The architectural model adopted by EOSC for federating heterogeneous national, thematic, and pan-European research-data infrastructures into a single user-facing layer, with shared identity and access management, monitoring, accounting, helpdesk, and service onboarding.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 10 Jul 2026

Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
A national research data infrastructure becoming an 'EOSC Node' under the Federation architecture.
Is an instance
A thematic biomedical-data infrastructure federating into EOSC alongside its national hosts.

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
A standalone repository with no EOSC interface is not part of the EOSC Federation.
Not an instance
A vendor cloud is not, by itself, an EOSC Node.

Editorial commentary

The Federation model recognises that EOSC will not own the underlying infrastructure but will federate existing nodes. Each federated ‘EOSC Node’ (typically a national or thematic infrastructure) commits to baseline interoperability requirements (EOSC AAI federation, EOSC core service integration, FAIR-aligned service registration). The Federation model is the operational programme that succeeds earlier EOSC procurement phases and is currently being elaborated by the EOSC Association and the European Commission.

References

EOSC Association, 'EOSC Federation handbook and architectural documents' (eosc.eu).

Also known as

EOSC Federation model · EOSC Node architecture

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="EOSC Federation"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/eosc-federation" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/eosc-federation",
  "name": "EOSC Federation",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/eosc-federation",
  "description": "The architectural model adopted by EOSC for federating heterogeneous national, thematic, and pan-European research-data infrastructures into a single user-facing layer, with shared identity and access management, monitoring, accounting, helpdesk, and service onboarding.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/research-info-systems#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/eosc-federation",
  "sameAs": [
    "EOSC Federation model",
    "EOSC Node architecture"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-07-10T02:06:20",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}

Referenced across the research world

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