The Czech Republic has reached a significant milestone in the development of research data management and open science. The EOSC CZ Node has been approved as a candidate node in the second wave of the EOSC Federation, which connects European services, infrastructures, and repositories for working with research data.
The expansion of the EOSC Federation was confirmed at the ninth European Tripartite Event, held on 21 April 2026 at University of Cyprus in Nicosia. A joint decision by the European Commission, EOSC Steering Board and EOSC Association approved all 14 new candidate nodes, including the national EOSC Node for the Czech Republic.
An EOSC Node is a national, thematic, or infrastructure-based node participating in the EOSC Federation – a European environment for sharing, discovering, and reusing research data and digital services. Its goal is to connect data sources, tools, services, and expert support so that researchers can work with data more efficiently across institutions, disciplines, and countries.
The EOSC CZ Node represents the Czech contribution to this European infrastructure. It builds on the long-established services of e-INFRA CZ and further expands them with the experience, needs, and specific use cases of institutions involved in the EOSC CZ initiative. This creates a shared platform developed by a broad spectrum of stakeholders from the Czech research environment. The acceptance of the Czech node confirms that the Czech Republic is an active part of the European data infrastructure.
The second wave of candidate EOSC Nodes includes 14 new participants. Eight of them will be established at the national level, including the Czech Republic, while others will further develop pan-European e-infrastructures and thematic areas.
The new candidate nodes will begin the onboarding process into the EOSC Federation in 2026. In the coming months, they will prepare updated project charters, nominate their representatives, and gradually integrate into its structures and working groups. The process will also include technical integration in line with the requirements defined in the EOSC Federation Handbook.
The core of the Czech node offering is based on proven services from the e-INFRA CZ portfolio, such as OpenStack, Kubernetes, Jupyter Notebooks, and the Galaxy platform. An important component is also the SensitiveCloud TRE (Trusted Research Environment), which enables secure work with sensitive data.
Integrated services include, for example:
As part of the Czech node, a Service Incubator will also be established to support the preparation of services and repositories that aim to join the EOSC Federation through the national node but do not yet meet the required level of technological readiness. Within this incubator, we plan, for example, the gradual integration of services from the RECETOX research infrastructure, such as mass spectrometry analysis via the Galaxy platform.
The Czech node is also involved in five international collaborations that demonstrate the power of federated data sharing:
For EOSC CZ, the approval of the candidate node represents an important recognition of the work achieved so far, as well as the beginning of a new phase. Through the EOSC CZ Node, the Czech Republic will be able to play an even more active role in shaping the European environment for the management, sharing, and long-term use of research data.
The second part of the introduction to the Data Stewardship Wizard (DSW) is primarily intended for data stewards, service administrators, and other users who want to better understand how DSW works “under the hood.” It is also relevant for those considering customizing content, creating templates, or deploying DSW at the institutional level.
April is dedicated to citizen science, which has become an increasingly important part of research and open science in recent years. How are data collected from the public actually used in practice? What benefits and challenges does this approach bring? And what is needed for its further development in the Czech Republic? We asked three researchers – Alena Fornůsková (Czech Academy of Sciences), Jakub Trojan (Faculty of Science, Masaryk University), and Michael Lažan (Senzorvzduchu, z.s.) – who have long been involved in citizen science.
