NOSCI.mk: Inaugural meeting of the National Open Science Cloud Initiative in North Macedonia

Using the NI4OS-Europe webinar platform, the inaugural meeting of the National Open Science Cloud Initiative in North Macedonia took place on 15th of March 2021. With more than 70 registered participants, mostly researchers from several universities and research institutes in the country, the meeting opened with the introduction of the concept of NOSCIs and the road for their establishment as laid out by the NI4OS-Europe.

The focus was given on the importance of the NOSCIs as focal points for the open science efforts and potential partners to the policy makers and research funders in the country.

The major elements that the NOSCI has to concentrate on were presented to the participants by the members of the UKIMs NI4OS-Europe team, including open data and publications, open methods and tools and most importantly open services and infrastructures, with strong focus on EOSC.

In the open discussion, the idea of devising a declaration for the establishment of the NOSCI.mk was elaborated, with useful input from the participants. The general idea is to produce a declaration that will be signed by all interested individuals and institutions to support the work of the NOSCI.mk and to give it a mandate to present its work and suggestions to the national policy makers and funders. For that purpose, a task force was established to work on the draft version of the declaration.