Open Science Infrastructure

SURF is the national ICT cooperative of Dutch education and research institutions. Members (100+) are all universities, universities of applied sciences, UMCs, and a lot of research institutions.

SURF fulfills 3 roles:

1. An association in which members work together across the boundaries of their sector/campus.
2. A service provider in which the SURF organisation provides services that have been created in consultation with the members.
3. An innovation workspace, where SURF creates an environment in which members can collaborate on complex innovation issues.

 The transition to Open Science is primarily a culture change. To bring about a change in research culture, five prerequisites are necessary:

• Make Open Science possible through open infrastructures;
• Facilitate Open Science through support and training;
• Make Open Science the norm together with the academic community;
• Make Open Science rewarding through incentives and system interventions;
• Embed Open Science through policies and regulations.

Progress requires collective action of many stakeholders.

As a cooperative, SURF can play various roles in fulfilling the ambitions of the various stakeholders. As a network organisation, SURF is well positioned to efficiently acquire knowledge and to build, bundle and distribute. SURF already collaborates with local and thematic Digital Competence Centers (DCCs), libraries and research communities.

SURF provides IT services like identity & access management, procurement & contracting, security, network connectivity, storage and data management, publishing and compute.

Innovation zones are the landing place in SURF where stakeholders can work together to solve complex issues. SURF has two innovation zones in the field of research: Optimal use of infrastructures, with a focus on storage/network/compute, and Strengthening Open Science, encompassing three major themes: Open Research Information, Open Scholarly Communication and FAIR data.

This presentation will discuss SURF's approach, the first results, challenges and plans on the roadmaps.