Open science is the movement of making research outcomes and its disseminations openly available to everyone. It promotes transparency and collaboration in scholarly research, allows the reproducibility of the results and disseminates knowledge through scholarly communication. Ultimately, the goal of open science is to make scholarly research accessible to everyone, and to increase its impact on society.

Linked Open Science is an extension of the Open Science movement that emphasizes the use of linked data and semantic web technologies to enable the sharing and reuse of scholarly information. It takes Open Science a step further by making research outcomes more interconnected, interoperable, and reusable by leveraging the power of the web to link and integrate data from different sources in a standardised way. Linked Open Science is a promising approach that has the potential to revolutionize the way scholarly research is conducted, by facilitating greater collaboration, interoperability, and reuse of data across different domains and disciplines.

The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) is one of the European Research Area initiatives that aims to build a cloud-based infrastructure for scientific research in Europe. The EOSC aims to promote the principles of Open Science and Linked Open Science by providing a platform for researchers to share and access data, tools, and services. The ultimate goal of the EOSC is to foster collaboration among researchers across Europe and facilitate the creation and dissemination of new knowledge.

Improved interoperability

To meet latest IT and repository standards: your content is more contextualised (links and relationships to other types of research outcomes and entities, such as PIDs), more flexible (different and improved vocabularies). More embedded in the R&I ecosystem (alignment with Open Science mandates and standards and support for well-established metadata schemas, namespace abbreviations).

“FAIR”

If you are compliant with the latest version of the OpenAIRE Guidelines you are also FAIR enough! This is your road to FAIRness.

EOSC

OpenAIRE is your entry/gateway to EOSC. If you are compatible with the versions 3.0 or 4.0 of the OpenAIRE Guidelines, then you will be onboarding the EOSC Portal Catalogue and Marketplace integrated platform.

If you are not registered in the OpenAIRE PROVIDE Dashboard service.

1. The first thing you need to do is to set up an OAI-PMH interface in your repository to enable harvesting via OAI-PMH for the records you want to be harvested by OpenAIRE.
2. Then you have to expose your repository's metadata records through the OAI-PMH interface, to comply with the OpenAIRE Guidelines v4.0. “What do you need to do?”
3. The next step is to assess your repository’s compatibility with the OpenAIRE Guidelines through the OpenAIRE Metadata Validator service.
4. If validation succeeds then the repository can be registered for regular aggregation and indexing in OpenAIRE. "How to register?"
5. Once you have finished the registration, the OpenAIRE Aggregation team will validate the information and verify the compatibility level of your repository.
6. We will contact you if we need further information.
7. Your repository will join the OpenAIRE infrastructure and your content will be regularly aggregated and indexed to the OpenAIRE Graph.

If you are registered in the OpenAIRE PROVIDE Dashboard service but you are not compliant with the OpenAIRE Guidelines.

1. You have to expose your repository's metadata records through the OAI-PMH interface, to comply with the OpenAIRE Guidelines. “What do you need to do?”
2. Assess your repository’s compatibility with the OpenAIRE Guidelines through the OpenAIRE Validator service.
3. In the PROVIDE dashboard at the “UPDATE -> UPDATE INTERFACES” tab, update the Desired compatibility level to the latest OpenAIRE Guidelines.
4. Once you have finished the update of the interface, the OpenAIRE Aggregation team will validate the information and verify the updated compatibility level of your repository.
5. We will contact you if we need further information.
6. Your content will continue to be regularly aggregated and indexed to the OpenAIRE Graph.

Very good technical knowledge of the software platform of your repository.

Accustomed with current standards and metadata schemas OpenAIRE Guidelines use (eg. Dublin Core, Datacite) and have knowledge of XML / XPATH / XSLT and XSD schemas.

Collaborate with all the people involved in the operation of the repository (eg. librarians, developers).

There are many factors that play a key role in answering this question. From the skills that are required, the people involved in the operation of the repository to the software platform that you use.

DSpace

• Instructions for implementing compliance with the OpenAIRE Guidelines.

Eprints

• Export Plugin for Interoperability with OpenAIRE (Exports metadata based on OpenAIRE Guidelines for Literature Repositories).

PURE

• Expose your metadata records via the “oai_openaire” or “oai_dc” metadata format.

We are here to assist you either from our technical team or in collaboration with your NOAD on all aspects of the upgrade process by providing guidance via email and/or via scheduled meetings.

1. Login to the PROVIDE dashboard by using your institutional account.
2. Go to the top left menu and select: Validator > Validate
3. Select the data source type (literature repository) you want to validate.
4. Select “enter new” and enter the base OAI-PMH URL of your repository.
5. Select the “OpenAIRE For Institutional and Thematic Repositories (OpenAIRE 4.0)” to test the compatibility of your repository
6. Select parameters
   • You may define an upper limit on the number of records tested. This is highly recommended for first time users, or when re-checking after the implementation of automated changes.
   • Select one of the data source exposed sets (optional).
   • You may also group your results by a specific field. This is quite useful when validating an aggregator and you know in advance which is the field that distinguished among data sources.
7. Finish the compatibility test and wait for the results by email or check the Validation History menu.

1. Register your repository in OpenDOAR, Re3data or FAIRsharing.
2. Login to the PROVIDE dashboard by using your institutional account.
3. Go to the top left menu and select: Register
4. Select the data source type (Repository) you want to register.
5. Fill in the form with the requested information, according to your data source type, as follows:
   1. Select data source
      Select your Repository from the list, starting by identifying the origin country.
   2. Register data source
      Fill in or update, if necessary, the basic information of your Repository. Note: the pre-filled information has been collected from OpenDOAR, Re3data or FAIRsharing.
   3. Register interface
      Register the base OAI-PMH URL of your Repository as well as the desired compatibility level with the OpenAIRE Guidelines. Since you have performed all the aforementioned steps you should select “OpenAIRE 4.0”. Choose an OAI-PMH records set if you have exposed a specific records set in your OAI-PMH for OpenAIRE. If no set is chosen, all records will be harvested.
   4. Terms of Use
      Select the desired options regarding the Terms of Use.
   5. Finish
      Select the option “Finish” to conclude the registration process.

1. Follow the instructions for all the fields and populate all the mandatory fields and attributes.
2. Populated Persistent Identifiers (eg. DOIs, handles for your research output).
3. Populated ORCID iDs for authors/creators of the research products.
4. Get funding data from OpenAIRE. Provide us information on Funders for your research products to see if they are incorporated into the OpenAIRE Graph. If not we get in touch with them to initiate the process.

FAIR principles describe how the research outputs should be organised and structured so they can be more easily accessed, understood and reused. The crowning achievement of the FAIR principles is to optimise the data “FAIRness” through machine actionability with none or minimal human intervention.

Nowadays many guidelines, tools, systems and even policies have been developed to promote and incorporate FAIR into the ordinary workflow of a researcher, a repository, a data source in general. But there are different stakeholder perspectives regarding the FAIR workflow that most of the time making your data FAIR becomes a complicated process. Whether you are a researcher, a repository, a research performing organisation, a funder you have different approaches in the so called FAIR workflow, which simply translates to “what do I need to do to have FAIR data?”.

The OpenAIRE guidelines are based on the Open Science mandates and standards and support well-established metadata schemas, namespace abbreviations and controlled vocabularies aligning with the FAIR Principles. The OpenAIRE guidelines requisite the metadata to enhance and support FAIRness:

Findability

• by requiring the existence of Persistent Identifiers as long as rich metadata (eg. creator, title, publication date, publisher)

Accessibility

• by the required “Access Rights” rule that obliges the metadata to contain information on how the user can access the data (open, embargoed, restricted, closed access).

Interoperability

by:

• using FAIR compliant vocabularies (COAR, CC-licenses),
• including references to other metadata of related research products (eg. linking of Projects to research outputs, linking of publications to other publications, and linking of publications to datasets).

Reusability

by:

• providing plurality of accurate and relevant attributes by requiring licensing information and the type of the resource,
• Including provenance information by required rules (eg. creator, title, date, publisher),
• complying with a community standard (eg. Dublin Core, DataCite metadata schemas).

Need support or guidance on updating the compatibility level of your data source?
Contact the OpenAIRE support team by email or use the contact button below.

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