  We propose to investigate a largely unexplored sector that is unique to the
formulation of hard exclusive processes in terms of GPDs, namely the
electroproduction of strange and charmed mesons in the kinematical ranges of
Jefferson Lab's 12 GeV upgrade, and of the proposed Electron Ion Collider
(EIC). In this contribution we focus on charmed meson production that is unique
to the EIC. Exclusive strange and charmed meson production provides new
insights in the connection of the quark/gluon degrees of freedom with the
meson-baryon description, both in the unpolarized and polarized sectors.
However, as particularly evident in polarized scattering, the underlying
mechanisms are still far from being fully understood. We present an approach in
terms of generalized parton distributions. As an application, we show that
through exclusive electroproduction of pseudoscalar charmed mesons one can
uniquely single out the non-perturbative charmed component in the nucleon
structure function.
