D2.3 Final report on user communities engagement

SSHOC is a 40-month project which unites 20 partner organisations and their 27 associates in developing the social sciences and humanities area of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). At the 40-month point, this report examines project activities from the perspective of stakeholder engagement and evaluates impacts in terms of progress against defined targets.

The report opens with a short reminder of the eight categories of stakeholders identified by project partners as most likely to benefit from seamless access to high quality SSH research data, and the tools and resources to facilitate data processing and analysis. These stakeholders include individual researchers and research networks, research and e-infrastructures, research libraries and funders, universities, policymakers, and citizen scientists. Across the board and whether to a greater or a lesser extent, each group is a potential end user of one or more of the assets around which the engagement strategy is articulated.

Assets brought to the consortium by SSHOC partners or developed within the project have been listed and described. These assets include a comprehensive suite of research data management tools and services, and a training programme.

The bulk of the report is dedicated to describing the stakeholder engagement strategy follow-up and implementation, which is elaborated along the following major lines: events, and aggregating researchers into smaller communities via a series of calls, interviews, surveys, and publications, activating communities and publications. These activities are supported by the SSHOC website and social media channels.

An analysis of engagement activities by stakeholder groups over the 40 months of the project shows that a solid network has been established with researchers, universities, libraries, and EOSC initiatives, and the associated key performance targets achieved.

The document closes off with conclusions on the activities and impact achieved and considerations for future user engagement in the SSH Open Cluster.