OSCARS – Advancing Open Science across Europe

The OSCARS project helps researchers across Europe find, access, share and reuse research data, tools and services.

One of the main ways OSCARS does this is by providing funding for researchers and research organisations to develop new Open Science projects and services. Through its Open Calls, OSCARS supports innovative ideas that make research data easier to find, access and reuse, while encouraging collaboration across scientific disciplines.

Researchers working in different scientific fields often face similar challenges. Research data can be difficult to find, access or combine, particularly when working across different disciplines or institutions. OSCARS aims to make this easier by bringing research communities together, improving existing services and supporting the development of new tools that make research data more accessible and reusable.

By encouraging collaboration and making research resources easier to share, the project supports Open Science: the principle that scientific knowledge, data and tools should be as accessible and reusable as possible.

CESSDA’s role in OSCARS

Within the OSCARS, CESSDA participates as part of the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSHOC) Science Cluster, contributing to three of the project's four main areas of work: 

• Building the cluster's Open Science Competence Centre

• Helping services work together across EOSC

• Testing and widening their use

In practice, CESSDA's role is to bring social science and humanities expertise into the project, to help improve the SSH Open Marketplace so it serves newer research infrastructures and connects better with other fields, and to make selected SSHOC services and data easier to combine with wider European Open Science Cloud tools, e.g. in shared analysis environments. CESSDA also works on aligning its training toolkit, data management guide and repository certification support with similar efforts in other research fields, and on bringing SSH know-how into the other clusters' work.

Bringing Europe's research communities together

OSCARS brings together major European Research Infrastructures through five Science Clusters, representing different scientific disciplines:

• Social Sciences and Humanities

• Life Sciences

• Environmental Sciences

• Photon and Neutron Science

• Astronomy, Nuclear and Particle Physics

These clusters have already developed services, tools and common practices that help researchers manage and share their data. OSCARS builds on this work, encouraging collaboration between scientific disciplines and helping turn existing solutions into sustainable, widely available services.

The project also supports the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), a European initiative to connect research data, tools and services across borders and disciplines.

Making research data easier to use

A central goal of OSCARS is to make it easier for researchers to work with data, regardless of where it comes from or which scientific discipline it belongs to.

The project promotes the FAIR principles, which aim to make research data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable.

Through its funding opportunities and collaboration between Science Clusters, OSCARS helps research communities develop new solutions, share expertise and adopt tools and services developed in other scientific fields.

This means that researchers do not always need to develop new solutions from scratch. Instead, they can build on existing tools and knowledge, making research more efficient and encouraging cooperation across disciplines.

Building a lasting Open Science infrastructure

Beyond funding individual projects, OSCARS aims to strengthen the European research landscape by developing services and support structures that will remain useful beyond the project's lifetime.

This includes establishing community-based Competence Centres that provide expertise and guidance, and developing Virtual Research Environments (VREs) where researchers can access tools and work with data.

These activities will also help the Science Clusters strengthen their role within the EOSC Federation, contributing to a more connected and accessible European research environment.

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