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although with a few error messages received:

You should try to fix them.. At first you should decode the error frames to see what's the issue with your CAN bus. The diagnostics topic might be helpful as well. Some are errors are harmless, other are not. Normally with a PEAK USB you should not get any.

Is it sufficient to simply publish required data (e.g. target velocity) to a corresponding topic, following the .dcf configuration without any ros_control entity?

No. canopen_motor_node implements the ros_control interface and needs the controllers to interface the motor with ROS. Even more: If no controller is running ros_canopen with halt all motions and prevent any other interaction with the motor sub-system.

But I am fairly unsure about the next step.

I would start with a joint state "controller" to test the overall connection and double check your unit conversions. And finally you should set up other controllers that annually drive the motor. E.g. a simple velocity controller that reads the target velocity from a topic.

Please do not forget setting the required_drive_mode parameter!