Open Science is creating a paradigm shift and is becoming the norm in research. OpenAIRE offers concrete solutions for the implementation of effective Open Science and a seamless integration into the European and the global open scholarly communication ecosystem.

What does the shift to Open Science mean for Research Performing Organisations (RPOs)? 

Research Performing Organisations (RPOs) are encompassing all Universities and Institutions that enable researchers to conduct and perform their research and duties by ensuring the presence of infrastructures and (human) resources to support and produce valuable research products (publications, data, software, patents, etc.).  

Thousands of organisations have expressed an interest in shifting the new research culture vision, enforcing the need for policy changes in research assessment. The embrace of this vision has been translated into signing several declarations such as the DORA declaration, the Leiden Manifesto, the Metric Tide, and the Hong Kong Principles for Assessing Researchers just to name a few. RPOs are key stakeholders of the more recent Agreement on Research Assessment, being part of the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA).  

Translating the vision into practice: How OpenAIRE facilitates this shift 

OpenAIRE for over a decade, has been working with experts in training and developing services for making Open Science a common practice for all key actors within the research ecosystem, including RPOs. Our mission is to shift scholarly communication towards openness and transparency and facilitate innovative ways to communicate and monitor research. To accomplish our mission and contribute to the shift in a new research culture, we wish to partner with universities, institutions, and research centres.  

OpenAIRE has been optimising guidelines and services to facilitate the uptake and implementation of Open Science infrastructures, aligning with the European and International Policy, being one of the federated e-Infrastructures in the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).  

With the launch of the new OpenAIRE service catalogue and the collaboration in EOSC, we noticed that for new users it may be difficult to find and choose the service that can be useful for their activities. As the concept of Open Science, beyond the open access publication, is still new to Institutions that are willing to step up Open Science, we wanted to make it easier with OpenAIRE services and guides. For that scope, we created a dedicated page on our website where RPOs can find the information they are looking for. In this webpage, we have summarised six steps to the pathway for adopting and implementing scholarly communication in Institutions. We have started from the first step to check the readiness of the Open Science in the Institute and walking through the interoperability with services that researchers and staff may use to easier their work.  

We compiled the services for RPOs in “one package” that can be chosen as a whole or as a selection of services depending on each RPO need for scholarly communication. This package for RPOs aims to embed Open Science within the process of the research life cycle, creating a customised service package for the Institutions’ needs.  

RPOs can customise their own data management plan, facilitate the discovery of the research produced in the institutes and collaborators (e.g., with the University Alliances’ Gateways), process data and anonymise the databases to be safely shared, publish in journals or in appropriate repositories, managing easier the research entries and assess and monitor the research output and the publications costs.  

• Better manage the research product at the RPOs level by entries and their update (DMPs, repositories, publications). 
• Track the costs and the impact of the research by curating the financial output and the income from funders and monitoring the re-use of data, downloads, and citations. 
• Improve the institutional policy with stronger data and stats. 
• Making a bigger impact with collaborations with other Universities and EOSC as OpenAIRE offers one of the main gateways to it thanks to the interoperability compliance.  

Curious to find out more?

• You can visit our dedicated website, which will be regularly updated with new documents and case studies.
• Register and participate to our informative webinar on 31 January 2023 at 14.30 CET in which you can contribute and ask questions.