Recontextualizing Open Science through co-designed mandates and policies: the case of FedOSC

Open Science (OS) can support collaborative and impactful research when embedded in a coherent, workable ecosystem of services, tools, policies and infrastructure. 

Since the introduction of federal OS mandates in 2017 and 2019, OS uptake in Belgium’s federal research ecosystem has remained uneven across its research institutions. Two 2025 surveys document diverse publication routes, data-sharing cultures, and levels of maturity, highlighting limited operational guidance in the current OS policy and insufficient awareness across the community. The existing framework is further challenged by a changing landscape, including the growing role of research data for AI in a data-driven economy, concerns around knowledge security and cybersecurity, and the evolving EU OS agenda around equitable open access publishing and the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). Austerity pressures and geopolitical concerns further condition the policy space in which OS evolves.  

Against this backdrop, the Federal Open Science Cloud (FedOSC) project provides a living case of ecosystem co-design combining bottom-up and top-down dynamics. Supported by the Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO) and coordinated by Belnet, Belgium’s mandated organisation in the EOSC Association, FedOSC brings together policy makers, service providers and representatives of the federal research community to articulate a unified OS vision. It addresses heterogeneous OS practices by developing shared infrastructures, harmonised policy, and facilitated community support. 

FedOSC data stewards work with BELSPO to update its OS policy through an iterative co-design exercise rather than a consultative add-on. Drawing on evidence from the 2025 surveys, two interlinked task forces bring together volunteer federal scientific institutes (FSI) members and policy makers. Through ongoing dialogue, they map overlaps and divergences in practices, networks, infrastructure, and identify emerging constraints. A gap analysis between these realities, their evolving context, and the current federal OS policy informs a consolidated set of recommendations for decision makers (planned for January 2026). In this setting, diversity in tools and cultures is not treated as noise, but as a design resource that keeps recommendations realistic and context-sensitive.  

At submission, recommendations remain under review and will be presented at the conference in validated form. Early directions converge on the following priorities:  boosting AI readiness through updated legal frameworks, mandatory PIDs and richer metadata, and infrastructures that enable reuse while reinforcing cybersecurity and trustworthy data flows; aggregating metadata to strengthen EOSC interoperability and enable monitoring across FSIs, accommodating local specificities; coordinating federal approaches to OS by tightening the OS peer network through shared spaces for ongoing engagement and facilitation. 

All other FedOSC outputs feed into this co-designed vision, so that policy, services, and skills evolve as one coherent system. Digital services are developed in continuous release cycles and refined through user engagement and acceptance testing. Upskilling follows the same logic: a learning community across FSIs is being built through facilitating peer exchange, leveraging and showcasing local expertise rather than top-down training.  

Overall, FedOSC takes up the challenge of showing that policy, infrastructure, and skills co-designed with the community can turn institutional diversity into a driver of more coherent, future-ready OS.