The exponential growth of available research data and the increasingly collaborative and cross-disciplinary research has accentuated challenges related to secure, efficient and lawful cross-border data sharing for research purposes. Removing barriers to data sharing while ensuring data sovereignty is crucial to realise the potential of EOSC to foster trusted cross-country and cross-discipline scientific collaboration.

This topic aims to support data sovereignty while enabling seamless and trusted data sharing and access across scientific disciplines, EU Member States and third countries where the EU considers sufficient data protection is in place, tackling different regulatory regimes and procedures.

Proposals should include the following activities:

• Development and implementation of national, community and/or institutional research data sovereignty frameworks, including policies for data sharing and access, harmonised and aligned with EU digital and data legislation and international agreements such as adequacy decisions and digital partnership agreements, as well as best practices from EOSC, related common European data spaces and international data-sharing standards and initiatives.
• Demonstration and validation of concrete adoption cases of data sovereignty policies by national, community or institutional actors, aligned with open science and the FAIR data principles.
• Development of harmonised governance frameworks, ensuring smooth enforcement of data sovereignty policies.
• Development of comprehensive data provenance tools to trace and verify the quality and lineage of data used in research, and demonstration through identified use cases within relevant selected thematic areas.
• Development of templates and guidelines for secure and sovereign data management, including template agreements on data sharing, publication, and reuse, and guidelines for licensing.
• Development of guidelines for classifying critical data and services based on sensitivity and relevance to scientific communities and European policies, and for managing risks related to access to and preservation of such critical data and services.
• Analysis of data categories and definitions across scientific disciplines, incorporating compliance with security requirements set out in EU and national legislation.
• Development of recommendations for the establishment of a support centre, linking with relevant national and thematic competence centres, focused on compliance of data management with EU and national legislation, and proof of concept of its integration and sustainable operation in the EOSC Federation.