OSCARS open call: some ideas and hints

As you might have seen at OSCARS 1st Open Call for Open Science Projects and Services | OSCARS or at EU Funding & Tenders Portal there is an interesting opportunity to submit proposals via the OSCARS project. There is a significant budget (13 mio EUR) and with a funding rate between 100k and 250k EUR this means that around 50 to 100 proposals can be funded.

The details about submissions are in the 2 links above, with this post I would like to give some ideas about how to relate proposals to the CLARIN and SSHOC research infrastructures.

Connecting to the CLARIN infrastructure

The main line of thinking can be: CLARIN is part of the SSHOC cluster and therefore integration with the CLARIN infrastructure means fulfilling the requirements in terms of leveraging the SSHOC infrastructure.

Depending on what you are working on, consider collaboration with a CLARIN centre.

  • If you are producing data, deposit it at a CLARIN B-centre.
  • If you are creating a tool, consider registering its metadata (description, link to the web application, source code location) at a CLARIN B-centre.

Both cases will help to make the point that the (meta)data is FAIR and besides that depositing at a B-centre guarantees:

When using a collection (e.g. a set of different data sets, each with its own persistent identifier), consider creating a Virtual Collection. It’s not a lot of work but it has a lot of impact with regards to creating machine-actionable metadata. In many aspects this also creates a link to EOSC (e.g. by its link to the Switchboard and in the future to the Digital Object Gateway).

Are you planning to create a web application that can analyse language data (text, speech, etc)? Consider connecting it to the Language Resource Switchboard.

Connecting to the SSHOC infrastructure

Low-hanging fruit: register your service, workflow and related publication in the SSH Open Marketplace. Connecting objects to each other (e.g. a publication where a certain workflow was used) make the case stronger.

By registering a tool in the Switchboard it will also automatically appear in the SSH Open Marketplace.

The SSHOC deliverable 3.8 gives an idea about how the Virtual Collection Registry and Language Resource Switchboard were integrated into the SSHOC infrastructure.

The full deliverable list might be helpful too.

Connecting to EOSC

What not to do: planning integration/onboarding into the EOSC portal and EOSC marketplace. Both will be discontinued in April 2024.

What to do: consider the integrations with CLARIN and SSHOC as mentioned above as integrating with EOSC. This is more sustainable in the long-term and fits the recent line of thinking about EOSC nodes, see:

While European Open Science Cloud | CLARIN ERIC does not have information on the nodes and still mentions the EOSC Portal and Marketplace it might give some inspiration.

Bonus ideas

For software development, consider a connection to or mentioning of

  • the EVERSE project, which is related to OSCARS
  • the EURISE network, a collaboration between SSOC partners

At a more global level, it might be worthwile to look for synergies with the RDA groups.

Questions

Further questions? Please post them here for a public discussion or mail contact-oscars@clarin.eu for a private follow-up.

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Additionally, here are some further ideas and hints, more generally about the Social Sciences and Humanities Open Cluster (SSHOC) in relation to the OSCARS Open Calls.

Inspired by the strategic plans of our constituent Research Infrastructures (see further details below), SSHOC has identified the following three Strategic Pillars to guide our activities for 2024-2028:

*Sharing Data, Tools and Workflows
*Training and Education
*Advocacy and Outreach

In answer to your question, “what are three major ways to connect to SSHOC?” we make the following proposals, which are linked to SSHOC’s three Strategic Pillars:

1. Sharing Data, Tools and Workflows: by contributing to Datasets, Tools & Services and Workflows to the Social Sciences and Humanities Open Marketplace

2. Training and Education: organise training and education activities, e.g. workshops, webinars etc. related to Open Science practices in the Social Sciences and Humanities, and contribute resulting Training Materials to the SSH Open Marketplace

3. Advocacy and Outreach: make use of existing Datasets, Tools & Services, Training Materials and Workflows in the SSH Open Marketplace with new communities not yet connected to SSHOC and share the results of your activities with the SSHOC community, e.g. via Blog posts, publications etc.

Furthermore, you could highlight your existing (or planned) contributions to the Research Infrastructures that are members of the SSH Open Cluster:

*CESSDA | Consortium of Social Sciences Data Archives
*CLARIN | Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure
*DARIAH | Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities
*EHRI | European Holocaust Research Infrastructure
*E-RIHS| European Research Infrastructure for Heritage Science
*ESS | European Social Survey
*GGP | Gender and Generations Programme
*GUIDE| Growing Up In Digital Europe: EuroCohort
*OPERAS | Open Access in the European Area Through Scholarly Communication
*RESILIENCE | Religious Studies Research Infrastructure
*SHARE | European Research Infrastructure Consortium for the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement

Additionally, should it be of assistance, here is some further background information about the SSH Open Marketplace and SSHOC which may be useful:

Social Sciences and Humanities Open Marketplace

Grounded in the three guided principles of contextualisation; curation and community, the Social Sciences and Humanities Open Marketplace is a discovery portal which pools and contextualises resources for Social Sciences and Humanities research communities: tools, services, training materials, datasets, publications and workflows. It is: a discovery portal, to foster serendipity in digital methods; an aggregator of useful and well curated resources; a catalogue, contextualising resources and an entry point in the EOSC for the Social Sciences and Humanities researchers.

SSHOC: a Brief History

The Social Sciences and Humanities Open Cluster (SSHOC), is one of the five Science Clusters with the goal of stimulating cross-domain research infrastructure collaboration for Open Science. With its origins in the Horizon 2020 funded SSHOC project, which ran from January 2019 - April 2022, it had the objective of transforming the current social sciences and humanities data landscape with its disciplinary silos and separate facilities into an integrated, cloud-based network of interconnected data infrastructures, which culminated in the SSHOC Final Conference. Following the end of the project, the growing consortium has agreed to continue to collaborate under the SSHOC Memorandum of Understanding, to enhance mutual interaction, build upon and expand existing synergies and expertise, and support sharing of know-how in all areas of common interest.

Currently the Social Sciences and Humanities Open Cluster, is comprised of a group of European Research Infrastructure Consortia (ERICs) that include: the Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives (CESSDA), Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure (CLARIN), Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH), European Social Survey (ESS), and Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE); emerging SSH Research Infrastructures, such as European Research Infrastructure for Heritage Science (E-RIHS), European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI), the Generations and Gender Programme (GGP), Growing Up In Digital Europe: EuroCohort (GUIDE), OPen scholarly communication in the European Research Area for Social Sciences and Humanities (OPERAS) and REligious Studies Infrastructure: tooLs, Innovation, Experts, conNections and Centres in Europe (RESILIENCE) and other Partner Institutions, such as Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS), Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences (GESIS) and Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center (PNSC), which provide infrastructural services for the Social Sciences and Humanities.

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To further clarify the application process to potential applicants to our OSCARS Open Call for Open Science Projects & Services and answer their questions, we have organised four one-hour “Ask me anything” online sessions open to anyone interested in the call, with the participation of the Science Clusters’ representatives.

Registration is open here, to one or more of the following sessions:

  • Session 1: 16 April - 14:00-15:00 CEST - EVNRI, LS RI, PaNOSC

  • Session 2: 23 April - 11:00-12:00 CEST - ESCAPE, PaNOSC, SSHOC

  • Session 3: 29 April - 14:00-15:00 CEST - ESCAPE, LS RI, PaNOSC

  • Session 4: 9 May - 14:00-15:00 CEST - ENVRI, LS RI, SSHOC

Kindly share the information with your colleagues and researchers at your institute.

The results of the first call have now been published.