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OpenAIRE Technical Meeting in Athens: Driving Innovations in Open Science
From 13 to 16 January 2026, the OpenAIRE team gathered in Athens for a four-day journey into the heart of Europe's open research ecosystem, exploring innovations and improvements in the Open Science landscape.
Over intense, in-depth sessions, participants combined strategic planning, technical exploration, and hands-on collaboration, all aimed at shaping the next phase of OpenAIRE services and infrastructure. The meeting brought together technical teams, the office team, and Executive Board members fostering an environment of open communication and exchange of perspectives,essential for driving meaningful innovation.
From vision to technical deep-dives
The meeting began with strategic discussions, situating OpenAIRE's work within the broader Open Science ecosystem. Participants explored how new features, services, and workflows can improve research transparency, interoperability, and accessibility across Europe.
Technical deep-dives addressed metadata, service integration, and data quality, with key achievements including:
- OpenAIRE Graph updates: enhanced entities, relationships, and metadata aggregation to improve discoverability and reuse of research outputs.
- Service development: advancements in EXPLORE, CONNECT, PROVIDE, MONITOR, UsageCounts, and MyResearchfolio, a researcher dashboard currently in development.
- Innovations: migration to Kubernetes clusters, AI-supported literature reviews, and multi-language support to broaden access, fields of science indicators and LLMs.
- Data quality & workflows: refined processes ensuring services remain accurate, scalable, and reliable.
The meeting also consolidated a common way of working across the OpenAIRE technical team through a Discover-Develop-Deploy framework. By strengthening early technical review and shared decision-making, the team is ensuring that new ideas are feasible, aligned, and sustainable before they reach production.
Collaborative innovation with guests
Several sessions included external guests and experts, including Lautaro Matas, Technical Manager at La Referencia, allowing OpenAIRE to stay at the cutting edge of Open Science innovation.
These interactions supported:
- Knowledge exchange and exploration of best practices.
- Hands-on experimentation with new tools and approaches.
- Discussions about future extensions and potential collaborations.
The Athens meeting became not just a technical review, but a creative space for envisioning how Open Science can evolve, aligning OpenAIRE services with emerging needs of researchers and institutions.
Meeting highlights
- Graph and services: Expanded entities and relationships, Kubernetes migration, AI-driven analysis, fields of science indicators and LLM strategy, multi-language support.
- Collaboration with guests: Exchange of ideas and hands-on activities aligned OpenAIRE with Open Science innovations and future possibilities.
- Structured deep-dives: Parallel sessions promoted teamwork and communication across roles.
- Quality assurance: Enhanced workflows ensured reliable and interoperable data.
- Community and connection: Open dialogue between technical teams, the office team, and chairs, culminating in a pleasant dinner that fostered informal discussions and strengthened team spirit.
"Athens was an incredible opportunity to connect strategic vision with practical innovation."
"By combining deep technical dives, open dialogue, and collaboration with guests, we are shaping tools that empower researchers and institutions in their Open Science journey."
"Parallel sessions allowed us to explore complex challenges together, learning from each other and exchanging perspectives across roles. The experience was intense, but incredibly inspiring."
Driving Open Science forward
The Athens meeting reaffirmed OpenAIRE's commitment to transparent, open, and reusable research infrastructure.
By combining strategic vision, technical rigor, and collaborative innovation, the team continues to enhance tools and services that make research outputs more discoverable, interoperable, and accessible, contributing to the ongoing improvement of the Open Science landscape.
These discussions, discoveries, and collaborations will guide the evolution of OpenAIRE, empowering researchers, institutions, and funders across Europe to advance Open Science practices, while celebrating the shared communication and perspectives that make innovation possible.
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