To define strategies for open science communities and develop a FAIR data culture, the CNRS’ DDOR sets up partnerships and is involved in several national and international working groups.
International partners
Knowledge Exchange
This is a European partnership involving six national organisations: CSC (Finland), the CNRS (France), DeiC (Denmark), DFG (Germany), Jisc (United Kingdom) and SURF (Netherlands).
Knowledge Exchange takes a prospective and pragmatic approach to open science and its members’ shared objective is to question this major general movement’s usages, context and forms of evolution. The idea of this partnership is to inspire actions to help each country’s research communities in the ways they use and interact with digital tools.
To achieve this, the CNRS and its partners discuss their own actions and questions, define objectives driving a whole range of studies and analyses for their own use and the use of their target public.
Research Data Alliance
This is an international organisation whose members develop common activities and infrastructure. Its aim is to deliberately prioritise data to break down obstacles to data sharing and exchange and accelerate global innovation.
The RDA has nearly 11,000 members from 145 countries – researchers and scientific data professionals working in multiple disciplines, fields and themes and in different types of organisations all around the world.
This organisational structure means the RDA can build social and technical bridges to facilitate the free sharing of data and thus achieve its ambition for researchers and innovators to share data freely across technologies, disciplines and countries, thus providing an effective response to major societal challenges.
The DDOR jointly steers the RDA France node supported by the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation (MESRI). The objective of the National Node is to drive a national RDA community.
European Open Science Cloud
The European Commission’s European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) initiative brings together European infrastructures to provide a catalogue of shared services for researchers. This federation of European infrastructures aims to develop shared disciplinary and international research processes.
This organisation of excellence providing ‘Cloud’ services is central to supporting the circulation, dissemination and adoption of knowledge in the European Research Area (ERA) in our digital age.
The European Data Strategy recognises the EOSC as a new European space for research and innovation providing a FAIR data network and associated services.
The initiative’s ambition is to open up, connect and roll out the EOSC beyond research communities to broadly involve the public and private sectors.
To achieve this, an international association under Belgian law or AISBL was set up in July 2020 bringing together the main actors of this EOSC ecosystem. The EOSC association is one of the three stakeholders in the EOSC Partnership alongside the European Commission and its Member States.
The CNRS is one of the precursor members of this European initiative and took an active part in drawing up its statutes and internal operating rules.
At the end of 2020, Suzanne Dumouchel, a research engineer at the TGIR Huma-Num and project leader at the Open Research Data Department (DDOR), was elected as a member of the EOSC’s Board of Directors for a three-year period. The CNRS has also signed up as a member of the association (AISBL). The organisation pays an annual subscription and has voting rights at the general assembly, represented by Sylvie Rousset, Director of the Open Research Data Department (DDOR).
The CNRS works in close collaboration with other French research organisations which are members or observers of the EOSC association. These include the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM), the National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control (INRIA), the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE) and the Conference of University Presidents (CPU)
The shared goal of these organisations is to harmonise the requirements of French research communities and thus promote the creation of a ‘French EOSC’.
National partners
Bibliographic Agency for Higher Education
The Bibliographic Agency for Higher Education (Abes) is the national operator serving documentation and scientific and technical information (STI) professionals.
The Couperin Consortium
This is a non-profit-making association funded by membership fees and subsidised by the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research. The Couperin network negotiates and provides expertise for digital document resources for academic and research institutions.
STI Association of research organisations
An association of those in charge of scientific and technical information at French public or public utility research organisations (Eprist).
This collaborative association’s aims are to promote exchanges between French research organisations, to drive inter-institutional thought about evolution in the field of STI, to contribute to defining and implementing STI policies, to propose and construct partnerships with other associations or structures working in STI and to enhance the value of the work carried out within the association.