Associated partner program is established (Deliverable 1.2)

To ensure the usability of the infrastructure, alignment with the community needs as well as pursuing complete coverage of important tools incorporated into the e-infrastructure and available to Users, OpenRiskNet will work with a continuously expanding network of partners. To make the interaction with the OpenRiskNet consortium, to give feedback and to contribute to the developments and case study work as simple as possible but also give the opportunity to share confidential information, foster collaborative developments between consortium and associated partners and even allow integration of tools as in-kind work, three different ways to associate with the project as a third party are available: 1) testing the infrastructure as a early adopter and give feedback and state requirements via the online surveys (see also updated deliverable report D1.1), 2) become an official associated partner allowing the exchange of confidential information like source code with examples of service integration and 3) applying to the implementation challenge, which will provide additionally to the technical support also financial support for service integration. This updated deliverable report describes these options organised in the Associated Partner Programme.

This programme aims at strengthening the working ties between the OpenRiskNet Consortium members and other organisations within the scientific and technology communities. Any organisation such as a University, institute, consortium, non-governmental organisation (NGO), a small or medium enterprise (SME) or a large commercial company can become an Associate Partner of OpenRiskNet. We expect to have two different types of users: service providers, who would like to integrate their databases and software tools into the OpenRiskNet infrastructure, and early adopters, who will use the infrastructure for their predictive toxicology and risk assessment tasks and as such provide feedback on their experiences and demonstration showcases of the services and functions provided by the OpenRiskNet e-infrastructure.

To establish this network, rules for the Associated Partner Programme were defined, formalised, checked by the legal departments of OpenRiskNet partners and finally accepted by the consortium. The programme was then announced and officially launched during the OpenTox Euro 2017 conference held in Basel, 21-23 November 2017, and co-organised by the OpenRiskNet project. Introduction and demonstration virtual meeting were organised throughout September and October 2018, the infrastructure and the associated partner programme was disseminated at different conferences and workshops throughout 2018 and the website was updated to further promote the programme. All these activities will also be continued in 2019. Details on the Associated Partner Programme are also available at: https://openrisknet.org/associated-partner-programme/.