Open Science at the NAS of Ukraine: From Existing Infrastructure to Participation in the EOSC Federation
A new paper published in the Visnyk of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine presents a strategic model for the participation of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NAS of Ukraine) in the EOSC Federation.
The article, “Open Science at the NAS of Ukraine: the Path from Infrastructure to Participation in the EOSC Federation”, was published by Anatoly G. Zagorodny, President of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, together with co-authors. It focuses on the transition from the Open Science infrastructure already developed within the Academy towards an operational environment in which Ukrainian research data, services, computational resources and scientific communities can participate in the EOSC Federation.
The starting point: Open Science infrastructure already exists
The paper stresses that the NAS of Ukraine does not start from zero.
During the implementation of the OPENS and OPENS2 projects, the Academy created a set of basic Open Science infrastructure components. These include the Open Science harvester, scientific publishing platforms, repositories for scientific texts, data and preprints, an institutional repository platform, the Research Data Management Competence Centre, and shared scientific equipment centres.
One of the central elements is DataverseUA, the research data repository of the NAS of Ukraine. It supports data deposition, metadata description, access, citation, versioning and long-term preservation. In the future architecture proposed in the article, DataverseUA can serve as a repository component for thematic scientific communities and future EOSC Nodes.
The Academy also has previous experience with distributed digital infrastructures through the Ukrainian National Grid and long-standing cooperation of Ukrainian institutions with EGI and CERN. The authors consider this experience important because it demonstrated the ability of Ukrainian institutions to operate distributed resources, follow common operational procedures and work within international federated infrastructures.
From individual infrastructure components to an interoperable research environment
The central strategic proposal of the paper is to move from separate Open Science components towards an interoperable research environment in which data, software, computational resources, analytical services and research workflows can be combined and reused.
The authors describe this environment through the concept of the Web of FAIR Data and Services. Research outputs should not exist as isolated files or repository records. Data, software, models, workflows, publications and services should be connected through metadata, persistent identifiers, provenance information and machine-readable descriptions.
For researchers, this means that Open Science infrastructure should support a complete research route: finding data or a service, obtaining authorised access to the necessary resource, performing analysis or modelling, depositing the result in a repository and describing it sufficiently for verification and reuse.
This transition changes the role of repositories and computing centres. They become components of a broader research environment rather than isolated services.
A phased model for EOSC Nodes in the NAS of Ukraine
The article proposes a phased model for developing EOSC Nodes with the participation of the NAS of Ukraine.
The first stage should focus on scientific areas where mature research communities, digital resources, technical infrastructure and responsible teams already exist. In these areas, thematic EOSC Nodes can be developed around concrete scientific use cases rather than around infrastructure alone.
The next stage should expand participation to institutes and research communities that have valuable data, equipment or expertise but are not yet able to maintain the full operational environment of an independent Node. The longer-term goal is a federation of thematic, e-infrastructure and academy-wide Nodes that remain organisationally autonomous but interact through common rules and services.
A key principle is that such a federation should not create a new centralised hierarchy. Individual Nodes retain responsibility for their own data, services, user communities and access policies. Coordination is required primarily for interoperability, trust, service management, metadata and interaction with other Nodes.
What has to be added to the existing infrastructure
The paper identifies several capabilities that must complement the infrastructure already available in the NAS of Ukraine.
Future Nodes need authentication and authorisation, catalogues and registries of resources, monitoring, user support, usage accounting and clear service-management procedures. They also need access to computing and storage resources, research applications, data services and discipline-specific software.
Importantly, all these components do not have to be physically located within a single institution. A Node may use shared national resources or services provided by other institutions, provided that responsibilities, access policies and operational arrangements are clearly defined.
The article also distinguishes between the internal resources of a Node and the subset that it exposes to the wider EOSC Federation. Only prepared and agreed services and resources need to become part of the Node Exchange; other resources may remain available only within a particular scientific community or national environment.
MATSCI-NASU as the first practical case
Materials science is presented as the most mature field for testing the proposed approach.
The MATSCI-NASU project, supported by EOSC Gravity, brings together the Bogolyubov Institute for Theoretical Physics, the Frantsevich Institute for Problems of Materials Science and Kyiv Academic University. Its purpose is to prepare the governance model, research resources, metadata approaches and operational prerequisites for a future thematic EOSC Node in materials science.
The project uses a complete research scenario rather than testing isolated services. The workflow includes scientific modelling, computational resources, metadata preparation, managed access and deposition of results in DataverseUA. This makes it possible to test whether the proposed infrastructure provides real value to researchers and whether the resulting digital objects can be understood, verified and reused.
The article also points to the possibility of extending this experience to other research groups and institutions working in materials modelling, spectroscopy, welding, structural analysis and other fields.
Virtual Research Environments and Virtual Laboratories
An important element of the proposed model is the use of Virtual Research Environments (VREs) and Virtual Laboratories (VLabs).
A VRE provides researchers with access to distributed datasets, computing resources, analytical tools and services for processing, publishing and visualising results. Within such environments, VLabs can support specific scientific communities by combining software, reproducible workflows, prepared datasets, metadata and documentation for clearly defined research tasks.
The authors use the Blue-Cloud experience as an example of how VREs and specialised Virtual Labs can contribute to the resource and service base of a thematic EOSC Node.
For the NAS of Ukraine, this approach is particularly relevant because scientific expertise and infrastructure are distributed across many institutes. VREs can therefore provide an organisational and technical framework for combining resources without transferring them to a single central platform.
Research data management as part of the Node architecture
The proposed transition also significantly increases the importance of research data management.
Future EOSC participation requires more than publishing datasets. Scientific results must be accompanied by sufficient metadata, provenance, licensing information, documentation and links to software, workflows, publications and other research objects.
This gives the Research Data Management Competence Centre a clear role in supporting scientific communities: developing metadata practices, helping researchers prepare reusable datasets, supporting data stewards, providing training and contributing to the preparation of FAIR research objects.
The article also highlights the role of shared scientific equipment centres. Their future contribution should not be limited to physical access to instruments. They can also become providers of FAIR data, methodological expertise and digital data-analysis services.
From Open Science policy to an operational research infrastructure
The main strategic message of the article is that the next stage of Open Science development in the NAS of Ukraine should be operational.
The Academy already has repositories, computing infrastructure, scientific equipment, research communities and data-management expertise. The challenge is now to connect these assets into research environments that have clearly defined providers, users, access rules, metadata, support services and interoperable interfaces.
The proposed phased development of EOSC Nodes offers a way to achieve this without creating a single centralised platform. Mature thematic communities can develop first, while other institutes and research groups can gradually join shared or future thematic environments.
For the NAS of Ukraine, participation in the EOSC Federation is therefore presented not simply as access to European infrastructure, but as a mechanism for turning Ukrainian scientific data, services, workflows and expertise into interoperable and reusable components of the wider European research ecosystem.
Article
Anatoly G. Zagorodny, Oleksandr O. Vasiliev, Oleksii S. Milenin, Sergiy Ya. Svistunov, Vitaly M. Shadura, Andrii Yu. Shevchenko. Open Science at the NAS of Ukraine: the Path from Infrastructure to Participation in the EOSC Federation. Visnyk of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. 2026. No. 9. P. 7–22. DOI: 10.15407/visn2026.09.00