OpenAIRE — an e-infrastructure for Open Access publishing of research outputs

Natalia Manola

OpenAIRE – an e-infrastructure for Open Access publishing of research outputs

Natalia Manola – project manager at OpenAIRE

(interviewer: Marta Hoffman-Sommer)

OpenAIRE started in 2009 as a tool for the European Commission to facilitate the monitoring of ERC- and FP7-funded research, in particular to monitor compliance with the Open Access Pilot in FP7 and the ERC Guidelines. The follow-up project OpenAIREplus had much broader goals. How would you define them?

OpenAIREplus expanded the scope in both the technical and human infrastructure aspects beyond the restricted realm of publications from projects funded by the EC (Special Clause 39), effectively offering an Open Access infrastructure to the entire scientific production of the European Research Area. In addition to dealing with publications, it  opened up to scientific datasets through a range of services for the automatic, semi-automatic, or manual identification of links between publications and related datasets, projects, or other publications.

OpenAIRE runs a web portal and several associated services for its users. What services are offered now, what will be added in the future? What groups of users are expected to benefit from these services?

OpenAIRE has placed Europe in a leading position for open scholarship, acting as a trusted partner with similar initiatives in the international arena. OpenAIRE, currently entering into the EC’s Horizon2020 (H2020), provides trusted, value added services to a wide range of stakeholders:

• researchers to find how to comply with the H2020 and other national or institutional policies, where to deposit their research results, and how to interlink them or present them in the right research context;
• project coordinators and project officers on how to monitor and report a project’s scientific outcome progress and its OA policy compliance;
• institutions and research communities on mechanisms to aggregate their research outcome and impact;
• data providers and OA publishers to interoperate with emerging e-Infrastructures beyond national boundaries;
• finally research administrators and the funders themselves to perform research analytics for evidence-based policy making.

Do you know who the actual users of the OpenAIRE services are and which functionalities are used most?

It is primarily used by researchers, project coordinators and research administrators to find out how to comply to the EC's Open Access mandates, to monitor and report the project's or institution's outcomes. Secondly it is used by data providers to participate in the infrastructure.

OpenAIRE also includes a network of NOADs - National Open Access Desks - based in 33 European countries. What are their responsibilities? What are the strengths and weaknesses of this kind of dispersed, national structure?

Key to OpenAIRE is understanding and supporting the users, providers and consumers of the scholarly communication ecosystem at their research places. For this reason it operates a unique network of people in all EU member states (and five associate countries), namely the National Open Access Desks (NOADs). NOADs have representatives on the ground who understand the local issues and are able to reach out with relevant messages in the local language. They engage and support ministries, institutions, publishers and curators of data and researchers alike, breaking down geographical and thematic boundaries by transferring best practices from one country to the other. They have a multiplication effect on the awareness and implementation of the EC and national OA policies and, equally importantly, promote the OpenAIRE services. Their involvement in OpenAIRE has resulted in a growth and enforcement of local open access policies, both at institutional and funder levels. In parallel they have established a strong position within the national scenes, allowing them to influence decisions makers, to emphasize emerging data management issues, and to enforce the role of  institution libraries within the national infrastructures.

What do you consider OpenAIRE's most important achievements?

Throughout the EC’s FP7 Open Access pilot, OpenAIRE has progressively been building a service-oriented infrastructure, now considered the reference point for Open Access in Europe, establishing a well-recognized brand name within and outside Europe. After five years of continuous operation, OpenAIRE has placed Europe in a leading position for open scholarship, acting as a trusted partner with similar initiatives in the international arena.

The OpenAIRE2020 project is starting in January 2015 and will operate for 3,5 years. What are in your opinion the most important goals to be achieved during this time? What particular results do you expect to be produced?

OpenAIRE2020 is a multifaceted project, its major aim being the consolidation of the established network and services, to better serve the Horizon2020 mandates and European researchers. A detailed description of the workplan and activities can be found here, below we just name a few of the activities:

a. Monitor and report H2020 research outputs, towards an effective coverage of the European Research Area, actively pursue collaborations with Europe’s funding organizations and publishers to integrate all funding schemes. The target is to cover 75% of literature repositories, expand the publication links to datasets and projects, and integrate additional major European funders.
b. Support the EC’s Open Research Data Pilot with training, education and the use  of tangible services (i.e. enhancing Zenodo to accommodate the long tail of science, developing anonymization services that help researchers publish without endangering the anonymity of the data sources, thus easing the “opting out” H2020 rules).
c. Provide tools and services to allow researchers to link and resolve cross-references from literature to data.  
d. Work with similar infrastructures around the world towards a global repository and OA infrastructure.
e. Look into new venues for open peer review platforms and how these can shape up the future of scholarly communication.
f.  Explore policies and workflows for processing APCs for FP7 post-grant publications, as well as their monitoring.¹

EU-financing of the OpenAIRE project series will come to an end in 2018. For this reason, the consortium is currently analyzing and discussing possible models of sustainable, long-term financing of its services. What are the possible options, what would be the best model? And which activities will be maintained: only the web portal and services, or other activities – such as community outreach, the NOAD network – as well?

OpenAIRE  commissioned a study to the ICRE8 team in order to assess the economic sustainability of the OpenAIRE project, allowing the monetary measurement of willingness to engage (WTE) and willingness to pay (WTP) for its services. The results were encouraging as key stakholder groups like research administrators, project coordinators and data providers seemed to appreciate the value of the infrastructure (technical interoperability and human network) and its services. The ICRE8 team combined the data from the study with member state research spending and allocation, and with further simulations came up with alternative subscription/contribution models for members. The results of this work are currently under consideration as OpenAIRE is in the process of creating a legal entity.

Are there any plans for the integration of the OpenAIRE infrastructure with other networks, outside of Europe? Will OpenAIRE become in the future part of a global open access infrastructure?

We realize that Open Access implementation can only succeed when it becomes a global endeavour. For this reason OpenAIRE has established close links with COAR and they work together toward an international repository network alignment. We have already started working with CLARA/LaReferencia to establish a similar infrastructure, and the first results will soon be visible with the adoption of the OpenAIRE guidelines by repositories and the use of the Validator service. In parallel, we are working with Jisc from the UK, SHARE from the US, and ANDS from Australia to ensure global interoperability with other regions of the world.

1. Within the context of OpenAIRE2020, the EC is now launching a Gold Open Access Pilot for FP7 post-grant publications. In this pilot, funds will be distributed for paying APCs (article processing charges) for OA publication of work that has been carried out in the frames of FP7-funded grants in situations, where the publication takes place after the projects had been completed and their budgets closed. When the pilot is launched, detailed information on how to apply will be available on the openaire.eu website.

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Utworzono: 2015-05-07