[14] The engagement component for a successful pan-European Open Science infrastructure: shaping discourse and engaging stakeholders from a research libraries perspective

Abstract: Research libraries have been active participants in developing services and support towards fulfilling the promise of Open Science. With their expertise in scholarly communication, data management and long-term digital stewardship they have been empowering researchers with technical infrastructure and training to enable open access to research outputs, to support their reuse, and promote more transparent and reproducible research processes.

Still, for the Open Science agenda to be fully realized, and to avoid duplication of efforts, a stronger coordination is required: one that would support infrastructure interoperability, shared policies, and sustainable initiatives. Building on these principles, and recognizing the issues at stake, the EU has launched the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), an initiative to accelerate and support more effective Open Science and Open Innovation endeavors at the pan-European level. When realized, EOSC will include “the required human expertise, resources, standards, best practices as well as the underpinning technical infrastructures” in order to enable “trusted access to services, systems and the re-use of shared scientific data across disciplinary, social and geographical borders”. To realize such a seamless network of services at the European level, and to support a shared commons for research outputs, a broad variety of stakeholders needs to be engaged. These include, among others, scientific communities, service providers, infrastructure initiatives, and funding agencies and policy makers.

With input from the LIBER’s participation in the European Open Science Cloud for Research pilot (EOSCpilot) project —one of the first collaborative project funded under the EOSC— this paper will discuss:

• effective strategies for stakeholder identification and engagement;
• practical approaches to leverage already existing engagement channels, and to establish new ones;
• the essential role of research libraries in the process.

With their expertise, and inherent experience as liaisons, research libraries can play a pivotal role in shaping the discourse and engaging stakeholders around the Open Science agenda and be primary partners in realizing a pan-European infrastructure powering (open) sustainable knowledge in the digital age.

Bio: Simone is currently the Open Science Officer for LIBER, the Association of European Research Libraries based in The Hague, The Netherlands. In his role, he works with partner institutions on European-funded projects (e.g., European Open Science Cloud Pilot, EUDAT) and other collaborative initiatives in the areas of open science, scholarly communication, and research data management. Before joining LIBER, Sacchi was Head of Scholarly Communication Services at the Center for Digital Research and Scholarship, Columbia University in the City of New York and, before that, Systems Librarian and Digital Repository Manager at the University of Bologna, Italy. Simone holds a Ph.D. in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a Graduate Certificate in Open Source Software Science and Technology from the University of Bologna, Italy, and a Masters Degree in Library Science from the University of Parma, Italy.