Large sums of money, and equally great ambitions, are already being directed towards developing data/research infrastructures, forscience and for industry, and there is no doubt that much additional awareness, new insights and new types of services and tools will emerge. Despite these huge investments there is no agreed view on how the future data space should be organized, what its key pillars should be and how access to data will be managed and facilitated. EOSC for example is based on the FAIR principles and a distributed service landscape, with further specifications currently being derived by expert Task Forces. Similar to the ESFRI process, NFDI relies on a process of discipline-driven infrastructure building, while recognizing that this leaves a gap to be bridged with respect to common services and standards. NIH Commons a conceptual framework for a digital environment was designed to allow efficient storage, manipulation, and sharing of research objects. Meanwhile, big industry is defining strategies for offering services on data based on proprietary binding mechanisms, seriously hampering innovation.
This panel will initiate a discussion across initiatives about major organizational principles and key pillars, and is intended as the first of a series of meetings on this topic. Its goal, therefore, is to identify major aspects that need to be considered when examining the emerging future global data space. For this purpose, we invited four “thinkers” whom we know dare to look ahead without being bound by current projects and political considerations.