Now a new paper explores potential business models for the European Open Science Cloud.

Article by David Pringle:

The best way for the EU to get its bold plan for an open science cloud up and running is to focus initially on meeting the needs of the 725,000 researchers working in higher education.

That’s one of the key conclusions from a new paper published by Science|Business, which says the the open science cloud’s top priority should be to make it straightforward and cost-effective for publicly-funded EU researchers to meet the growing requirement to open their results and data to other researchers. On the basis that Member States’ science ministries and the EU institutions fund approximately two-thirds of the research conducted in EU universities, the paper estimates the higher education sector could spend up to €2.25 billion a year on services available through the new European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).

Once it is launched in November 2018, the EOSC could evolve into a multi-sided marketplace, akin to Amazon.com or Apple’s App Store, in which the value to each market segment depends on the participation of other market segments. After it reaches a critical mass, the EOSC will, like other marketplaces, be subject to so-called network effects (it grows in value as it attracts more participants).

The paper is the product of two meetings of our Cloud Consultation Group, a gathering of members of the Science|Business university-industry network with a special interest in the science cloud. They include experts from ETH-Zurich, CERN, Microsoft, the European Space Agency and others. The resultant paper, while drawing on the members’ expertise, is ultimately a statement of Science|Business and does not necessarily reflect the views of individual members.

Original ScienceIBusiness source for further reading