OpenAIRE Answers to Eurodoc: What’s in OpenAIRE For Early-Career Researchers? How do we improve our work towards Open Science?

What OpenAIRE offer to you as a researcher? What can you do as an Early-Career Researcher for OpenAIRE?

On 29 November 2023, OpenAIRE was invited to speak at the "Eurodoc lunchtime webinars series" to introduce the tools that Early-Career Researchers (ECRs) can use to enhance the researchers' Open Science practices. Our Outreach and Engagement Officer, Giulia Malaguarnera, who is also a former President of Eurodoc presented to the ECRs the main services they can use from the OpenAIRE Catalogue.

Open Science represents a key topic for Eurodoc and Early Career Researchers, who embrace its values and principles but often find barriers in the practices and frustrations on performing activities not adequately rewarded. In the webinar, Giulia guided the ECRs on a journey through the Open Science Practices in the research lifecycle. 

A walkthrough of the services for you as a researcher

There are fourteen services in the OpenAIRE Catalogue and it can be challenging for a newcomer to find the tool that can facilitate the work in research and enhance the Open Science activities. Eurodoc asked us: what's in the catalogue for ECRs?

STEP 1. Discovering research products

One of the most important processes in research is inside the word itself: "search" and "re-search". In the Open Science vision, the researchers are not just producing publications, but the community should value the entire process behind the research products (articles, books, but also software, data, patents, and so on). As an ECRs, you may struggle to find in one place all these research products or similar projects that can improve your research work (e.g. re-using data, finding methods articles, protocols), enhance your collaboration activities and advance your career (e.g. finding similar or complementary research projects, identifying universities and other authors working in similar fields). The OpenAIRE Graphs collect and link this information to provide the researcher with a wider context for the research projects.

The user-friendly service that OpenAIRE offers to explore the collection of the OpenAIRE Graph is called OpenAIRE Explore: it has an advanced search engine to include or exclude keywords, projects, funders, data sources (journals, repositories, registries, and other research aggregators). You can also access the OpenAIRE Graph contents via the Open Science Lens: by downloading the browser plug-in a little logo will appear on citations in journal articles that you read, with a simple click to the icon you can go quicker to open access data sources to find an article of your interest.

STEP 2. Creating your research history

In OpenAIRE Explore, you can also claim your authorship in data, publications, software, and other research products by linking them to your ORCID (see this guide). To offer other researchers around the world more information about the research activities related to a project, it's also possible to create a link between several entries via OpenAIRE Explore (see this guide).

To curate better the information about your research activities, you can create a Data Management Plan (DMP) in ARGOS linking it to other datasets published in Zenodo or other repositories, the funder that is supporting your research work, and link it to your research products (see this guide). You can also publish your dataset in Zenodo, making sure your dataset is well anonymized (you can use Amnesia for this).

In the context of a new research culture, the "publish or perish" should be overpassed by more qualitative resources, like the possibility of writing your narrative curriculum. You can watch this webinar by GraspOS on BIP!Scholar.

STEP 3. Publishing in Open Access

Fully embracing the Open Science practices can be difficult for ECRs, particularly looking at the open access publication. What are the difficulties? First, there is no systematic training about Open Science: it's a common misunderstanding that Open Science means publishing in Open Access (check our podcast episode on "Demystifying Open Access: Embracing the full scope of Open Science").

What ECRs should know or search for publishing in open access?

OpenAIRE offers many guides for researchers, including the publication requirements for the Horizon Europe funding program that ECRs can use also for other funding systems. This guide shades the light into how to retain copyright publications and all the main information you need to publish in open access. OpenAIRE Explore you can search for repositories and journals as well as look to other infrastructure and registries like the Directory for Open Access Journals (DOAJ).

As a researcher or part of a community, you can also start your own journey in creating and curating a Diamond Open Access Journal (no cost for authors and readers), are you interested? Episciences is the platform you are looking for! 

About Eurodoc: Eurodoc is the European Council of Doctoral Candidates and Junior Researchers. It is an international federation of 25 national organisations of PhD candidates, and more generally of junior researchers from 23 countries of the European Union and the Council of Europe.

About the OpenAIRE Graph: The OpenAIRE Graph is one of the largest and trusted Knowledge Graphs in the scholarly communication domain. Made up of metadata from thousands of trusted sources, it covers an extensive range of research products, including publications, datasets, and software. The Graph also contains links of these products, not only showing relationships between themselves, but also to research organisations, researchers, funders, and other related entities, resulting in an enriched and comprehensive view of the Open Science research landscape.

Zenodo slides: 10.5281/zenodo.10423934