Following our first article on the activities of WP4 (Communication, Management and Open Calls), the work package continues to coordinate OSCARS, support funded projects, and communicate widely.
After the second Open Call closure in May 2025, contracts for the 12 selected projects were signed in the following months, allowing all projects to start between 1 December 2025 and 1 March 2026. WP4 has published guidelines and templates for final deliverables – setting out the approval process at the end of the project lifetime, and detailed information about the set of reports and other material requested from all projects.
At the end of 2025 the WP4 team, in collaboration with the Science Cluster representatives and OSCARS Consortium members, published a Open Science article series, covering topics focused on the key Open Science challenges addressed by OSCARS funded projects: repositories, data annotation, software/AI/tools, and the promotion of Open Science. The introduction to the series “OSCARS in context: an introduction to Open Science, FAIR principles, EOSC and the SRIA” includes the references to all the following articles published on Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17193362
Early 2026 was marked by several events:
- S3 School which took place at Laboratoire d’Annecy de Physique de Particules (LAPP) in Annecy, France, from 14 to 21 January. A one-week training programme designed to teach good and modern coding practices tailored for scientific software development. More information here
- EOSC Winter School: OSCARS contributed to the third edition of the EOSC Winter School, taking place in Nice, France from 27-29 January 2026, with OSCARS project manager, Friederike Schmidt-Tremmel, being part of the sub-committee preparing session B in the Thematic Track 3: Competences and Training. Read the article here
- Ahead of the 2nd OSCARS Annual General Meeting (AGM), and to provide projects with the necessary background information for the planned discussions and group work at the meeting, the EOSC Association and the Science Cluster members organised a webinar for funded projects on 17 February 2026: a short introduction to the EOSC Federation and the Science Clusters’ EOSC nodes and Hubs, and an overview of the opportunities and requirements for onboarding the outcomes (datasets, services, tools, etc.) of OSCARS-funded projects. In addition, a pre-AGM questionnaire was sent to all 70 funded projects and completed by 65.
- OSCARS 2nd Annual General Meeting (AGM), held in Seville from 10 to 12 March 2026, brought together the 70 funded projects, as well as the OSCARS consortium members and Science Cluster representatives. The AGM is a unique opportunity for exchanges around the projects’ goals and challenges. This year, the AGM spanned three days: the first day involved consortium members only, who discussed the concept of Competence Centers and exchanged views on how best to support funded projects within OSCARS. The following two days were dedicated to the 70 projects. It included a mix of presentations, speed dating@posters (organised by the key Open Science challenge they address (Repositories, Data annotation, Software, AI and tools, and Promotion of Open Science), alongside discussions on Community-based Competence Centers (CCCs) and the different Science Clusters’ EOSC Nodes/Hubs meeting “their” projects - all aimed at matching the expectations of funded projects and the EOSC Federation. You can read the article here. Following the AGM, a survey was sent to all participants to gather feedback, and new video interviews with funded projects have been published.
2026 also marks a key milestone for OSCARS: the first four funded projects have now concluded:
- 01-382 Fragalysis Cloud - Opening drug design data - and feeding the next generation of AI models – Led by Warren Thompson & Frank von Delft (Diamond Light Source)
- 01-421 HEFTIE - Handling Enormous Files from Tomographic Imaging Experiments – Led by David Stansby (University College London)
- 01-124 VISA - User experience enhancement, led by Ludovic Leroux (Institut Laue-Langevin), built a new open-source engine, WebX, from the ground up, that let multiple users share an instance and work together on the same experimental data.
- 01-390 RSOTC - the Regional State Of the Climate dashboard - led by Markel García (Predictia Intelligent Data Solutions and CSIC), built a FAIR-by-design dashboard delivering near-real-time regional climate data.
01-436 Mc-ReDD - Metadata Collection and validation for Re-use of raw Diffraction Data, led by Loes Kroon-Batenburg (IUCr CommDat working group), developed imgCIF_Creator, an open-source tool and web service that automatically generates standardised, reusable metadata files from raw crystallographic diffraction data.
For more details, read the full articles here: Fragalysis Cloud & HEFTIE | VISA & RSOTC | MC-ReDD
OSCARS members have also submitted the first Periodic Technical Report, summarising the first two years of the project (1 January 2024 - 31 December 2025):a detailed report on all activities carried out by the four Work Packages, including deliverables, milestones, events, workshops and the cascading grants. The report was approved by the European Commission with very positive feedback.
Projects funded by OSCARS remain very active, rolling out a wide range of initiatives. To mention a few:
- CASTAL launched a Call for Secondary Studies on Local Sustainability Transition to promote the use of the CASTAL Atlas and to support innovative, data-driven analyses of sustainability transitions across Europe.
- OSPARK is holding the second edition of the OSPARK bootcamp - a six-week online course and a two-day onsite workshop in Munich, Germany.
- RISKY, in partnership with Renewables Grid Initiative, organised the webinar "Data Sharing as a Win-Win for Wildlife and Infrastructure", to discuss how to expand renewable energy and transport infrastructure while better protecting biodiversity.
Looking ahead, WP4 is finalising an updated OSCARS Dissemination Strategy and preparing the OSCARS deliverable D4.4 - Impact Report, due in November 2026.
In short, the WP4 team has strived to provide the best possible support for funded projects and the consortium and remains deeply involved in the scientific and EOSC communities to ensure that results/outcomes support and are of benefit to the wider scientific community and society at large, and contribute to the EOSC Federation.
Browse the latest news and events from OSCARS and its funded projects.