SIB is working to advance and harmonize digital preservation and data curation practices in Europe, through two EU-funded projects that kicked off this month. The EOSC EDEN and FIDELIS projects leverage our long-standing expertise in maintaining high-quality, trustworthy biodata resources for the life sciences community, and support our mission to foster research and innovation through FAIR and open data.
EOSC aims to give Europe a global lead in research data management and ensure European scientists enjoy the full benefits of data-driven science. SIB brings extensive expertise in bioinformatics, life science resources, and training as one of initiative’s 170 member organizations.
Advancing open science practices in Europe and globally
The European Open Science Cloud aims to create a web of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) data and services. As part of this effort, our Vital-IT Knowledge Representation Unit, SIB Biodata Resources, and Training teams are contributing to two complementary projects working to ensure the long-term preservation of Europe’s data assets. The EOSC EDEN project focuses on enhancing data preservation strategies, while the FIDELIS project focuses on creating trustworthy digital repositories.
EOSC aims to give Europe a global lead in research data management and ensure European scientists enjoy the full benefits of data-driven science. SIB brings extensive expertise in bioinformatics, life science resources, and training as one of initiative’s 170 member organizations.
The two projects are funded by Horizon Europe and collectively bring together over 30 carefully selected organizations with relevant expertise across disciplines. As one of seven partners contributing to both projects, SIB will help strengthen and harmonize FAIR data standards and practices in Europe – which will also advance open science on a global scale.
EOSC EDEN: Enhancing digital preservation strategies at European and national level
With large volumes of data being created at unprecedented scale across disciplines, a systematic approach is urgently needed to select what to preserve in the long term. The EOSC EDEN project will create and share a common framework to identify which data are candidates for long-term preservation, through assessments of their use, quality and benefits to science and society. The project also plans to create a model to periodically re-evaluate candidates, as well as establish a European registry featuring services and tools from trustworthy repositories and archives.
As the only project partner representing bioinformatics, SIB will:
- ensure life sciences requirements and needs are included in the envisaged European distributed infrastructure for long-term data preservation and access;
- recommend metadata standards and vocabularies for repositories to ensure their interoperability;
- implement and propagate guidelines on long-term data preservation among the life science community, as part of a network of data curation experts.
In addition to contributing to a general framework and practices for long-term digital preservation in Europe, we will leverage these to support SIB Resources in improving their data preservation strategies.
FIDELIS: Establishing a European network of trustworthy digital repositories
Trustworthy digital repositories (TDRs) are needed to preserve and maintain accessible, reusable, and discoverable data resources over the long term. The FIDELIS project will harmonize the definition of trustworthy repositories and establish a European network of TDRs to foster and support the scientific environment envisioned by EOSC.
SIB’s contribution includes:
- defining must-have attributes for life sciences digital objects;
- guiding repositories to achieve TDR status in the EOSC context;
- harnessing the power of knowledge representation to facilitate information exchange between repositories, by supporting repositories to semantically describe themselves in a standard, harmonized, machine-readable way;
- upskilling key actors by defining stakeholders’ training needs, developing a training strategy and setting up training interventions.
Our contribution will have a direct impact to support and enhance national and international repositories, including knowledge bases such as those managed by SIB.
Bringing data management expertise to a third EOSC project
SIB is also contributing to a project aiming to establish EOSC as the European Research Commons – a global trusted ecosystem providing seamless access to high-quality, interoperable research outputs and services. Launching in April, the EOSC Data Commons project will develop innovative services for improving and accelerating data lifecycle management in a European data and computational continuum. This includes a platform for AI-based discovery of data and tools across the entire collection of European research outputs, to which SIB will contribute. Our involvement across the three EOSC projects will ensure their strategic coordination and hence contribute to the successful implementation of the overall EOSC vision.
EOSC EDEN and FIDELIS consortium members, including from SIB, kicked off the two projects at a meeting organized in early February 2025 by CSC - IT Center for Science, the projects’ coordinating partner organization, in Helsinki, Finland. Credit: Andrea Greco, Trust-IT Services.
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Image legend/credit: The EOSC logo is the exclusive property of the European Open Science Cloud Association AISBL (EOSC-A).
