FDM- und OS-Talks: Adopting EOSC on the ground

Presenter: Stefan Reichmann

The contribution is based on an article (Reichmann et al., 2025) that traced the adoption of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) by Austrian research-performing institutions. Starting from the paper, the talk will sketch how Open Science has been imbued with competing meanings from its inception, which has resulted in conflicting interpretations of the goals of EOSC. In this, the article claimed that “official” EOSC narratives have moved away from the current Open Science discourse, which accounts for the hesitancy of researchers and institutions towards EOSC. To make this plausible, the presentation contextualizes Open Science within the broader context of science studies to argue that these competing narratives result in tensions which surface in moments of practical implementation. As a result, EOSC operates in a highly contested environment and, in this sense, is susceptible to contradictory interpretations. Its foundational philosophy, the FAIR Guiding Principles (Wilkinson et al., 2016), tacitly universalizes one set of practices, norms, and values as the sole reference point. Through anecdotal evidence from research support staff active in the implementation of EOSC, the article describes how the tensions embodied in the development of EOSC are perpetuated “on the ground” of research-performing institutions.