The objective of the AENEAS project is to develop a concept and design for a distributed, federated European Science Data Centre (ESDC) to support the astronomical community in achieving the scientific goals of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). The scientific potential of the SKA radio telescope is unprecedented and represents one of the highest priorities for the international scientific community. By the same token, the large scale, rate, and complexity of data the SKA will generate, present challenges in data management, computing, and networking that are similarly world-leading. SKA Regional Centres (SRC) like the ESDC will be a vital resource to enable the community to take advantage of the scientific potential of the SKA. Within the tiered SKA operational model, the SRCs will provide essential functionality which is not currently provisioned within the directly operated SKA facilities. AENEAS brings together all the European member states currently part of the SKA project as well as potential future EU SKA national partners, the SKA Organisation itself, and a larger group of international partners including the two host countries Australia and South Africa.

Now the H2020 EOSC pilot project has taken the first steps towards creating the blueprint for an open European Science Cloud, this proposal aims to supply practical solutions for the use of the FAIR data principles throughout the research data life cycle. Emphasis is on fostering FAIR data culture and the uptake of good practices in making data FAIR. Keeping in mind that there is no ‘one size fits all’, the consortium will focus on all scientific communities for supporting, creating, further developing and implementing a common scheme to ensure data development, wide uptake of and compliance with FAIR data principles and practices by data producers as well as national and European research data providers and repositories contributing to the EOSC. Furthermore, the consortium will closely collaborate with other relevant (global) projects and initiatives already on the way e.g. GO-FAIR, Research Data Alliance (RDA), World Data System (WDS), CODATA. We will provide a platform for using and implementing the FAIR principles in the day to day work of national and European research data providers and repositories. The consortium cooperates with other projects that will be funded under the INFRAEOSC-05-2018 topic (e.g. the EOSC governance (5a) and where appropriate 5b, the projects funded in the INFRAEOSC-04-2018 topic (e.g. the ESFRI clusters SSHOC, PANOSC, ENVRI FAIR, ESCAPE and EOSCLife) and with the EOSC coordination structure developed in the existing EOSC-pilot and EOSC-hub projects. According to the research data life cycle (planning/creating, processing, analysing, preserving and reuse) the consortium partners have defined goals, activities and outputs on - making data FAIR through research workflows - ensuring long-term preservation of data - making data FAIR through data curation - improving accessibility of research data (e.g. legal barriers) - improving findability of data through creation and interconnection of metadata catalogues - curricula/education

RDA Europe 4.0 addresses the INFRASUPP-02-2017 call targeting the area “European support to the Research Data Alliance, RDA” designing Europe’s contribution to implementation of an effective governance model and strategy in RDA global, while ensuring that RDA delivers on locally relevant issues. RDA Europe 4.0 focuses on the need for open and interoperable sharing of research data & on the need to build social, technical and cross-disciplinary links to enable such sharing on a global scale. It strives to do this with its community-driven and bottom-up approach launched since 2012. In fact, RDA Europe 4.0 directly builds on the current RDA Europe effort, by efficiently bringing in the organisations that implemented RDA Europe since 2012. The scope of RDA Europe 4.0 is to become the centrepiece for an EU Open Science Strategy through a consolidated European network of National Nodes, bringing forward an RDA legacy in Europe, providing skilled, voluntary resources from the EU investment to address DSM issues, by means also of an open cascading grant process. The ambitious, 27-month project is implemented by 5 beneficiaries (Trust-IT Services, Gottingen State University Library, the Digital Repository of Ireland at the Royal Irish Academy, the Digital Curation Centre and the RDA Foundation), skillfully supported by 9 National Nodes which carry out specific operational activities & act as national champions for their respective region. One of the specific goals of RDA Europe 4.0 is to complete a capillary European network by on-boarding additional 13 nodes by project end. Main Outputs: Expansion from 9 to 22 national nodes in EU; 7500+ individual members & 75 organisational members; 9 RDA recommendations as ICT technical specifications; consolidated programme for experts, early careers, ambassadors & adoption projects; 5 international RDA plenary meetings; integration with EOSC, ESFRI & other pan-EU initiatives; RDA Europe self-sustained after project completion.