Named after Zenodotus, the first librarian of the Ancient Library of Alexandria and father of the first recorded use of metadata, a landmark in library history, Zenodo was launched in 2013, as a catch-all repository for research funded by the European Commission. In addition to being a repository, Zenodo, with the support of CERN, provides access to Big Data management tools and enhanced digital library capabilities for Open Data. As the need for such a repository was not limited to one research funding organisation or one nation for that matter, Zenodo’s novel concept quickly caught on and became a “hit” with the Open Science community; research from all over the world and from every discipline began to pour in, making the newly-minted repository a popular destination for Open Science scholars. 

Now, 11 years later, we talk to Lars Holm Nielsen and Jose Benito Gonzalez from CERN about the importance of Zenodo’s contribution, the challenges faced in developing it, how it pertains to the EU Open Research Repository and a vision for the future. Enjoy!

Now that Zenodo is turning 11 years old, what have been the main lessons learned and/ or achievements that have helped you shape the novel EU Open Research Repository?   

On the occasion of Zenodo’s 11th “anniversary”, one of the more important developments we have had over the past few years was last October, which marked the transition to a reusable platform, as well as a shift of focus from ensuring that research materials and artefacts are easy to share to safeguarding that their collaborative curation is also easy. This is of utmost importance to us, especially as Zenodo’s initial success and continued growth are based on the support of our extensive network of users and the OpenAIRE NOADs. These 34 National Open Access Desks are the very backbone of OpenAIRE, a network of national, academic and research libraries, inter-institutional organisations, information services and consortia, and their contributions to Zenodo and the soon-to-be-fully realized EU Open Research Repository has been invaluable.

Even now, as we complete the pilot phase and approach the official launch dates (the EU Open Research Repository is expected to be fully operational by the end of 2024), the project continues to evolve. Efforts are being made to integrate cutting-edge features (assisted curation, FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) support and more) that will serve to better support researchers in making their publicly funded research open and as FAIR as possible.

What would you say is the differentiation between the EU Open Research Europe Repository and ORE?  

The EU Open Research Repository is a Zenodo - community dedicated to the promotion and fostering of Open Science as well as the enhancement of visibility and accessibility of research projects (and their results) funded by the European Union. The community is managed by CERN, on behalf of the European Commission, and its mission is to support the implementation of the EU's Open Science policy by providing a trusted and comprehensive space for researchers to share their research outputs (data, software, reports, presentations, posters and more). The EU Open Research Repository simplifies the process of complying with Open Science requirements, ensuring that research outputs from Horizon Europe, Euratom, and earlier Framework Programmes are freely accessible, and thereby accelerating scientific discovery and innovation.

The difference with a publishing venue, such as the Open Research Europe (ORE) publishing platform for example, is that the repository serves a different scope of materials. While the Open Research Europe platform focuses on published articles with peer review, curated using rigorous academic standards, the Repository’s mandate is much wider; EU Open Repo is a repository for all the other research artefacts (software, data, reports, etc) produced by projects. Both ORE and the EU Open Repository are inclusive of all commission-funded projects. One could say that it represents a more holistic approach that enables researchers to share the underlying data and materials that support their work, along with publishing their findings, thus fostering transparency and reproducibility in the scientific process. Another way of viewing it's as a complimentary service, aimed at “covering all bases” in Open Science!

What you are describing requires a higher standard of curation; how has this challenge been addressed? 

In reality, the challenge of setting up the EU Open Research Repository has been twofold: on the one hand, we have had to distribute curation across a large number of projects, which we are addressing by “building on top” of Zenodo’s community feature to offer curation to registered projects. The basic workflow is as follows: we validate the creation of an EU project community, and once this is approved and validated, the curators of that community take over and manage the curation. In addition to that, we also implement features to ensure harmonised standards across all the project communities, to make sure there’s a grant link, as well as an “early warning” feature, in case the data set does not comply with some of the Horizon Europe Open Science requirements. The second part of the challenge is how we are going to integrate FAIR checks directly into Zenodo, to better help researchers to deposit more FAIR data. 

What is your vision for the future, both for the EU Open Research Repository and for Zenodo? 

As always, our primary concern is to provide an e-infrastructure that tackles real Open Science problems, offers solutions that are useful to the stakeholders involved, and thus provides real added value to all current and future Open Science efforts.  Our vision is that our distributed curation model will have applications in many other domains and cases. As the features of the EU Open Research Repository are built into the underlying technical platform, called InvenioRDM, they are deployed in Zenodo, making them available to the EU Open Research Repository. 

Currently, there are more than 2700 EU-funded research projects that already have a Zenodo-community to share their research: these will be indexed by the EU Open Research Repository, under a single umbrella and provided with enhanced features. Several early adopter projects from different domains (BY-COVID, FAIR-IMPACT, FAIRplus, GDI, iMagine, interTwin, RESILIENCE, SERPENTINE) are collaborating to provide feedback on the new repository features. 

Any other projects interested in adopting and contributing to the new features can sign up for free and will be onboarded as soon as possible during the remainder of the pilot phase.