During Open Access week 2017, we announced that a new project would be coming out from OpenAIRE:
“Coming early next year is OpenAIRE Advance, which continues the mission of OpenAIRE to support the Open Access/Open Data mandates in Europe. By sustaining the current successful infrastructure, comprised of a human network and robust technical services, this new project consolidates those achievements while working to shift the momentum among its communities to Open Science, aiming to be a trusted e-Infrastructure within the realms of the European Open Science Cloud.”
We are happy to announce that the OpenAIRE Advance kick off meeting was successfully held in Athens, Greece on from the 17th to the 19th of January. The project will run for 36 months, concluding in December of 2020; Jisc is one of 47 partners in the project, continuing in its role as the National Open Access Desk for the UK, as well as facilitating training and dissemination activities across the UK and in Europe. The project will also integrate significantly with both the European Open Science Cloud, or EOSC, and OpenAIRE Connect, which is working to help develop a “Catch-All Broker” to facilitate the lines of communication among publishers, institutions, and various content providers.
Some of Jisc’s open access services will interface with OpenAIRE Advance illustrating a continued strong collaborative effort among the countries who are represented in the new project, as well as a continuation of the excellent work done in OpenAIRE2020. There will be an investigation into the possibility for greater interoperability between OpenAIRE and Jisc’s Sherpa services, most notably Sherpa/Romeo, which aggregates and analyses publisher open access policies from around the world and provides summaries of self-archiving permissions and conditions of rights given to authors on a journal-by-journal basis. Jisc’s Publications Router, which gathers information from content providers such as publishers and passes it on to institutions to help them capture their research articles onto their systems, such as their repositories or CRISes, is also involved with some of the work being undertaken with OpenAIRE Connect; that inter-connection will mean much for the work in Advance since the two projects will both be involved with some aspects of EOSC. Jisc’s IRUS (Institutional Repository Usage Statistics), a standards-based statistics aggregation service for repositories in the UK, is also involved with the development of the OpenAIRE usage statistic portal, allowing for more wide-spread standardisation using Counter. Representatives from Jisc and the Open University are also integral with OpenAIRE’s work with COAR’s Next Generation Repositories, which will influence the future development of Zenodo, the highly powerful repository developed by CERN for all of OpenAIRE’s content.
In total, there are 9 work packages in place for the project, with the NOADs taking on increasing responsibility for exploring potential integrations and partnerships with what OpenAIRE is doing. OpenAIRE is committed to a strong collaboration with the EOSC, as is Jisc, so the new project potentially allows for the UK to remain in a strong working relationship with Europe, particularly since Jisc has had a history of successful partnerships with the previous incarnations of OpenAIRE. We continue to participate in OpenAIRE2020, which concludes at the end of June 2018. There is also work towards CRIS-CERIF interoperability, with the potential for implementation of the OpenAIRE-CRIS-CERIF application profile; this would mean being able to validate and aggregated CERIF entities in OpenAIRE infrastructure. Jisc is undertaking relevant work with CERIF/Eurocris with the developments of the Research Data Shared Service, so there is alignment of a great many things happening for project partners, interested parties, and key stakeholders!
As was expressed during the two-day event, OpenAIRE is essentially invested in enhancing openness and facilitating an international dialogue, as well as providing support if needed, and many policy makers and funders appreciate that task. The concept is putting together what can be called an Open Science Partnership based upon the FAIR principles but never forgetting the value of being open. If you’d like to learn more or have any questions, please get in touch: Info.OpenAIRE@jisc.ac.uk or help@jisc.ac.uk.