In May 2020, Jisc officially signed up to participate in the OpenAIRE Legal Entity (LE), also known as OpenAIRE, AMKE. Jisc continues its involvement in the current Horizon 2020-funded project known as OpenAIRE Advance, which was set to conclude at the end of December but now has a two-month extension; however, joining the LE means that we will remain the National Open Access Desk (NOAD) for the UK for the foreseeable future. Therefore, we will continue working with OpenAIRE to provide expertise in areas such as repository usage statistics, certification and registration of open repositories, and publisher open access policies.
Being a partner means that once Horizon Europe begins, Jisc will be in a good position to continue to support UK projects funded by that new initiative, as we have done with Horizon 2020. Relatedly, given the logical and positive overlap of Jisc’s endorsement of Plan-S with OpenAIRE’s, we remain in a unique position to help foster the existence of an international “Plan-S world” with training, provision of guides and services, and promotion of both Jisc’s and OpenAIRE’s resources.
In addition, both Jisc and OpenAIRE are engaged with the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) independently, with a current project called EOSC Synergy, and collaboratively by virtue of the NOAD activities that promote and support the EOSC, such as the OpenAIRE Research Graph and the content providers’ dashboard. Notably, IRUS, Sherpa Romeo and OpenDOAR, are three important and relevant Jisc services generally used internationally and particularly by OpenAIRE service users. Not least, it means with all the remaining uncertainties of a post-Brexit United Kingdom, Jisc will continue to promote international collaboration global institutions and organisations.
If anyone would like to know more about Jisc’s involvement with OpenAIRE LE, please get in touch: help@jisc.ac.uk.