We are thrilled to share that OpenAIRE and OPERAS have officially joined the second wave of the EOSC Federation as a candidate node, as officially stated by the European Commission and the EOSC Federation. Named the EOSC Scholarly Commons Node, this partnership represents a strategic alignment to ensure that scholarly communication - the very fabric of how research is shared and validated - is natively integrated into the European Open Science Cloud.

Strengthening the Federation: A dedicated layer for scholarly communication

The EOSC Scholarly Commons Node is a joint effort between OpenAIRE and OPERAS, designed to bring a comprehensive service stack to the Federation. It offers 15 established services (all at TRL 8-9 and one at TRL 7) covering the entire research lifecycle:

• Discovery & Monitoring: Access to the OpenAIRE Graph (250M+ records) and GoTriple (20M+ documents) for multilingual SSH discovery. Navigate through scholarly works via the EXPLORE service and even create community and domain specific dashboards via CONNECT.
• Data Management: Tools like Argos for machine-actionable Data Management Plans (DMPs).
• Research Assessment & Outreach: Research monitoring dashboards for impact assessment (MONITOR) aligned with the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) to support responsible research assessment. By registering repositories of scholarly works to PROVIDE, research content is exposed to the research community and expands its value.
• Publishing & Peer Review: Support of Diamond Open Access publishers (EDCH), standardised peer review information (PRISM) and comprehensive usage metrics for the Open Access books (Metrics).
• Standardisation and Interoperability: By using the OpenAIRE Guidelines - the de facto European standards adopted by thousands of repositories - we ensure that data sources are natively aligned with the EOSC Interoperability Framework. Integrating the Scholix framework - a universal service for interlinking research objects - we establish a robust, multi-hub interoperability framework for the Federation via the ScholeXplorer service.

Furthermore, three new use cases will be offered across the Federation, demonstrating:

• The multi-node value by connecting national research outputs to the European scholarly communication graph
• The offering of multilingual Social Sciences and Humanities resources with bibliometric analysis
• The interconnection of data infrastructure Nodes services, with the Data Management Plans (Argos, DMP), to expand scholarly communication capabilities and connect the dots of data with machine actionable FAIR DMPs.

For OPERAS, joining the EOSC Scholarly Commons Node is about ensuring that scholarly communication in the Social Sciences and Humanities becomes an integral part of the European Open Science Cloud ecosystem. Research communities need infrastructures that support multilingualism, bibliodiversity, and community-driven publishing practices, while remaining interoperable at European scale. Through this collaboration with OpenAIRE, we are strengthening the connection between researchers, publishers, repositories and citizens, so that knowledge can circulate more openly, fairly and sustainably across disciplines and borders, and we are very excited for this opportunity that the EOSC Node presents.

I believe it is high time for scholarly communication to be recognised as the glue of EOSC. It is already deeply embedded in the daily digital life of every researcher, from discovery and publishing to assessment and reuse. OpenAIRE provides the connecting infrastructure and services to support this continuum, linking research outputs, communities, and services across disciplines and borders. Working with OPERAS allows us to move towards a more seamless experience between research infrastructures, Diamond OA publishing and the SSH communities. We are truly excited to be part of the EOSC Federation, learning from other nodes and taking careful but decisive steps towards a federated European research data space, where content, services, and communities work as one.

Impact on End Users: From researchers to institutions

The EOSC Federation's success is measured by its utility to those on the front lines of science. For researchers and innovators, the Scholarly Commons Node simplifies the path to Open Science:

• Seamless Discovery: Researchers can find resources across all disciplines and 10+ languages through the OpenAIRE Graph and GoTriple. They can combine best practices and enhance their research without any cross-national barriers.
• Responsible Assessment: As Europe moves toward research assessment reform (CoARA), our node provides the dashboards (MONITOR) and metrics needed to evaluate research fairly. We draw a path where researchers can showcase their work and impact in a narrative way (MyResearchFolio) and research performing organisations can build on their excellence so that the funders of research can follow up in an open and transparent way. FAIRness of scholarly works is our drive that empowers researchers to focus on their goal.
• Institutional Empowerment: Universities ensure their feedback is collected, their voice is heard, while gaining tools to manage their digital sovereignty and promote their impact on society and the research ecosystem.

Societal Impact: Science as a Public Good

The ultimate goal of EOSC is to accelerate scientific productivity to solve global challenges. The Scholarly Commons Node contributes to this societal mission by:

• Democratising Knowledge: By supporting Diamond Open Access and community-governed infrastructure, we ensure that science remains a public good.
• Citizen Science & Engagement: Tools like Hypotheses (academic blogging) and VERA foster direct engagement between researchers and society, making scientific progress transparent and participatory.
• Evidence-Based Policy: Faster, more transparent sharing of research results allows policymakers to make decisions based on the most up-to-date and verifiable "Open Science intelligence". Services like MONITOR, provide a holistic impact tracking method powered by scientific trust and with transparency.

European Impact: A sovereign future for European research

By joining the EOSC Federation, OpenAIRE and OPERAS act as proxies for over 130 combined member institutions, reaching almost every European country. This node ensures that the European Research Area (ERA) remains a trusted, secure, and sovereign environment where scientific knowledge is treated as a global public good and EOSC as a vibrant, human-centric ecosystem where knowledge flows for the benefit of all.