Collaboration and consolidation of the Science Clusters promotes their long-term role(s) in framing an offer to accompany, help, involve, coordinate, and empower scientists to commit to Open Science practices, to connect with EOSC, and foster uptake of the Science Clusters’ services and solutions.
The cross-fertilisation research and innovation framework that the Science Clusters have developed and deployed within the H2020 work programme fosters consolidation towards the structural development of Community-based Competence Centres (CCC).
One of the aims of OSCARS is thus to set up, within each Science Cluster, a Cluster Open Science Competence Centre (CLOCC).
As defined in the OSCARS project, a CLOCC is a ‘virtual hub dedicated to fostering research excellence through training and knowledge transfer. CLOCCs are community-based initiatives supported by a collaborative network of people in the context of the Science Clusters providing expertise, best practices and services in relation to Open Science, and the promotion of cross-disciplinary collaboration’.
The concept is something new that will be deployed to leverage the specific achievements and competences of each cluster, addressing each scientific community’s culture and needs, while at the same time strengthening intra-cluster collaboration by sharing best practices and jointly developing common strategies.
In the first five months of the project implementation, several exchanges have taken place among key OSCARS’ contributors, firstly to agree on a common definition of CLOCCs. The next step in the project is to work towards the CLOCC implementation.