In support of the Internationalization of EOSC, an online meeting was held on Friday 06/04/2021 between the two regional projects of NI4OS-Europe for Southeast Europe and LA Referencia(Federated Network of Institutional Repositories of Scientific Publications) for Latin America.This was the first meeting that aimed to understand the activities and core networks of others, as well as exchange ideas and exploit areas for future collaborations.

NI4OS-Europe was represented byAthena RC, namely Eleni Toli, Electra Sifakaki, Kalliopi Kanavou and Elli Papadopoulou.

The meeting began with Eleni briefly explaining the scope and objectives of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), highlighting the role of the National Open Science Cloud Initiatives (NOSCI) in the Governance of the EOSC, and also linking to OpenAIREwhere LA Referencia is a member. More specifically, Eleni noted the contribution of NI4OS-Europe to the harmonization of Open Science practices, among other things, through training and the incorporation of data services and repositories to EOSC.

Bianca Amaro, President of LΑ Reference, and Lautaro Matas, Executive and Technical Secretary, reported on the mission of their network that covers eleven (11) countries in Latin America, cooperation with other networks, such as in Spain and Africa, and OpenAIRE relationships. They also noted the differences in its scope compared to NI4OS-Europe, mainly in support for the Open Science policy.

The meeting highlighted common lines and provided the space to express interest and ideas for closer collaboration between NI4OS-Europe and LA Referencia.As a result of the discussions, it is identified that both projects provide support to a controlled number of countries, fifteen (15) for NI4OS and eleven (11) for LA Referencia, recognizing heterogeneous challenges in Open Science policies, FAIR maturity and regulatory status. at the national level.In addition, both promote open infrastructures and guarantee access and interoperability of national repositories by being compatible and interconnected with the OpenAIRE infrastructure.Among the differences identified, it stands out that LA Referencia supports policies only at the implementation level and does not have a central financing mechanism.

Overall, the meeting ended with the two projects eagerly exploring places where they could collectively host sessions to address those commonalities and issues to similar audiences whose work could be beneficial technically or strategically, going even beyond the southeastern regions of Europe and Latin America.