Introduction
The EOSC Portal Onboarding Process is the process that an EOSC Provider must follow to register the Provider and its Resources in the EOSC Portal Registry. The ESOC Registry provides EOSC System Users with a list of live/ready-to-use descriptions of EOSC Resources offered by the EOSC System. Every entry of the EOSC Registry must comply with and be described and updated following the EOSC Portal Interoperability Framework. The EOSC Portal Interoperability Framework includes, among others the EOSC Profiles, the EOSC Rules of Participation (RoP) and the EOSC Portal Application Programming Interface (APIs) methods for the automatic provisioning and synchronisation of information between Providers’ systems and the EOSC Portal. The EPOP is fundamental is achieving trust in the EOSC by checking compliance to the EOSC RoP and the EOSC Profiles.
Prior Efforts
The joint effort by the European Commission, the Member States and four projects (EOSCPilot, eInfraCentral, OpenAIRE-Advance, EOSC-Hub) led to the development of the First Version of the EOSC Portal and the EOSC launch in 2018. This First version of the EOSC Portal onboarded many Resources offered to European researchers from a large number of EOSC Providers. The onboarding of those Resources to the EOSC Portal was achieved by two parallel efforts: eInfraCentral (catalogue) and EOSC-Hub (marketplace) that onboarded together more than 94 Providers that gave access to more than 250 services, 4M datasets, 150K applications and software, 35M publications and 3M other research products, organized in more than 300 entries.
From 2019 to 2021 EOSC Enhance was responsible to further develop, optimise and coordinate the onboarding function and related interfaces of the EOSC Portal. In this framework, EOSC Enhance was responsible to unify and specify, develop and operate a single onboarding process for all EOSC Providers.
EOSC Portal Onboarding Process v3.00
EOSC Enhance D2.2 – EOSC Processes development and consensus, unified and specified the EOSC Portal Onboarding Process (EPOP) v3.00 and provided the basic information for the EPOP operations. The EPOP operations were overlooked by EOSC Enhance in collaboration with EOSC-hub initially and currently with ESOC Future, which staff the process while the tooling comes from EOSC Enhance. The EPOP is implemented by the EOSC Providers Component of the EOSC Portal developed by eInfraCentral and upgraded in EOSC Enhance.
EPOP v3.00 was built on the foundations of eInfraCentral, EOSC-Hub, EOSCPilot, OpenAIRE-Advance and CatRIS, as well as the results produced by the EOSC Working Groups (e.g., RoP) and the experience gained by the organisations participating in the onboarding so far that have produced a detailed set of rules and specific criteria. EPOP v3.00 reflected the need for sufficient and appropriate inclusiveness, transparency, and openness such that it can be followed by all interested parties with small differentiations, irrespective of their maturity.
EPOP v3.00 specified only the onboarding of Providers and their Resources; and was organised in 3 distinct Phases implemented in 10 Stages. EPOP v3.00 defined also the EOSC Portal Onboarding Team (EPOT) roles and responsibilities and the messaging for informing Providers and the EPOT on next (or pending) steps on the EPOP.
The EPOP is supported by the EPOT Backend interface. The EPOT utilises an additional software platform to keep track of the applications’ onboarding progress. The ticketing system is based on the Jira suite modified accordingly to cope with the requirements of the process. The tooling is presented in D2.2 – EOSC Processes development and consensus.
EOSC Portal Onboarding Process v4.00
After v3.00 was adopted and implemented successfully at the EOSC Portal, EOSC Enhance received several Requests for Changes (RfCs) for the EOSC Portal Onboarding Process. Among those are:
- Several requirements reviewed and approved via the EOSC Portal Change Management Process and listed in Table 5‑1.
- The Ordering Capability (additional onboarding Phase).
- The updates on the Quality Assurance and Feedback Processes (see next Chapter).
- The onboarding of trusted Multi-Provider Regional and Thematic Portals (MPRTP) (additional distinct EPOP to cover cases where the Requestor is not the owner of the Resources but rather an aggregator, broker or of other similar roles).
Table 1: EOSC Portal Onboarding Process Requests for Change
Jira ID | EOSC Portal Onboarding Process Requests for Change (RfC) | Subject |
EOSCENR-212 | Activate Provider (incl. dashboard) even without a Resource onboarded | Single Provider |
EOSCENR-213 | Adjust Onboarding process for approving Provider and Resources | Single & Multi-Provider |
EOSCENR-214 | Add for each Resource the admin role at the Provider Component | Single Provider |
EOSCENR-206 | Prerequisite of minimum maturity level for listing Resources on the Portal | Single Provider |
EOSCENR-210 | New event for coexistence of Resources in user projects | Single Provider |
EOSCENR-184 | Fix silent failure of records which pass PC validation and fail UC validation | Single Provider |
EOSCENR-202 | Provide textbox for comments during Resource Update | Single Provider |
EOSCENR-187 | In the timeline view show also, who changed the records | Single Provider |
EOSCENR-151 | Automatically message Providers who have not updated their Profiles in the last x months | Single Provider |
EOSCENR-152 | Send automatic daily digest of EPOT and PP activity to EPOT mailing list | Single Provider |
EOSCENR-115 | Prospective providers can access a section with the full guidelines for the onboarding of National Catalogues & Registries | Multi-Provider |
EOSCENR-116 | National, Regional or Thematic Aggregators can onboard their resources in automated way | Multi-Provider |
EOSCENR-174 | Allow the option to onboard Providers via the API | Single & Multi-Provider |
Based on the aforementioned requirements, 2 distinct EOSC Portal Onboarding Processes are defined in EPOP v4.00: a) for Single Providers like in v3.00 and b) for Aggregators and in particular for MPRTPs.