Now the H2020 EOSC pilot project has taken the first steps towards creating the blueprint for an open European Science Cloud, this proposal aims to supply practical solutions for the use of the FAIR data principles throughout the research data life cycle. Emphasis is on fostering FAIR data culture and the uptake of good practices in making data FAIR. Keeping in mind that there is no ‘one size fits all’, the consortium will focus on all scientific communities for supporting, creating, further developing and implementing a common scheme to ensure data development, wide uptake of and compliance with FAIR data principles and practices by data producers as well as national and European research data providers and repositories contributing to the EOSC. Furthermore, the consortium will closely collaborate with other relevant (global) projects and initiatives already on the way e.g. GO-FAIR, Research Data Alliance (RDA), World Data System (WDS), CODATA. We will provide a platform for using and implementing the FAIR principles in the day to day work of national and European research data providers and repositories. The consortium cooperates with other projects that will be funded under the INFRAEOSC-05-2018 topic (e.g. the EOSC governance (5a) and where appropriate 5b, the projects funded in the INFRAEOSC-04-2018 topic (e.g. the ESFRI clusters SSHOC, PANOSC, ENVRI FAIR, ESCAPE and EOSCLife) and with the EOSC coordination structure developed in the existing EOSC-pilot and EOSC-hub projects. According to the research data life cycle (planning/creating, processing, analysing, preserving and reuse) the consortium partners have defined goals, activities and outputs on - making data FAIR through research workflows - ensuring long-term preservation of data - making data FAIR through data curation - improving accessibility of research data (e.g. legal barriers) - improving findability of data through creation and interconnection of metadata catalogues - curricula/education

The Beyond 1 Million Genomes (B1MG) consortium will establish the support and coordination structure for the European 1+ Million Genomes initiative (1+MG), which is based upon the commitment of 20 European Member States and Norway that have signed the Declaration ‘Towards access to at least 1 million sequenced genomes in the EU by 2022’. Collectively, these countries have committed to establish a cross-border federated network of national genome collections associated with phenotypic data, consented for advancing health and medicine practices across Europe. Europe is uniquely placed to take on this challenge and position itself as a global leader in this field. B1MG will go ‘beyond’ the 1M genome target and ‘beyond’ the 20 signatory countries. The project will collaborate with an array of international initiatives and consult a range of stakeholders to support the creation of a pan-European genome-based health data infrastructure, encompassing data quality and exchange standards, access protocols and legal guidance. Recommendations will be translated to a B1MG maturity level model that provides concrete guidance on the steps required to implement personalised medicine, a healthcare approach that takes into account a person’s genetic make-up, at local, regional and national-scale. Personalised medicine is expected to bring significant socio-economic benefits, including more efficient national health systems. Faster and more accurate diagnosis, the development of pharmacogenomics and advancement of preventative medicine will lead to better health, quality of life of patients and increased life expectancy. This will be captured in a methodology for economic evaluation, forming the basis of future business-cases for implementation in the health sector.

The diversity, complexity and volume, as well as privacy and regulatory considerations, necessitate a collaborative and federated approach to life-science data. For scientists to find and share data across Europe and world-wide, ELIXIR needs to continuously develop and connect its services. The international ecosystem provided by ELIXIR – with 220 institutes in 23 Nodes, connecting hundreds of bioinformatics services – is globally unique and a competitive advantage for European research. Through our national Nodes ELIXIR has the geographical spread, service portfolio and expertise to fulfil our ambition that every European project uses FAIR data based on common standards, tools and services. The initial operational phase of ELIXIR, supported by the H2020 ELIXIR-EXCELERATE project, focussed on the coordination and delivery of bioinformatics services from national Nodes. This lay the foundation for a coordinated European infrastructure. ELIXIR-CONVERGE will build on these achievements to deliver another critical component: the provisioning, across Europe, of distributed local support for data management based on a toolkit for researchers that enables lifecycle management for their research data according to international standards. ELIXIR-CONVERGE will develop the national operations of such a distributed research infrastructure to drive good data management, reproducibility and reuse in a heterogeneous funding landscape. Over 36 months and with partners from our 23 Nodes, ELIXIR-CONVERGE takes the next step to realise a European data federation where interconnected national operations, strategically managed via national research infrastructure roadmaps, allow users to extract knowledge from life science’s large, diverse and distributed datasets. By connecting ELIXIR Nodes to provide FAIR data management as a service, ELIXIR-CONVERGE will build national capacity and create a blueprint for operating sustainable Nodes in distributed research infrastructures.

The life sciences are undergoing a transformation. Modern experimental tools study the molecules, reactions, and organisation of life in unprecedented detail. The precipitous drop in costs for high-throughput biology has enabled European research laboratories to produce an ever-increasing amount of data. Life scientists are rapidly generating the most complex and heterogeneous datasets that science can currently imagine, with unprecedented volumes of biological data to manage. Data will only generate long-term value if it is Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable (FAIR). This requires a scalable infrastructure that connects local, national and European efforts and provides standards, tools and training for data stewardship. Formally established as a legal entity in January 2014, ELIXIR - the European life science Infrastructure for Biological Information - is a distributed organisation comprising national bioinformatics research infrastructures and the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI). This coordinated infrastructure includes data standards, exchange, interoperability, storage, security and training. Recognising the importance of a data foundation for European life sciences, the ESFRI and European Council named ELIXIR as one of Europe’s priority Research Infrastructures. In response ELIXIR have developed ELIXIR-EXCELERATE. The project will fast-track ELIXIR’s early implementation phase by i) coordinate and enhance existing resources into a world-leading data service for academia and industry, ii) grow bioinformatics capacity and competence across Europe, and iii) complete the management processes needed for a large distributed infrastructure. ELIXIR-EXCELERATE will deliver a step-change in the life sciences. It will enable cost-effective and sustainable management and re-use of data for millions of users across the globe and improve the competitiveness of European life science industries through accessible data and robust standards and tools.