There appears to be a status difference between an Associate Member and a Regular Member; is that true?

The difference lies in the fact that the Regular Member is the legal member representative of the country concerned. Extant OpenAIRE Advance project partners that also exist in any one country or others that eventually join any National Member Consortium headed by the Regular Member, will work through that Regular Member to have issues raised at the GA level.

All OpenAIRE members are eligible to take part in the Standing Committees (art 11(4)). However, the Chair needs to be representing only a Regular Member (art.11(6)).

• You must adhere to the OpenAIRE Policies and Internal Rules of Procedure and the Rules of Participation. (Chapters 3 and 6)
• Regular Members represent Associate Members in the General Assembly (Chapter 3)
• There is an initial contribution of 500 Euros, which has been re-set to zero as a result of a decision made on January 17, 2019 during the Debrecen GA. The decision may be overturned only with a GA unanimous decision (Chapter 4, art.10(13)(c)). Internal discussions on annual membership fees are currently under way, with predicted fees in the range of 1500 - 3000 Euros to be effective from 2023.

During the course of OpenAIRE’s development since 2009, many project members have created and deployed Open Access and Open Science services, which are now plugged into and inform OpenAIRE ones. In order for there to be clarity around mutual cost implications and service provision levels to external stakeholders, each such service should be the subject of an SLA agreement between OpenAIRE and the member provider. This is also in place to maintain the quality assurance ambitions of all parties concerned. The Term SLA has been substituted by the Principles of Participation and finally Rules of Participation in the statutory documents (24.04.20).

There is no direct or necessary relationship between membership of the Legal Entity and use of OpenAIRE services. OpenAIRE services (such as APIs) are currently free to use and access by members and non-members alike. As the services created under OpenAIRE Advance are released, others will also be able to use these related products at no cost during the life of OpenAIRE Nexys (till end 2023), whether they are funders, researchers, or research-intensive institutions.

However, where these services will be employed in the established workflows of other research infrastructures rather than research-intensive institutions, or taken up to be tested or furthered as part of funded project work, the additional effort required to adapt and maintain these services would be reflected in appropriate costs which can be factored into bids and recurring maintenance grants.

OpenAIRE will also have a set of standard Terms of Service documents for different categories of services. This normally includes registered and non registered users (if differentiation is required between the two types). An agreement on licences used for content released under OpenAIRE needs to be established.

Eventually, membership of the Legal Entity may entail offering in-kind contributions, in particular, if it is established as a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC). In this case, Members whose services are used by OpenAIRE will pledge to offer them at no cost, in exchange for the products and services of other LE members, that could be used to accelerate services development and provide new opportunities to support open science in OpenAIRE LE countries.

These issues will be covered at the point OpenAIRE becomes an ERIC via a formal access policy based on the Commission’s guidelines, its Charter for Access, published in consultation with the ESFRI, the e-infrastructure Reflection Group (e-IRG), and the European Research Area stakeholder organisations in March 2016 (more). We do not foresee this to be initiated before end of 2023.

OpenAIRE is in principle able to charge for services (Art. 16(2)). However, the details of how this is to be implemented, who will own the services and other related assets, and what the level of the service fee will be is to be agreed amongst its members in the GA. The starting principle is that all services offered by OpenAIRE are free of cost for the scientific and research community, although the GA may decide otherwise (Art.19)

Currently, a Working Group on Business Models has been assigned to deliver a proposal on what are the best models (costs, revenues, channels) to fit and apply on individual services.

OpenAIRE members are not prohibited to independently offer commercial services (Art. 16(4)).

The Regular Member may raise an objection against a legal action being carried out by a person appointed by the Chair of the Project Steering Committee of OpenAIRE Advance, but that doesn’t seem to be a power of an ordinary member.

As stated above, not directly. The agreement between the members of any National Membership Consortium with its representative Regular Member is for the country concerned to regulate, although OpenAIRE has produced a template document for such an agreement.