Open Science and Data Management

Cloud4Business adopts Open Science principles as a structural element of its R&I strategy, in compliance with the mandatory Horizon Europe requirements (art. 17 Model Grant Agreement) and with Recommendation (EU) 2018/790 on access to scientific information.

1. Open Access Policy

Cloud4Business adopts an immediate Open Access policy for all publications and outputs produced within publicly funded projects, in compliance with Article 17 of the Horizon Europe Model Grant Agreement and with Plan S principles (cOAlition S, 2018). Long-form text publications — scientific articles, technical reports, working papers, public project deliverables — are released under the Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 licence. Research software is released under standard open-source licences (Apache 2.0, MIT or EUPL) and assigned a Zenodo DOI to ensure academic citability. Datasets are released under context-appropriate licences (CC-BY 4.0, CC0 where legally feasible) and accompanied by FAIR metadata.

Deposit takes place exclusively in trustworthy repositories: Zenodo (operated by CERN, CoreTrustSeal-certified, part of EOSC) for textual publications, software, datasets and multimedia materials; GitHub as a collaborative development platform for software, with automatic archiving on Zenodo at each release. The embargo policy applied by Cloud4Business is zero embargo: publications are accessible from the moment of publication, with no restriction periods. Any exceptions — limited to content subject to legitimate intellectual property constraints, commercial confidentiality or personal data protection — are explicitly motivated in the project Data Management Plan.

2. Data Management

For each research and innovation project, Cloud4Business develops a Data Management Plan (DMP) drafted according to the official Horizon Europe template and maintained as a living document throughout the project duration, in line with the European Commission Horizon Europe Programme Guide and with the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity (ALLEA, 2023).

Update milestones

• Month 6 — initial version following the first data collection phase, with definition of types, estimated volumes, metadata standards and access criteria.
• Month 18 — interim version with any methodological revisions, updated preservation plan and openness/closure criteria for individual outputs.
• Month 36 (or project end) — final version documenting the actual publication and preservation of each output, with assigned DOIs and links to Zenodo deposits and GitHub repositories.

Metadata standards

The data management infrastructure adopts DataCite metadata for formal citation and Dublin Core for essential bibliographic description, with progressive alignment to relevant domain-specific schemas: GeoDCAT-AP for geospatial data, INSPIRE for territorial data, Darwin Core for biodiversity data where applicable, SAREF (ETSI TS 103 264) for IoT/sensor data. All outputs are deposited on Zenodo, part of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), with a minimum preservation horizon of ten years beyond project completion.

Personal and sensitive data protection

The management of personal and sensitive data strictly follows the GDPR (EU Regulation 2016/679), supported by the company’s ISO/IEC 27001-certified Information Security Management System, with end-to-end data lifecycle tracking and documented anonymisation/pseudonymisation protocols specified in each project DMP.

3. FAIR Principles on Data

Cloud4Business applies the FAIR principles (Wilkinson et al., 2016, Scientific Data 3:160018, DOI: 10.1038/sdata.2016.18) to all outputs of its R&I activities.

Findable

• Each output (dataset, software, technical report) is deposited on Zenodo with automatic assignment of a persistent DOI.
• Metadata follow the DataCite Metadata Schema 4.5, including: title, authors with ORCID iD, description, keywords, publication date, resource type, licence, relevant project.
• Each C4B author is identified through a verified ORCID iD: Maria Emilia Mazzone (0009-0009-2582-9716), Stefano Falcone (0009-0006-5686-2058).

Accessible

• Open Access as the default mode for all outputs not subject to intellectual property or commercial confidentiality constraints.
• For datasets containing sensitive data (personal, geolocated environmental, financial): time-bound embargo or restricted access via Zenodo restricted access, with metadata always public (“as open as possible, as closed as necessary”).
• Access protocol: HTTPS with REST Zenodo API (standard, non-proprietary).

Interoperable

• Open and non-proprietary formats: CSV, GeoJSON, JSON-LD, GeoTIFF for datasets; Python/JavaScript for software; Markdown/PDF for documentation.
• Controlled vocabularies and reference ontologies: ETSI SAREF for IoT/sensors, IFC/IDS for BIM data, Dublin Core for general metadata.
• Machine-readable metadata schema deposited together with the data.

Reusable

• Explicit licences for each output (details in section 7).
• Technical documentation (README, data dictionary, API specification) attached to every deposit.
• Data provenance (data lineage) documented: sources, transformations, versions.

4. Repositories for deposit and preservation

Zenodo (primary repository)

• URL: zenodo.org
• Operator: CERN (Geneva) — OpenAIRE infrastructure
• C4B usage: Deposit of datasets, software, technical reports and preprints.
• Preservation guarantee: Zenodo guarantees long-term preservation of deposited outputs for at least 20 years (CERN Data Centre). DOIs are managed via DataCite and are persistent and resolvable indefinitely.
• Community: C4B deposits are linked to relevant Zenodo communities (e.g. “EU-funded research”, “Environmental Sciences”, “Construction and Building Technology” where available).

5. Publications and FAIR outputs

Cloud4Business publishes its research outputs on Zenodo, a trustworthy repository operated by CERN within the European Open Science Cloud, ensuring each output a persistent identifier (DOI), FAIR metadata compliant with DataCite, long-term preservation and an open licence following the «as open as possible, as closed as necessary» principle. The list below gathers the publications currently available, ordered by category. Outputs are authored by the founding members Stefano Falcone and Maria Emilia Mazzone, in some cases co-authored with established research partners (Ingenium Rise S.r.l. for the records on Qualiagro 4.0 and on advanced climate-risk scenario simulations).

Software

Dataset

Technical reports and preprints

6. Software Repository and Open Code

Software developed within Cloud4Business research and innovation activities is released on GitHub under standard open-source licences (Apache 2.0, MIT or EUPL depending on application context) and archived on Zenodo to ensure a persistent, citable and version-controlled identifier following FAIR for Research Software principles. Versioning is automated through a Zenodo↔GitHub webhook: each official code release produces a new DOI, ensuring full traceability of software evolution.

Active repositories

c4b-nbs-pipeline · v0.1.0 · Open-source pipeline for ingestion and integration of Copernicus Sentinel-1/2 satellite imagery with environmental IoT sensor streams.
GitHub repository: github.com/C4B-AI/c4b-nbs-pipeline
Zenodo DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19278318
Code licence: Apache 2.0
Languages: Python (≥3.10), with dependencies on rasterio, xarray, paho-mqtt, sentinelsat.
Status: active, under development towards version 0.2.0 with LoRaWAN protocol extension.

For the full technical description of the implementation see the AI Frameworks section of the Technologies page.

7. Adopted licences

Cloud4Business adopts a differentiated licensing strategy by output type, balancing maximum openness and intellectual property protection.

8. Author profiles

Cloud4Business publications are signed by authors with persistent ORCID identifiers, ensuring unique attribution, tracking of affiliations over time and interoperability with all major international scientific repositories. Full member profiles are available on the Team page.

Maria Emilia Mazzone — CEO & Platform Architect

ORCID iD: 0009-0009-2582-9716
Publication areas: software architectures for complex environments, on-premise AI platforms for environmental monitoring, Earth Observation/IoT integration, software quality (ISO/IEC 25010) and data quality (ISO/IEC 25012).

Stefano Falcone — CTO & R&I Director

ORCID iD: 0009-0006-5686-2058
Publication areas: governance of European R&I projects, exploitation strategy and business models for Key Exploitable Results, methodological frameworks for economic assessment of Nature-Based Solutions, alignment with the EU Taxonomy of sustainable activities.