A launch event was held on October 12 for the Global Open Science Cloud International Programme Office (GOSC IPO), co-founded by the International Science Council Committee on Data (ISC CODATA) and the Computer Network Information Center (CNIC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

As the coordinating and facilitating branch of GOSC, the office hopes to facilitate the implementation of the GOSC initiative, with prioritized missions, including expanding the international cooperation network for GOSC and maintaining the GOSC membership, helping organize a series of conferences, training workshops, and other events to increase social visibility, carrying out community outreach, day-to-day operations, and future development as well.

This is the first international program office held by CODATA, and CNIC will be the host institution for this GOSC IPO.

As one of the key pillars of open science recognized by the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, we have witnessed the flourishing of digital infrastructures all around the world. So how to build enhanced, interconnected, and interoperable digital research infrastructures for larger-scale collaborative research becomes vital. 

The idea to co-design and co-build a global open science cloud has been proposed during the CODATA Beijing Conference in 2019. GOSC has been acting as a co-build robust network of trusted research e-infrastructures, among which different research resources are bridged, and all stakeholders are connected for innovative science discovery in the dynamically evolving global open science environment.

"The work initiated by CODATA and CNIC is so critically important since it will address the technological and interoperability challenges by encouraging cooperation, strengthening alignment, and ultimately favoring interoperability between the existing and emerging open science clouds", said Dr. Mathieu Denis, Acting CEO of ISC, via a video link during the opening ceremony.

"I believe that a global open science cloud initiative that tries to connect all these regional initiatives is very timely," said Prof. Barend Mons, CODATA President. This is a critical first step to take, to make sure that this is a truly international initiative and is worth it to the people that are in charge of these open science clouds around the world, he said.

Representatives from China and the broad CODATA community, including the CODATA International Data Policy Committee (IDPC), the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), the EOSC Association, the African Open Science Platform (AOSP), and the Malaysia Open Science Platform (MOSP) Initiative joined the discussion with a brief review of worldwide open science practices and open science clouds.

We hope the GOSC Initiative and the IPO will contribute to inclusive science and accelerated discoveries empowered by the open science era. And surely it will help support the interconnection of institutional, national, and regional Open Science clouds and platforms to create a virtual, collaborative, trusted environment for globalized research and innovation, according to Dr. Lili Zhang, the GOSC IPO Executive Director. 

Welcome to join the GOSC initiative!

Please stay tuned at: https://bit.ly/3jwZHNg

Sign up to join us at: https://bit.ly/GOSC-Sign-Up