By Raul Palma (PSNC), Esteban González (UPM), Daniel Garijo (UPM), Anne Fouilloux (Lifewatch-ERIC)
ROHub and FAIROs, two FAIR Digital Object (FDO) services central to the FAIR2Adapt FAIRification Framework, will join the EOSC Federation through the EOSC Polish Node (EOSC-PL). Selected under the EOSC Gravity Inter Projects Grants call, ROH-ON is a six-month initiative that establishes a practical onboarding pathway for FAIR2Adapt services into EOSC and strengthens long-term FAIR infrastructure support for the Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) community.
The project is led by PSNC (Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center) and UPM (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid), with LifeWatch ERIC contributing through its connection to the OSCARS-FIESTA project and the wider environmental e-infrastructure community. The onboarding work will be carried out through EOSC-PL, operated by the Polish National Science Centre.
The initiative officially kicked off on 6 May 2026 with the EOSC Gravity team. Fittingly, the first EOSC Academy course, “Explaining the EOSC Federation”, followed on 13 May 2026, an appropriate starting point for a project focused on making federation work in practice.
From project services to federated EOSC infrastructure
The onboarding of ROHub and FAIROs marks an important transition from project-level FAIR tooling to a federated EOSC infrastructure that supports sustainability beyond individual project lifecycles.
Both services pre-date FAIR2Adapt and already have a strong INFRAEOSC track record through initiatives such as RELIANCE and OSTRails. Operated respectively by PSNC and UPM, they have already contributed to the consolidation of FAIR Digital Object and RO-Crate practices within EOSC. Moreover, FAIROs is already integrated in ROHub, enabling the FAIR assessment of RO-Crates, and their corresponding aggregated resources, managed in ROHub.
Within FAIR2Adapt, both services are being further extended for Climate Change Adaptation workflows and FAIR Digital Object management.
ROHub, already FAIR2Adapt’s default FDO repository, is being enhanced with new RO-Crate profiles, FAIR signposting support, advanced AI-driven semantic enrichment, and claim extractions capabilities. These developments are complemented by existing integrations with EOSC services and infrastructures, including EGI check-in, Notebooks, Zenodo, B2Drop, Argos DMP, and OpenAire Scientific Knowledge Graph. As part of ROH-ON, ROHub will additionally integrate with the EOSC Federation AAI (myAccessID), strengthening interoperability and federated access across the EOSC ecosystem.
FAIROs, developed further in FAIR2Adapt WP3 led by UPM, is expanding from a Research Object assessment tool into a broader FAIR assessment service for FAIR Digital Objects, including software assessment aligned with FAIR4RS and informed by EVERSE, semantic artifact evaluation, and community-specific FAIR metrics.
These developments are additive rather than restrictive. Although FAIR2Adapt extends the platforms for Climate Change Adaptation workflows, ROHub and FAIROs remain fundamentally domain-agnostic services by design. The same FAIR Digital Object infrastructure supporting FAIR2Adapt demonstrators can equally support bioimaging, astronomy, environmental science, life sciences, social sciences, and other EOSC communities through different RO-Crate profiles and FAIR assessment metrics.
Why EOSC federation matters
Onboarding ROHub and FAIROs into EOSC-PL provides the Climate Change Adaptation community with:
federated and sustainable FAIR infrastructure,
EOSC AAI-enabled federated access,
interoperable FAIR Digital Object publishing and discovery capabilities,
and long-term operational continuity beyond the duration of any individual project.
At the same time, the work establishes reusable onboarding patterns and integration practices that can support the future inclusion of additional FAIR2Adapt services within the EOSC Federation.
The project contributes:
a validated deployment pathway through EOSC-PL, leveraging PSNC’s role as an EOSC EU Node subcontractor;
validated approaches for EOSC AAI integration, FDO publishing, and FAIR assessment;
and practical experience implementing the EOSC Federation Handbook and the Guidelines for Onboarding Resources to EOSC Exchange (v5.0).
This creates a concrete foundation for future onboarding efforts involving additional FAIR2Adapt services and FAIRification Framework components.
As the EOSC Federation moves into its next wave of Node enrolment, FAIR2Adapt and the broader Climate Change Adaptation community are increasingly positioned to contribute from operational experience and validated deployments rather than from future ambitions alone.
Two cross-domain use cases
ROH-ON, funded under the EOSC Gravity Inter Projects Grants call, combines use cases from very different scientific domains to demonstrate that ROHub and FAIROs are genuinely community-agnostic FAIR services.
Within OSCARS-FIESTA, image-analysis workflows from bioimaging, astronomy, and environmental sciences will be packaged and validated as FAIR Digital Objects using ROHub and FAIROs.
Within FAIR2Adapt, Climate Change Adaptation demonstrators—including urban climate risk assessment and coastal water-quality modelling—will validate the services in production-like conditions using reproducible RO-Crate workflows.
Together, these use cases demonstrate that the same FAIR Digital Object infrastructure can support diverse scientific communities through different RO-Crate profiles and FAIR assessment metrics.
What the project will deliver
Over the next six months, the project will:
onboard ROHub and FAIROs into EOSC-PL with EOSC AAI integration;
create and validate FAIR Digital Objects for cross-domain scientific workflows;
integrate workflow execution capabilities through external workflow engines such as Galaxy;
and release training materials, tutorials, and best-practice guides through the EOSC Academy.
This short project also aims to demonstrate measurable improvements in FAIRness and reusable FAIR Digital Object workflows across multiple scientific domains.
All training materials will be released under CC-BY 4.0, deposited in Zenodo with persistent DOIs, and published as RO-Crates in ROHub with persistent identifiers—applying FAIR Digital Object principles throughout the project itself.
Looking ahead
Our thanks to the EOSC Gravity team for selecting the proposal, to the EOSC-PL Node and the Polish National Science Centre for their support, and to the OSCARS-FIESTA and FAIR2Adapt partners contributing datasets, workflows, and domain expertise.
The first major deliverables, onboarded ROHub and FAIROs services operating through EOSC-PL, are expected by summer 2026.
By federating mature FAIR Digital Object services within EOSC today, the project creates a practical foundation that other FAIR2Adapt services and research communities can build upon in the years ahead.
FAIR2Adapt has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 101188256. The inter-project activity described here is funded through the EOSC Gravity Inter Projects Grants scheme.
