Life Science Competence Centres: Open by Design

Preprint in submission process to Briefings in Bioinformatics Abstract: European Life Science Research Infrastructures (LS-RIs), one of the five major RI Science Clusters in Europe, were established to provide access to cutting-edge technologies to the scientific community. Individually, and collectively as the LS-RI cluster, they contribute to the development of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), under the aegis of the EOSC Federation. They are actively involved in the design and implementation of Competence Centres (CCs). These aim to increase the accessibility of domain-specific knowledge and tools, enhance interoperability, facilitate sharing and harmonisation of procedures, and promote Open Science and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) practices. In this paper, we report a landscape mapping of the existing resources that formed the basis for the construction of CCs. We describe the possible design of CCs and their articulation with the LS-RIs. We focus on community-based ideas and recommendations to increase the potential of CCs to address long-standing challenges in sustainability, governance, scalability, and interoperability of Open Science within EOSC and the European Research Area (ERA) more generally.This paper provides a description of the nascent LS CCs, built following a survey of needs and services of existing LS-RI communities. When fully implemented, the LS CCs will serve as dynamic hubs to foster innovation, contribute to the EOSC’s future FAIR web of data, and support ongoing developments of the EOSC Federation. They will act as drivers of collaborative and impactful LS research in Europe and beyond. We explore the underlying challenges, and propose solutions, to ensure that the establishment of CCs will add value to the LS RI community, and to the EOSC, in a sustainable way.