OpenAIRE and libraries in Greece and Cyprus: For many years now, OpenAIRE NOADs in Greece (ATHENA RC and HEAL-Link) and Cyprus (University of Cyprus Library) have run joint webinars and workshops to raise awareness and train their national academic and research communities on Open Science practices. Most importantly, they have been supporting researchers in complying with Open Science requirements in the context of the EU Framework Programmes for Science, Technology and Innovation (FP7, Horizon2020, Horizon Europe).

OpenAIRE NOADs are professionals in library and information science who work in academic and research environments and assume the role of Open Science liaisons who support the alignment of national and European research policies and ecosystems.

Expanding collaborations: Digitalisation of science has posed new demands in the way research is conducted, shared and supported throughout a project lifecycle. The need for quality of research results and their reproducibility is expressed by the transition to the new standard of Open Science. Today, libraries seize this opportunity to upskill/reskill and support their library users to become digital literate and competent in the European Research Area (ERA) and Digital Single Market (DSM).

In Spring 2022, the Greek and Cypriot NOADs converged with the Association of Greek Librarians and Information Scientists - A.G.L.I.S. and the Cyprus Association of Librarians – Information Scientists - CALIS to address the evolution of Librarianship in the Open Science realm. The collaboration is based on the organisation of events that connect professionals and staff of public, school, academic and research libraries in Greece and Cyprus with OpenAIRE NOADs to exchange information and discuss recent trends. Furthermore, this provides a great opportunity to record the needs of the members of the two associations and the naional Open Science communities at large.

Starting off: The first webinar welcomed 240 library professionals and staff in talks and discussions that provided a good overview of the changing role of librarians in the digital age. The focus of the event was to highlight:

• Libraries which have traditionally been the place where research support is provided through the acquisition of infrastructure, tools, services for access to, analysis and sharing of scientific information, and
• Librarians who are directly involved with the academic and research community supporting their everyday queries and scientific needs through guides and instructions.

The agenda of the event was as follows:

Libraries in Open Science: In this first event, participants were navigated through the latest policies of the European Commission and the UNESCO Recommendations on Open Science. Among the things highlighted were the importance of quality data and their economy to increase living conditions through innovation and citizens' participation and trust in science. From that, it became apparent that Open Science is for everyone and can be applied by all libraries, not only academic, and that training is needed to successfully reach this systemic change. The presenters urged library professionals to upskill/reskill in order to in turn train and support their users in the application of best practices on Open Science. Librarians are the ones who should also upgrade or develop new services in their institutions that follow the FAIR principles to ensure harmonization of practices, policy compliance and ease scientific information exchange. The value of Open Science was made clear to everyone, who agreed that the support of institutions and funders is equally needed for Open Science to progress at national and institutional levels. New incentives and alternative rewarding mechanisms for the evaluation and promotion of researchers according to best practices should become a priority.

Coming up: Both communities of library professionals and information scientists in Greece and Cyprus remain active and embrace the advancements in the library science field. They will meet again in the Autumn to continue discussions about their daily Open Science activities and experiences. This collaboration is expected to flourish and provide exposure to new information and skills which is a prerequisite for the dynamic response of the libraries to the digitalization on science and society.

In a 90-minute workshop at the OSFair on 22 September 2021, the projects EOSC-Pillar, EOSC Synergy, ExPaNDS, NI4OS-Europe, FAIRsFAIR and EOSC-Nordic with support of the EOSCsecretariat.eu project, discussed their progress and work on policies related to open science (OS) with the audience. The participating projects have worked together over the last two years in the 'Policy and Governance' Task Force, one of the six task forces established to support the work of the Working Groups of the former EOSC Executive Board.

Text written on behalf of Linas Cepinskas, Policy Officer, Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS)

How to communicate FAIR? How to spark up a conversation on FAIR with your audience? How to assess one's knowledge of FAIR? To answer these and other questions, Maaike Verburg and Linas Cepinskas from DANS delivered two demo sessions at the 3rd Open Science Fair Conference (https://www.opensciencefair.eu). 

OpenOrgs is a new tool created to solve a long-standing problem: the disambiguation of organizations variously involved in the research process. In particular OpenOrgs addresses the ambiguity affecting the information aggregated by OpenAIRE from different research organization registries (e.g. ROR, EC) and populating the OpenAIRE Research Graph.

OpenCitations is an independent not-for-profit infrastructure for open scholarship dedicated to publication of open bibliographic and citation data by the use of Semantic Web technologies. It provides more than one billion citations data which can be reused for any purpose and can be accessed via SPARQL endpoints, REST APIs, and that can be downloaded in bulk. 

ARGOS is an open platform for Data Management Planning (DMP), supporting researchers to meet Research Data Management policies and practices in the research workflow. The name "ARGOS" derives from Greek mythology and recalls both the hundred-eyed giant, Argus Panoptes, and Argus (Argonaut) builder of Argos, a solid but rapid ship crossing the Mediterranean.

 OpenAIRE Turkey NOAD (National Open Access Desk) and Izmir Institute of Technology (IZTECH) Library Director Gültekin Gürdal, who is also the member of "OpenAIRE Research Data Management Task Force", has initiated a study in a Research University in Turkey namely IZTECH, that can set an example toother institutions on  data reuse.