June was a month of international visits and the consolidation of international cooperation for the EOSC CZ Secretariat. The first visitor was Meghan Bohardt from the Austrian EOSC SOA (Support Office Austria), who joined the EOSC CZ Secretariat as part of her Erasmus+ internship. During her week-long stay, she became acquainted with the work of all teams and their operations in the national context.
The second international delegation included colleagues from the EOSC SOA at the University of Vienna: Tereza Kalová, Chris Schubert, Marie Czuray, and Bernd Saurugger. They participated in an intensive program in Brno, which featured presentations on the EOSC CZ initiative, Natinal Repository Platform, and Open Science at Masaryk University.
Olga Bohuslavová, the International Relations Specialist at the EOSC CZ Secretariat, positively assesses the recent meeting: “I have been considering the idea of connecting the Czech and Austrian EOSC secretariats since the end of last year. In March, following a visit to the University of Vienna focused on Open Science, a colleague from EOSC SOA expressed interest in a week-long internship in Brno. This step accelerated the meeting of both teams, and although it took place during an extremely challenging period, it proved to be an effective way to get to know each other, understand the challenges we face in the national implementation of EOSC, and share experiences. Personal meetings with foreign teams are crucial for gaining real insights and deepening international partnerships—something that online meetings simply cannot replace. I found that we connected well on a personal level with our colleagues from Vienna, and I believe we will meet again at the end of this year in Vienna.”
We asked our Austrian colleagues a few question:
How do you see the EOSC CZ initiative?
As very professional and effective!
What do you do differently than us?
A lot more of the activities we do are done via in-kind hours, by volunteers. Though our Secretariat has two FTEs.
What do you like about our work? And what did you experience during your visit here?
It was especially helpful to see how you are structured and how you conceive of your target audiences.
Have you found any inspiration here that you could also implement in Austria?
Seeing how many researchers you have involved confirmed to me that we are on the right track in focusing heavily on community building and engagement.
How do you see the EOSC CZ initiative?
The Czech EOSC Secretariat is running one of the largest EOSC Offices in Europe (with over 20 staff members) and is obviously working very professional and effective. We believe we could learn a lot from them and hopefully also serve them with new input. Given that the Czech EOSC Office invited us for a very productive exchange this June, and hosted Meghan for an Erasmus staff exchange, the SOA GA on Dec. 17 would be a great opportunity to strengthen the relationship between our countries. We hope to welcome you in Dec. in Vienna!
What do you do differently than us?
We rely more heavily on partnerships and collaborations with other organizations than having so much capacity of our own. We are a much smaller team dealing with the daily (communication) agendas.
What do you like about our work? And what did you experience during your visit here?
Your comprehensive approach to stakeholder (researcher!) engagement was very insightful and provided us with ideas for refining our own activities.
Have you found any inspiration here that you could also implement in Austria?
Your focus on building strong, multi-faceted networks has encouraged us to explore deeper partnerships and collaborations in Austria.
On 21-23 October, the EOSC Symposium 2024 took place in Berlin, attracting over 450 in-person participants and more than 900 online from over 60 countries. The event provided an opportunity to discuss the future of EOSC. It kicked off with the launch of the first EOSC EU Node, the key to connecting European data services and infrastructure.
On 21-23 October 2024, Open Science Week took place in an online meeting format. The three-day programme featured a series of lectures and discussions on the development of open science, data stewardship and practical tools to help researchers in their daily practice.
