/research/openscience/index.cfm?pg=home

The next item coming from the open science initiative will be the Open Science Policy Platform which will support policy formulation and implementation https://ec.europa.eu/research/openscience/index.cfm?pg=open-science-policy-platform

It is also worth noting that on the Open Access side, the Amsterdam Call for Action on Open Science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amsterdam_Call_for_Action_on_Open_Science was issued as part of an Open Science Conference April 4-5, 2016 and is expected to go to the Competitiveness Council on May 27, 2016. It currently calls for 100% open access in Europe by 2020.