11. Science Set Free: An Open Access Infrastructure for Europe

Recently launched, OpenAIRE2020 is the European Union initiative for an Open Access Infrastructure for Research which supports open scholarly communication and access to the research output of European-funded projects. The substantial technical infrastructure operates on two levels:

Gathering research outputs: OpenAIRE gathers open access content from a network of institutional and disciplinary repositories. To put this into practice, an integrated suite of guidelines has been developed so that data sources, namely literature and data repositories, OA publishers and CRIS systems can be harvested and their contents made more visible. The portal gives access to EU-funded scientific publications, and also provides monitoring tools for depositing and usage statistics.

Policy harmonisation and community outreach: OpenAIRE has a collaborative and thriving ‘human’ network, which is pan-European in nature. The community works to advance open access initiatives at national levels. It has National Open Access Desks in nearly 30 countries, and operates a European Helpdesk system for all matters concerning open access, copyright and repository interoperability.

OpenAIRE is starting to move from a publication infrastructure to a more comprehensive infrastructure that covers all types of scientific output, and is establishing an infrastructure to harvest, enrich and store the metadata of scientific datasets. Cross-links from publications to data and funding schemes will be supported. This interlinking of research objects has implications for optimising the research process, allowing the sharing, enrichment and reuse of data.

The poster presented will outline the activities of OpenAIRE. It will also highlight the following themes: advocating open access, repository guidelines, visibility of the European research environment, enhanced publications and sharing and reuse of research data.