Contact

No borders to Europe’s research environment

Find out what CS3MESH4EOSC is doing for researchers, developers, companies, policy makers and citizens

Developing an interoperable federation of data, to easily sync, share and deploy applications and software Making friction-free collaboration in EUROPE a reality Producing high-level services for the EOSC community

Learn more

THE SCIENCE MESH DATA SERVICES

Data Science Environments

To facilitate collaborative research and enable cross-federation sharing of computational tools, algorithms and resources. Read more

Open Data Systems

To add metadata and publish datasets with persistent identifiers directly on the Science Mesh sites or to external data repositories. Read more

On-demand Data Transfers

To allow efficient data-based collaboration on on-demand basis. Read more

Collaborative Documents

To be able to simultaneously edit documents in safe, EU-based, cloud environments. Read more

Mission

CS3MESH4EOSC is a 3-year EU-funded project that addresses the challenges of the fragmentation of file and application services, digital sovereignty and the application of FAIR principles in the everyday practice of researchers.

Initially, 7 major data services will be combined into ScienceMesh - a federated service mesh providing a frictionless collaboration platform for hundreds of thousands of users (researchers, engineers, students and staff). The service will offer easy access to data across institutional and geographical boundaries. The infrastructure will be gradually expanded and offered to the entire eduaction and research community in Europe and beyond.

The initial service will connect SURFdrive, CERNBox, PSNCBox, CloudSTOR, Sciebo, owncloud@CESNET, SWITCHdrive and ScienceData.

The CS3MESH4EOSC project will design, build and deploy the necessary technology to achieve this.

Specifically the project will promote vendor-neutral APIs and protocols, and follow an open-source approach to software development and service delivery - thus creating a platform for a data-centric application ecosystem in the European Open Science Cloud.

Join the Science Mesh and shape the future of data

Impact

Researchers will gain access to a global collaboration platform which will be seamlessly integrated in their current working environments. Collaboration with users and groups at other institutions will be just one click away and readily accessible. FAIR-abiding data archiving, sharing and publication will be available to all.

Institutions will gain the freedom to choose their storage and application providers without compromising on functionality and without the risk of creating disconnected service silos for their users.

Service managers and site administrators will gain a streamlined and well documented environment for stable service operation at scale. They will benefit from the cumulated knowledge, operational experience and support of a large community.

The tech Industry in Europe and beyond will gain the opportunity to extend their current user base and ensure integration with the growing and evolving service ecosystem of the European Open Science Cloud.

Read more about the impact in our use cases

ScienceMesh

A key result will be ScienceMesh - a mesh of connected data services for research and education.

This will encompass:

using, promoting and contributing to developing APIs for server-to-server file-sharing
using, promoting and contributing to developing APIs for applicationsand file-service interoperability
implementing and deploying both set of APIs at core sites in the form of site services
creating services/functionality for seamless user selection and group creation across sites/services
creating services/functionality for metadata and seamless data publishing, searching and archiving

Once created, the next key steps will be:

engaging with research communities and creating data-centric applications for selected scientific use cases
engaging with additional service providers and extending ScienceMesh into a pan-europan service, reaching users across the continent
engaging with industry players to further extend the reach and use of the infrastructure

See how the Science Mesh is being implemented

Who should use the Science Mesh?

Service Providers Researchers Software Developers Policy Makers & Citizens System Administrators

Main benefit in brief

Join the Science Mesh as early adopter, able to build sync & share capabilities through the already existing storage EFSS (Enterprise File Sync&Share) platforms. To implement the Science Mesh, service providers would have to open their service sufficiently such that they can plug into the mesh and be interoperable with other providers.

Main benefit in brief

Cross-institutional collaboration on sharing documents and enabling researchers to work, both independently and jointly, by using their domestic data without the need to register on an additional external EFS platform. We consider that end-users and research communities will be involved in the long-term with a high level of communication activities, also after the end of the project as they constitute our target user base for the success of Science Mesh to be used at European level and beyond.

Main benefit in brief

Contribute to the integration of new application services, access new software applications not available on the market and will be allowed to sell this service to their target user communities. The involvement of commercial software developers is crucial for the complete deployment of the Science Mesh at European and global level.

Main benefit in brief

Service enabling digital sovereignty in policy making processes and effectively increasing both open access and human capital. The Science Mesh would be a crucial part of the European Open Science Cloud, which has been a grand initiative by the EU.

Main benefit in brief

With reference to the institutional operators of services, their involvement will be medium in terms of engagement activities as the project partners are already contributing to the Science Mesh and the system administrators and service managers are already engaged with the partner institutions. Their contribution to the project is expected to run in the medium term until the end of the project and hopefully they will keep using Science Mesh also after the end of the project.

GOAL

CS3MESH4EOSC delivers a global collaboration service for researchers, educators, data curators and analysts. It provides an interoperable platform to easily share & deploy application and software components, while providing rich collaborative workflows.

This global collaboration platform will be fully integrated with the European Open Science Cloud, while ensuring data-centric & FAIR data management principles. The Science Mesh will make EU research more efficient, reliable, collaborative and transparent.

Find out more about the key technologies

EARLY ADOPTERS

The project builds on unique experience developed in the CS3 community.

All current and future CS3 participants are welcome to join the infrastructure and participate to its development.
Specifically, collaboration with storage and application vendors will actively be pursued.

If you're a service provider interested in joining ScienceMesh, or a researcher or tool builder interested in deploying applications on ScienceMesh, get in touch.