OpenAIRE Connect project

Project n°: 731011
Project type: Research and Innnovation
Start date: 01/01/2017
Duration: 30 months
Total budget: 1 997 837.50 €
Funding from the EC: 1 997 837.50 €

OpenAIRE-Connect aims to build technological and social bridges and deliver services that will enable a uniform exchange - in terms of scientific communication - of research artefacts (literature, data, and methods) with semantic links between them, across among Research communities and Content providers in scientific communication.

It will introduce and implement the concept of Open Science as a Service (OSaaS) on top of the existing OpenAIRE infrastructure, delivering out-of-the-box, on demand, deployable tools. OpenAIRE-Connect will adopt an end-user driven approach (via the involvement of 5 prominent Research communities), and enrich the portfolio of OpenAIRE infrastructure production services with a Research Community Dashboard Service and a Catch-All Notification Broker Service.

Open Science is around the corner. Scientists and organizations see it as a way to speed up, improve quality and reward, while policy makers see it as a means to optimize cost of science and leverage innovation. Open Science is an emerging vision, a way of thinking, whose challenges always gaze beyond its actual achievements. De facto, today’s scientific communication ecosystem lacks tools and practices to allow researchers to fully embrace Open Science.

OpenAIRE-Connect aims to provide technological and social bridges, and deliver services enabling uniform exchange of research artefacts (literature, data, and methods), with semantic links between them, across research communities and content providers in scientific communication. It will introduce and implement the concept of Open Science as a Service (OSaaS) on top of the existing OpenAIRE infrastructure, delivering out-of-the-box, ondemand deployable tools. OpenAIRE-Connect will adopt an end-user driven approach (via the involvement of 5 prominent research communities), and enrich the portfolio of OpenAIRE infrastructure production services with a Research Community Dashboard Service and a Catch-All Notification Broker Service.

The Research Community Dashboard Service will serve research communities to (i) publish research artefacts (packages and links), and (ii) monitor their research impact. The Catch-All Notification Broker Service will engage and mobilize content providers, and serve them with services enabling notification-based exchange of research artefacts, to leverage their transition towards Open Science paradigms. Both services will be served on-demand according to the OSaaS approach, hence be re-usable by different disciplines and providers, each with different practices and maturity levels, so as to favor a shift towards a uniform cross-community and cross-content provider scientific communication ecosystem.Figure: Research Community Dashboard and Catch-All Notification Broker ServiceOpenAIRE-Connect fosters transparent evaluation of results and facilitates reproducibility of science for research communities by enabling a scientific communication ecosystem supporting exchange of artefacts, packages of artefacts, and links between them across communities and across content providers. OpenAIRE-Connect extends the technological services and networking bridges (human/social/support) today offered by the OpenAIRE infrastructure in order to foster the expansion of an Open Science publishing paradigm and facilitate the emergence of shared solutions to it. Specifically, OpenAIRE-Connect introduce three classes of new services:
- Research community services: offering support for a uniform transition of research communities towards Open Science publishing;
- Content provider services: leveraging the transition of content providers towards Open Science publishing;
- Support services: building community capacities for European and global alignment on Open Science publishingBy introducing an Open Science as a Service (OSaaS) approach, OpenAIRE-Connect will deliver on-demand Open Science publishing services to research communities and content providers, aligning practices and mechanisms that address transparent evaluation and reproducibility. By complementing the technological efforts by networking activities that will strengthen the emerging Open Science social environment, OpenAIRE-Connect will facilitate a cultural and technological shift towards common Open Science publishing practices.