Skip to main content

We love what we do.
Our vision is

to transform society through validated scientific knowledge and allow citizens, educators, funders, civil servants and industry to find ways to make science useful for themselves, their working environments and society.

Attribute to Jean-Claude Guédon

We make Open Science happen.

Our mission is

to shift scholarly communication towards openness and transparency and facilitate innovative ways to communicate and monitor research.

to assume co-ownership over the development trajectory of an open scholarly communication system by mobilising all research actors to invest together in its components and ensure the community remains at the driving seat.

Our priorities.

In a nutshell

Align policies

Foster the Open Science dialogue for policies and their implementation in Europe and beyond.  Through our network of 37 National Open Access Desks (NOADs).

Facilitate interoperability

Develop guidelines and services that enable content providers, funders and research administrators to interconnect their systems.

Link research

Link research outcomes (publications, data, software) to their creators (researchers, institutions, funders) to enable discoverability, transparency, reproducibility.

Monitor Open Science

Build the European Research Information system that encompasses all research and enables ready-made reporting, monitoring and analysis.

Train for Open Science

Train researchers, content providers, policy makers, public agenies, citizens to acquire the skills and competencies to implement Open Science. 

Build global bridges

Work with worldwide initiatives to promote and share common access policies, standards, protocols, content and technical know-how towards a sustainable open global research ecosystem.

Facilitate open innovation

Support 3rd party providers to build innovative scholarly communication services and value-added services to foster a better understanding of scientific knowledge.

  • Align policies
    through our network of 37 National Open Access Desks (NOADs).
  • Facilitate interoperability
    via guidelines and services that federate all types of scholarly works.
  • Link research
    to provide context and enable discoverability, transparency, reproducibility.
  • Monitor Open Science
    by bringing quality data for trusted metrics and consensus on indicators.
  • Train for Open Science
    researchers, content providers, policy makers, research managers, citizens for opening up and (re)using research outcomes.
  • Build global bridges
    to promote and share common practices, standards & protocols, content, technical know-how towards a sustainable open global research ecosystem.
  • Facilitate open innovation
    for innovative scholarly communication and  value-added services.

Our values and principles.

Staying true to our mission

  • Implementing a participatory infrastructure with open governance.
  • Services developed by the community and for the community.
  • Empowering multiple and diverse Open Science Communities.
  • Respecting equitable and inclusive representation: no one is left behind. 
  • Seeking innovation on services, but no lock-in on content.
  • Building European and global partnerships.

OpenAIRE and the European Open Science Cloud

OpenAIRE’s mission is closely linked to the mission of the European Commission: to provide unlimited, barrier free, open access to research outputs financed by public funding in Europe. OpenAIRE fulfils the EOSC vision with operations already providing the glue for user and research driven functionalities, whether these come from the long tail of science (repositories and local support) or domain disciplined research communities or Research Infrastructures.

Our Milestones

OpenAIRE has grown through a series of project phases funded by the European Commission.

Click on each milestone for details

2008 - OpenAIRE

Pilot of OA to publications

OpenAIRE was funded by the EC 7th Framework Programme (FP7) to support the implementation of Open Access in Europe. It provided the means to promote and realize the widespread adoption of the Open Access Policy, as set out by the ERC Scientific Council Guidelines for Open Access and the Open Access (OA) pilot launched by the European Commission (EC).

Read more
2012 - OpenAIREplus

Introducing research data

OpenAIREplus (2nd Generation of Open Access Infrastructure for Research in Europe) expanded the publication repository networks to collaborate with data providers from domain specific scientific areas  supporting the management of and interlinking between scientific data. The NOAD network was expanded to 31 countries, while the project leveraged its international connections to contribute to common standards, data issues and interoperability on a global level.

Read more
2015 - OpenAIRE2020

Introducing research data

Support OA mandate for all projects and pilot for Open Data in Horizon 2020. OpenAIRE2020 brought together professionals from 50 European institutions, including research libraries, open scholarship organisations, national e-Infrastructure, data experts, IT and legal researchers. The National Open Access Desks (NOADs)  expanded to 33 countries.

Read more
2015 - OpenAIRE Connect

Services for research communities

Deliver services for a uniform exchange of research artefacts (literature, data, and methods) with semantic links between them across among research communities and content providers: the Research Community Dashboard  and a Catch-All Notification Broker, both out-of-the-box, on demand, deployable tools via an end-user driven approach via the involvement of 5 Research communities.

Read more
2018 - OpenAIRE Advance

An operative infrastructure for EOSC

A new phase for consolidating services and operating a trusted e-Infrastructure within the European Open Science Cloud. National Open Access Desks (NOADs) become a pivotal part within their own national data infrastructures, positioning Open Access and Open Science onto national agendas.

Read more
2018 - EOSC Enhance

Developing the EOSC Portal

Improve and enhance the discoverability of scientific services and data resources by further developing and widening the catalogue of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). 

Read more
2020 - OpenAIRE Nexus

An operative infrastructure for EOSC

A new phase for operating the OpenAIRE services and providing access via EOSC and extending the OpenAIRE portofolio with additional scholarly communictions services: EpiSciences, Open Citations, OpenAPC.

Read more
2020 - EOSC Future

Developing the EOSC Core

Integrate, consolidate, and connect e-infrastructures, research communities, and initiatives in Open Science to further develop the EOSC Portal, EOSC-Core and EOSC-Exchange of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).

Read more