OpenAIRE for repository managers: interoperability, metadata enrichment and usage statistics in Greece and Cyprus

PROVIDE: Antonis kicked off the webinar by analysing how the OpenAIRE Content Provider Dashboard and its underlying services work. OpenAIRE Dashboard is a web service for content providers to interact with OpenAIRE, register their repository and become part of a wider research community within the EOSC ecosystem. Specifically, the OpenAIRE Content Provider Dashboard consists of the following services: Validator, Registration, Enrich, Usage Statistics.

• Validator evaluates repository metadata against the OpenAIRE Guidelines and then presents compliance results, including errors identified in order to be fixed before re-running the validator.
• Registration concerns the process of indexing literature, data repository, journal or aggregator in the OpenAIRE catalogue.
• Enrichment helps repositories to improve their datasources with additional metadata through the Broker Service. Antonis explained that the Broker Service runs a deduplication process to find missing or extra information and applies text mining to enrich all records with additional metadata fields.
• Usage Statistics offers repository managers the ability to track their usage activity, including aggregated metrics on usage of scholarly works, as well as to retrieve and analyse these data.

Demo: Moving on, Stefania proceeded with a live walk through the OpenAIRE Content Provider Dashboard in order for participants to explore the use and benefits of aforementioned services in practice. Stefania informed repository managers about key points to have in mind during the registration process and pointed out that OpenAIRE also indexes data sources from two major registries: OpenDOAR for literature repositories and re3data for data repositories. She also performed a test validation to a random repository and explained how to make changes based on the compliance results. Stefania showed how repository managers can set personalized notifications to receive reports about metadata enrichment events that will improve their datasources.

Questions & Answers: The presentation was followed by a Q&A session where participants expressed queries about the services and processes mentioned throughout the presentation and the demo. Clarifications were given regarding the registration service to communicate that despite OpenAIRE aggregating content from repository registries, registering the repositories in OpenAIRE is required. The discussion focused, also, on the deduplication process for metadata enrichment and on compliance issues, unraveling more technical aspects. At last, repository managers were provided with suggestions about where and how to start with validating, registering, correcting and improving their metadata against the OpenAIRE Guidelines.

What's next: Athena Research Center and University of Cyprus will take up actions to promote and support compliance of national, thematic and institutional repositories with OpenAIRE and EOSC. In that context, participants were urged to show interest and communicate their needs.

You may find the recordings and presentations here.

NI4OS-Europe report of the webinar can be found here.