Identifying and locating funders in the OpenAIRE Graph has been made much simpler with the new addition of the OpenAIRE EXPLORE Funders page. Previously, extracting this information from the vast knowledge graph involved a series of steps which required more time and know-how. Now, users can find this information in a fast and easy, user-friendly manner, by visiting this new page.

The New Funders Page

The new webpage compiles useful information providing a clear view of all funders indexed on the OpenAIRE Graph, i.e., funders whose databases have been ingested in the graph and curated. Users can now quickly view the number of funded projects and associated research products for a funder, as well as the estimated percentage of their Open Access scholarly works.

Funder databases as an integral part of the Open Scholarly Ecosystem

What it's about: Funder Projects are a key component of the OpenAIRE Graph Data Model, allowing us to create meaningful relationships between project grants and their funded research products, associated organisations, and communities. We can link publications, datasets, software, and other research products to the project grant level using funder project data.

Why is this important? Knowing the research outputs attributed to grants is of critical importance in order to allow better navigation or trusted assessment exercises.

What is the process? When funders join OpenAIRE, they provide information about their grants in a simple file format or provide us with an API or website where we can collect and update their project data directly. After we clean it and curate it, we use it to develop a customised to the funder text mining module that identifies grant citations within the body of a publication.

A unique approach: OpenAIRE’s approach is unique because in the end OpenAIRE’s data is curated. This means that when an output is integrated into the OpenAIRE Graph, the information regarding its grants and funding is verified, cleaned, and then linked to corresponding projects, further enriching the Graph. Without this step, we would observe tens of thousands of funders with information that is often incomplete or inaccurate, e.g., one funder being displayed as different ones, numerous times.

A last note: We distribute this curated grant data to repositories and other publishing venues, so that researchers can use it in assigning them at publishing/depositing time and then shared properly in the metadata, as instructed by the OpenAIRE Guidelines.

We are excited to announce the launch of the new Funders page in OpenAIRE EXPLORE, an overview of all funders whose data has been integrated in the OpenAIRE Graph. Users can now easily access the projects and research products funded by each organisation, their commitment to open access, their OpenAIRE MONITOR dashboards (when public), as well as other key details, with more to be added as the page evolves.

Our aim?  To foster transparency, inspire collaboration."