Italy

Italy has been a key player in the development of open science practices and the dissemination of open science culture in Europe over the past decade, thanks to coordinated efforts by research-performing and research-funding organisations, as well as national e-infrastructures.

One of the main recent achievements was the creation of the Italian Computing and Data Infrastructure (ICDI) in 2019, a forum involving representatives of major Italian Research Infrastructures and e-Infrastructures, aimed at promoting synergies and common strategies at the national level, and optimising Italian contributions to European and global challenges in this field, including the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), the European Data Infrastructure (EDI) and HPC.

EOSC-Pillar coordinator GARR is also representing ICDI as one of the four founding members of the newly-founded EOSC Association, playing a pivotal role in the coordination of its first steps towards the first General Assembly in December 2020.

Marialuisa Lavitrano (UNIMIB) was elected as one of the directors of the EOSC Association at the first General Assembly in December 2020. Read our interview with her at this link.

If you are part of an Italian Open Science initiative and want to learn more about EOSC, check out the EOSC-Pillar Ambassadors Programme.

Roadmap for consolidating National Initiatives

Within the EOSC-Pillar project, the so-called "Transversal Task Force" conducted a series of interviews to further gain insights into the national landscape, analyzing the status of National Initiatives and specifically of Mandated Organisations in the realm of the EOSC Association.

The full report, completed Oct 2021, is available here,  while the excerpt focusing on the Mandated Organisation for Italy is here.

Legal and Policy Framework and Federation Blueprint

Within the EOSC-Pillar project, Work-Package WP4 compiled a thorough study of the legal and policy state of the art in the involved countries (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy), identifying commonalities and gaps or challenges, and proposing recommendations for researchers on the rules and procedures with respect to legal issues regarding open access, open data, and cross border data access.

The full report (last update, Sep. 2021) is available here, while an excerpt containing details on Open Science Regulations and Policies, National copyright laws, Personal data protection laws in Italy is available here. 

EOSC Observatory

Check out the EOSC Observatory, a policy intelligence tool being developed by the EOSC Future project for monitoring policies, practices, and impacts related to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). It will support the EOSC community in tracking the implementation of EOSC and the policy makers in developing actionable policies.