EUDAT’s vision is to enable European researchers and practitioners from any research discipline to preserve, find, access, and process data in a trusted environment, as part of a Collaborative Data Infrastructure (CDI).
Although research communities from different disciplines have different ambitions and approaches – particularly with respect to data organization and content – they also share many basic service requirements. This commonality makes it possible for EUDAT to establish common data services, designed to support multiple research communities, as the foundation of the CDI as envisaged by the High Level Expert Group on Scientific Data in its 2010 report Riding the Wave.
EUDAT2020 brings together a unique consortium of e-infrastructure providers, research infrastructure operators, specialist application/solution providers and researchers from a wide range of scientific disciplines under several of the main ESFRI themes, working together to realise this CDI.
The increasing volume and complexity of data in many disciplines, as well as the drive to develop cross-disciplinary data services calls for greater collaboration between all stakeholders, as well as for a clarification of roles and responsibilities, in particular between research infrastructures and e-infrastructures. One of the main ambitions of EUDAT is to bridge the gap between research infrastructures and e-infrastructures through an active interaction and engagement strategy, and innovative partnerships. Progress is not only about developing technical solutions, but also about defining the right organisational and business model required to ensure a sustainable uptake. The model must necessarily take into account existing arrangements within national governments and pan-European research communities. This is a challenge that no-one has yet addressed at the pan-European scale; EUDAT2020 intends to do this.
