SSHOC D6.1 Community Engagement Strategy

The project aims to build a fully-fledged Social Sciences and Humanities Open Cloud (SSHOC) where users of Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) data are provided with data, tools and training materials. SSHOC plays a key role in the realization of Europe’s Open Science agenda and the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).1

This community engagement strategy outlines how the project will engage with the SSHOC community coherently and efficiently, thereby fostering community engagement, developing a data-sharing culture which follows the FAIR principles, and giving user communities knowledge, skills and expertise so that they can use and contribute to SSHOC resources.

The strategy also describes the stakeholder categories identified in the SSHOC Overall Communication and Outreach Plan,2 and follows a stakeholder landscape analysis performed by project partners. It explains why the SSHOC project should engage with these stakeholders, outlines key messages and value propositions for each group, and shares the most effective channels and approaches to be used. Collaboration between project Work Packages (WPs) and coordination of timeline of engagement activities, will create a storyline of engagement for each group. This is critical in order to gain a certain level of commitment.

It is important to note that project partners already represent a big part of the SSH community. This strategy therefore builds on existing networks, channels and tools. Furthermore, collaboration with other EOSC-relevant projects will be at the core of activities. The strategy is complemented by a set of KPIs based on identified needs and assigned activities to project partners, as per the Grant Agreement. Provisions for possible gaps and risks are also addressed.

This Community Engagement Strategy is in line with the activities of the SSHOC Overall Communication and Outreach Plan, keeps and intentionally flexible timeline, in order to be able to adapt to current EOSC developments and will be complemented by the training activities of a sound Building Expertise Strategy to be delivered in December 2019.