Navigating Pressure: How FedOSC Builds Resilient Digital Curation for Open Science

Digital curation is being reshaped by a mix of accelerating AI uptake in research, public budget austerity, and a hardening political landscape. These forces intersect in ways that threatens the promises of open, equitable, sustainable and democratic research, paradoxically framing research data as both capital to protect and a public good to share This poster examines how FedOSC, Belgium’s Federal Open Science Cloud initiative aims to navigate these dynamics and strengthen resilient, democratic and transparent digital curation infrastructures. Austerity creates resource constraints that may reduce the capacity of the Federal Scientific Institutions (FSIs) to conduct high-quality data management, sustain research data or services, guarantee access or maintain long-term preservation. At the same time, AI offers efficiency through automated metadata management or linked data, yet inducing risks related to transparency, bias, externalization, and long-term maintenance. Patterns of digital authoritarianism, such as global north biases, or corporate monopolies, pose challenges to data sovereignty, archival integrity and equitable knowledge access. FedOSC proposes a strategic response to these points of pressure by enhancing or developing shared infrastructures and tools, aligning governance, policies and guidelines across FSIs. It promotes FAIR data practices, supports interoperable repository development, and provides training that emphasizes transparency, inclusivity, and accessibility. By coordinating efforts at a federal level and aligning with the European Science Cloud (EOSC), FedOSC reduces redundancy costs and strengthens resilience against technical, economic and political vulnerabilities. It commits federal research to the EOSC’s ambition of a truly functional open knowledge market in Europe and empowers FSIs to access EOSC services. Through equitable prioritization strategies, responsible AI integration, robust governance and shared infrastructure, FedOSC ensures that Open Sciences values remain intact even under pressures, guaranteeing access to scientific knowledge, reframing the apparent tension between Open Science and knowledge security as an opportunity for mutually reinforcing dissemination and preservation strategies.