The EPOS Multi-Scale Laboratories: A FAIR Framework for Stimulating Open Science Practice across European Earth Sciences Laboratories

Abstract

The Multi-scale Laboratories (MSL) are a network of European laboratories bringing together the scientific fields of analogue modeling, paleomagnetism, experimental rock and melt physics, geo-chemistry and microscopy. MSL is one of nine (see below) Thematic Core Services (TCS) of the European Plate Observing System (EPOS). The overarching goal of EPOS is to establish a compre-hensive multidisciplinary research platform for the Earth sciences in Europe. It aims at facilitating the integrated use of data, models, and facilities, from both existing and new distributed pan European Research Infrastructures, allowing open access and transparent use of data. The TCS MSL network allows researchers to collaborate with other labs and scientists. By becoming part of the rapidly growing TCS MSL network, new laboratories are offered a platform to showcase their research data output, laboratory equipment and information, and the opportunity to open laboratories to guest researchers through the Transnational Access (TNA) program. The EPOS Multi-scale laboratories offer researchers a fully operational data publication chain tailored to the specific needs of laboratory research, from a bespoke metadata editor, through dedi-cated, (domain-specific) data repositories, to the MSL Portal showcasing these citable data publica-tions. During this process the data publications are assigned with digital object identidiers (DOI), published with open licenses (e.g. CC BY 4.0) and described with standardized and machine-read-able rich metadata (following the FAIR Principles to make research data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable. The TCS MSL is currently working on linking these data publications to the EPOS Central Portal1, the main discovery and access point for European multi-disciplinary data, and on increasing the number of connected data repositories.