RoP for Onboarding EOSC Training Resources and EOSC Marketplace

 Table of contents

Onboarding procedures for EOSC Providers who want to include Training Resources in the Knowledge Hub

• A Provider starts registration in the EOSC Portal – using current EPOT onboarding workflows: https://eosc-portal.eu/providers-documentation/eosc-provider-portal-inclusion-criteria. The training providers need to be onboarded onto the Providers Portal as any other resource providers. Once a Provider is approved by EPOT the provider can onboard services and training resources. 
• If a Provider wants to include its training resources in the EOSC Knowledge Hub (KH) training catalogue, needs to access the Providers Dashboard and start the process to onboard new training resources.

• KH team is included in the EPOT team and is a part of the rota for training resources. The only work of the KH team within the EPOT rota is the validation of the first training resource, and the future validation/auditing of onboarded training resources. EPOT is doing regular audits of RP and Resources and the KH team is involved in the training related ones.  

• The Provider has two options to onboard Training Resources:

  • manually via a registration form for each resource individually, or

  • via the Portal Application Programming Interface (API).

• For a manual registration “resource by resource” KH trusts the resource (no validation, approval is by default when a form is filled out, validation is done on the Provider level) and gives permission to register training resources. Periodic auditing takes place. The forms ensure that mandatory metadata is supplied before an entry can go into the training catalogue.
• Only the first training resource from an onboarded provider would be validated by EPOT - subsequent ones do not need explicit validation. 
• There is a synchronization between the KH catalogue and the EOSC Marketplace (as there is an additional research product catalogue). 
• A master product is always in the marketplace.  
• KH team curates training resources using the curation quality checklist, follows up with a Provider if needed. Some automated curation will be implemented to minimise the workload of the KH team. Audits will be automated as much as possible, certain checks on URLs for example. 
• The Provider agrees to periodically update training resources (and corresponding metadata) to keep them current. If a resource will not be well maintained but may still be useful, a Provider includes a note that maintenance is not continued. 

Inclusion criteria to onboard Training Resources

In addition to meeting the common inclusion criteria to onboard all resource types, these criteria must be met to onboard training resources:

• Provide metadata in English when filling-in the EOSC Training Resource Profile. 
• Specify the learning outcomes, resource type (e.g. recorded lesson, textbook, activity plan, etc.), content resource type (e.g. video, slides, audio, etc.), and estimated duration (e.g. estimated work hours).
• Be in one of the European language(s) (note 1)
• Incorporate information about the expected level of training and expertise to be achieved (beginner, intermediate, advanced, all) and required qualifications to access the training resource.
• Comply with the FAIR principles, open and reproducible science practices, and have a defined approach to adherence to them. The provider also ensures file technical integrity (completeness of metadata to facilitate discovery and reuse, PIDs, etc.). In addition to ensuring the technical integrity of files, the provider should provide the most accurate metadata possible: all mandatory metadata is provided; all copyright, usage conditions, access constraints, licensing are declared; and all sources are credited when pre-existing resources are reused.

• Provide information about the resource's provenance. 

• Be periodically updated and include the date of the last update to prevent outdated content. In the event that a training resource is not well maintained but is still useful, the provider must include a note that maintenance has been discontinued. 

• Ensure preservation (e.g. resources are deposited in a repository/platform that can ensure that they are accessible for a reasonable (3-5 years) period of time, preferably in trusted repositories with a long-term preservation policy). EOSC does not offer long-term preservation. 

Terminology issues and EOSC Future approaches

Rules of Participation exist on the EOSC level and not on the EOSC Future project level, which means that we could only discuss the practical implication of the rules for training resources and make recommendations for the newly launched EOSC Association Task Force.

Inclusion criteria for onboarding EOSC service providers are within the scope of the EOSC Future project, but we don’t want to introduce specific criteria for different types of EOSC providers and we don’t expect new entities such as training providers. For example, EGI, GEANT and OpenAIRE already have training onboarded as services in the Marketplace. Also, not all training is provided by (training) service providers and training is not always connected to specific services. We should separate training as a service from training material. No difference on the provider level is the project approach. 

So when we talk about onboarding EOSC training resources we could only focus on the content level - e.g. do we need more metadata on training? And this is already addressed in D9.1 EOSC Training Catalogue and Learning Platform Specification. 

Practical implications

The current version of inclusion criteria is available at https://eosc-portal.eu/for-providers (Service Requirements), see the text below: 

Some requirements, such as - Publish Research data which is Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable - clearly refer to data and we would like to ensure that training resources are also covered - for example by saying: Publish Research data and training resources which is Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable.

This generic rule - Release notes and sufficient documentation are available - could be rephrased to be more training specific, for example: Training resources are documented for reuse i.e. not just slides, and are up-to-date. 

While promoting openness, Rules of Participation should also cover commercial training offerings and favour the costs that are really only recoverable costs of provision, not massively lucrative / expensive courses.