The EOSC is an ambitious programme in Europe aimed at supporting the global Open Science as a driver for enabling a new paradigm of transparent, data-driven science as well as accelerating innovation.

The EOSC will offer 1.7 million European researchers and 70 million professionals in science, technology, the humanities and social sciences a virtual environment with open and seamless services for storage, management, analysis and re-use of research data, across borders and scientific disciplines by federating existing scientific data infrastructures, currently dispersed across disciplines and the EU Member States.

The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) initiative has been proposed in 2016 by the European Commission as part of the European Cloud Initiative to build a competitive data and knowledge economy in Europe. An extensive consultation with scientific and institutional stakeholders took place in 2016 and 2017. An engagement process was initiated with a first EOSC Summit in June 2017, resulting in the EOSC Declaration endorsed by more than 70 institutions. The summary outcome of the consultation was presented in March 2018 by the European Commission in the form of a roadmap for implementing the EOSC.

The European Commission is providing financial support to implement the EOSC by means of projects under the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (Horizon 2020). Seen below are the various ongoing and future projects that will contribute to the development of the European Open Science Cloud by 2021.