Supporting the long-term resilience and European sovereignty of critical research data and knowledge repositories and scientific services for the life sciences

Expected Outcome:

Proposals are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

• Increased resilience and sovereignty of critical European research data and knowledge repositories and scientific services used in the life sciences^[1], including in particular biomedical and biomolecular related disciplines.
• Further integration of trusted, FAIR data^[2] and research infrastructures in the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC)^[3] Federation.
• Increased European leadership and contribution to international collaboration frameworks supporting data infrastructures.

Scope:

Europe is home to some of the world’s key research data repositories, scientific services and facilities that are indispensable for the life sciences.

Despite their crucial role in advancing the life sciences in Europe, such infrastructures are often vulnerable to risks that can critically impair their sustainable operation and serving of the community, such as overdependence on precarious funding streams, overreliance on a too limited number of experts or organisations for the operation and further development of technical components or features that could otherwise benefit from more distributed solutions and appropriate safety nets against ‘single points of failure’.

EOSC is the Common European Data Space for research, a flagship initiative to transform Europe’s landscape of research data and knowledge repositories and scientific services towards a more coherent and harmonised common space of high-quality, FAIR research data, knowledge and interoperable services. It aims to benefit research infrastructures by increased economies of scale, higher efficiencies and sharing of resources and costs, and to benefit researchers by facilitating access to quality services and enabling research data and knowledge sharing and reuse within and across disciplines and borders in Europe.

The aim of this action is to increase the resilience of key research data and knowledge repositories and services used in the life sciences, i) by supporting their participation and integration into the EOSC Federation as well as relevant European or global collaborative frameworks to interconnect, share and scale resources, and ii) by supporting a vibrant broad community of infrastructure operators that diversifies and enriches these services, strengthening their operational sustainability and expanding their uptake by end-users.

The action targets critical research, data and knowledge infrastructures in the life sciences as well as other key facilities that serve the needs of researchers in the life sciences.

Proposals should address all the following activities:

• Reinforce the integration in the EOSC Federation of key data and research infrastructures and scientific service providers that serve the needs of the life sciences. Activities should include fully operational contribution to and adoption of EOSC federating capabilities, interconnection of relevant data and services within the EOSC Federation, and development of concrete use cases that demonstrate increased efficiencies and economies of scale across multiple EOSC Nodes as well as scientific use cases to demonstrate the value of the EOSC Federation for researchers and other end-users in the life sciences and for cross-discipline research.
• Develop and deploy solutions and set up collaborations and agreements that enable the broader community to sustain and enrich these repositories and services, strengthening technical reliability, cybersecurity and trusted access mechanisms, and reducing risks of service interruption.
• Develop and demonstrate business and financing models that minimise the risks of service downgrades or disruptions, such as diversifying funding sources, federating technical components and features across multiple competent organisations, and further expanding their user base beyond researchers.
• Support the participation in European or global collaborative initiatives or frameworks that aim to diversify funding sources and support load sharing and balancing commitments across multiple actors in EU Member States, Associated Countries and globally, such as the Global Biodata Coalition (GBC)^[4].
• Support training and upskilling programmes for technical and scientific staff needed for operation of these resources, and aiming to avoid loss of critical expertise.

Proposals should identify the specific key digital repositories and services that their activities will focus on, justify their importance for the advancement of the life sciences in Europe with concrete performance indicators and other metrics, and describe the specific risks of these resources that will be addressed by the action. They should ensure broad participation of organisations across EU Member States and Associated Countries.

Proposed actions should ensure complementarity where relevant with projects funded under topic HORIZON-INFRA-2026-DEV-01-07: “Risk management, mitigation and contingency for ESFRI/ERIC and other world-class research infrastructures” and HORIZON-INFRA-2026-01-EOSC-02: “Trusted frameworks for secure and efficient data sharing in EOSC (EOSC Partnership)”. Synergies with other Common European Data Spaces may be considered, where relevant.

[1] For a description of disciplines within the life sciences, see the ‘Choose Europe for life sciences’ strategy, COM(2025) 525.

[2] FAIR data are data which meet the principles of findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability.

[3] https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/strategy/strategy-2020-2024/our-digital-future/open-science/european-open-science-cloud-eosc_en

[4] https://globalbiodata.org

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