Initiative

Open Science Demonstrator 2025

The Open Science Persistent Demonstrator (OSPD) is a long-term inter-agency initiative aiming to enable and communicate reproducible Earth Science across global communities of users and amplify inter-agency Earth Observation mission data, tools, and infrastructures. 

Introduction to the Pilot Initiative 

The Open Science Demonstrator 2025 is a collaborative initiative led by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), co-sponsored by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the European Union through the FOCAL project. This pilot aims to advance the principles of open science by developing and validating a framework for the standardized description, sharing, and reuse of scientific workflows. The Open Science Persistent Demonstrator (OSPD) is a long-term inter-agency initiative aiming to enable and communicate reproducible Earth Science across global communities of users and amplify inter-agency Earth Observation mission data, tools, and infrastructures. 

Objectives 

The primary objective of the Demonstrator is to address the growing need for transparency, reproducibility, and interoperability in scientific research. By enabling workflows to be described in a machine-readable, modular, and standards-compliant manner, the initiative seeks to: 

  • Facilitate the reproducibility of scientific results across platforms and institutions. 
  • Promote the reuse of workflows in new contexts, reducing duplication of effort. 
  • Support interoperability through the adoption of open standards such as those developed by OGC. 
  • Enhance transparency by documenting data sources, processing steps, and assumptions in a structured format. 

Scope and Structure 

The pilot is organized around a series of work packages that collectively address the technical, semantic, and organizational challenges of workflow reuse. These include: 

  • Workflow Discovery and Evaluation: Identifying and documenting existing workflows suitable for reuse. 
  • Open Science Ontology Development: Establishing a shared vocabulary and conceptual model to describe workflows and their components. 
  • Workflow Reuse Experiments: Adapting and executing workflows across heterogeneous platforms. 
  • OGC Workflow Building Blocks: Developing reusable schema components and validation tools to support standardized workflow descriptions

Participation 

The initiative is open to OGC members and invites participation in four key roles: 

  • Scientists: Provide and explain workflows, and support their adaptation and execution on new platforms. 
  • Platform Operators: Offer infrastructure for workflow execution and support interoperability. 
  • Platform Developers: Adapt workflows for execution on different platforms and contribute to metadata modeling. 
  • Building Block Developers: Design and implement reusable schema components and contribute to the development of the Open Science Ontology. 

Expected Outcomes 

By the conclusion of the pilot, participants will have contributed to: 

  • A minimum viable product for the Open Science Ontology. 
  • A set of interoperable, reusable workflow descriptions. 
  • Demonstrations of cross-platform workflow execution. 
  • Enhanced documentation and best practices for workflow standardization. 

This initiative represents a significant step toward a more open, collaborative, and efficient scientific ecosystem, where workflows are not only published but also readily discoverable, understandable, and reusable. 

Join this initiative today: https://portal.ogc.org/files/?artifact_id=111516 

The Call for Participation is open until August 14th, 2025. 

Sponsors


The OSPD is generously supported by OGC Strategic Members—the European Space Agency (ESA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)—and co-funded by the European Union.