OPERAS is the Research Infrastructure dedicated to support open scholarly communication for the Social Sciences and the Humanities in the European Research Area (ERA). The OPERAS-PLUS project started on September 1, 2022, has a duration of 36 months and runs from September 2022 to July 2025 under Grand Agreement Number 101079608 (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101079608). It receives funding from the Horizon Europe framework Infra-Dev in order to support new ESFRI research infrastructure projects in their preparatory phase . OPERAS was selected in 2021 as a new infrastructure on the ESFRI Roadmap for the excellence of its scientific case and for its strategic importance for the European Research Area and the structuring of the European research infrastructure ecosystem. OPERAS is now on its path to becoming operational as an ERIC in 2028.
The project aims at supporting this process and the development of the infrastructure in its preparatory phase and on its way towards implementation as an ERIC. It will empower OPERAS to further
- Strengthen its governance structure in regard to financial, legal and human resources
- Support the network of national nodes and their national activities
- Develop the services portfolio providing both required technology and a monitoring system for services development
- Maximise OPERAS’ impact in the ERA and at the international level by extending it beyond its current scope and onboarding new members and countries in the infrastructure.
The body of work will stand in the continuity of work already realised in the former projects (OPERAS-D, OPERAS-P, HIRMEOS) and collaborate with the running projects COESO, TRIPLE, and DIAMAS, and soon with other projects to come in 2023.
Work packages and OPERAS-Plus Pillars
The methodological approach of OPERAS-PLUS is based on two Pillars:
(1) the establishment of the infrastructure through the support to the legal entity and
(2) the support and development to the OPERAS services and especially the building of its catalogue.
OPERAS-Plus Work Packages
| WP1 – Coordination and management |
| WP2 – OPERAS construction phase framework development |
| WP3 – Member States and Associated Countries & other OPERAS stakeholders engagement |
| WP4 – OPERAS Innovation Lab development |
| WP5 – Technical support to OPERAS services |
| WP6 – User engagement and training |
| WP7 – Support to national nodes |
| WP8 – Communication and impact assessment |
Consortium:
The project has a consortium of 13 partners from 12 countries:
MAX WEBER STIFTUNG – DE
MWS is one of the leading agencies supporting German research in the humanities abroad. It is a legal entity closely linked to the German Federal Government located in Bonn. It comprises ten humanities research institutes around the world, which provide a bridge function between the host nations and Germany and play an important role in the international science scene. Being a multi-polar network, the institutes collaborate in the promotion of the internationalization of science. The foundation’s goal is to promote research with a focus on history, culture, economic and social sciences in selected countries and a mutual understanding between Germany and the host countries.
For more information visit: https://www.maxweberstiftung.de/
OPERAS – BE
OPERAS is an international not-for-profit association (AISBL), established under the Belgian law on non-for-profit associations, international non-for-profit associations and foundations of 27 June 1921, as amended by the Law of 2 May 2002. As an AISBL, OPERAS pursues a non-profit purpose of international utility.
OPERAS AISBL has been established by Royal Decree in 2020 under the name of OPEN SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION IN THE EUROPEAN AREA FOR SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION (in short OPERAS).
CNRS – Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (OpenEdition and Huma-Num) – FR | Affiliated partner: AMU – FR
OpenEdition is a French national research infrastructure in the humanities and social sciences. Its missions are to develop open access publishing and to disseminate the uses and skills related to digital publishing and scholarly communication. It provides the research communities with comprehensive services, including four complementary platforms for journals, book series, research blogs and academic events.
Huma-Num is a Very Large Facility which aims to facilitate the digital turn in the SSH. To perform this mission, Huma-Num is built on an original organisation. It organises a collective dialogue with communities via consortia accredited by Huma-Num and provides a technological infrastructure on a national and European scale based on a vast network of partners and operators. Through consortia of actors in scientific communities, Huma-Num favors the coordination of the collective production of corpora of sources (scientific recommendations, technological best practices). It also provides research teams in the Human and Social sciences with a range of utilities to facilitate the processing, access, storage and interoperability of various types of digital data. This set of shared services comprises the provision of a Grid of services, a platform for the unified access to data (ISIDORE) and long-term archival facilities. For more information visit: huma-num.fr
University of Zadar – HR
For more than a decade the Department of Information Sciences at the University of Zadar is very active in promoting the idea of free and unrestricted access to research results and academic works. Our staff members are involved in a number of national infrastructure projects like HRCAK (Portal of Croatian scientific journals) and CROSBI (Crotian scientific bibliography), their international projects and initiatives like in OpenAIRE, an EC-funded initiative with 50 partners which aims to support the Open Access policy of the European Commission via a technical infrastructure, and TD COST Action TD1306 New Frontiers of Peer Review (PEERE). The University of Zadar encourages its academics to publish their research in open access. All journals published by different University departments are freely available on the web. The University Library has established an institutional repository on the national digital archive and repository DABAR and in the meantime offers advice and support for students, teachers and researchers in helping them publish their works under free access conditions.
For more information see: University of Zadar
IBL PAN – PL
IBL PAN is a highly recognized literary and cultural studies centre in Poland. Founded in 1948, the Institute focuses on literary and cultural studies in a comparative context, as well as on literary theory. IBL PAN is a leading national centre for documentation, bibliography and scholarly editions of Polish literature, as well as an early adopter of digital methods in the humanities. It was ranked in the ‘Excellent’ category (A+) in two most recent national evaluations of research institutions (2013 & 2017). In 2016 the European Commission awarded the Institute with the certificate of ‘HR Excellence in research’. The Institute currently employs approximately 100 researchers and is a doctoral-level teaching centre.
For more information visit: ibl.waw.pl
UC Digitalis is a global project of the University of Coimbra for the collection, valuation and dissemination of digital contents. It aims to place knowledge transfer dynamics at the service of economic, social and cultural development, thereby intensifying the University’s links with the community at national and international level. It is particularly distinctive of UC Digitalis that it is designed to promote and boost the editorial status of the science produced in the Portuguese-speaking world. It hosts the digital libraries ALMA MATER, POMBALINA and IMPACTUM, comprising almost 25,000 documents (mainly books, book chapters and articles).
For more information view: uc.pt/en
OAPEN – NL
OAPEN is dedicated to Open Access to scholarly monographs. The foundation operates two platforms: the OAPEN Library, a platform for hosting, dissemination and preservation of open access books, and the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB), a discovery service for Open Access books. OAPEN was launched in 2008 as a 30-month targeted project co-funded by the EU in its eContentplus-program. The project was conducted by University Presses from 6 countries, coordinated in the Netherlands by Amsterdam University Press (AUP) and supported by the University of Amsterdam (Uva) and the University of Leiden (UL). The project was continued in 2011 as the OAPEN Foundation, founded by AUP, UL, University Library of Utrecht University (UU), Netherlands Academy of Sciences (KNAW), National Library of the Netherlands (KB) and AUP. These institutes act as Participants in the foundation. The Foundation received financial support from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). Support from above mentioned participants and NWO was renewed in 2014.
For more information visit: oapen.org
Universitá di Torino – IT
UniTo is one of the most ancient and prestigious Italian Universities. Hosting about 70.000 students, 4.000 academic and technical staff, 800 post-doctoral students, it promotes culture and produces research, innovation, training and employment. It is today one of the largest Italian universities, open to international research, projects and training. It has been at the forefront in Open Access projects, enacting in 2013 its Open Access policy, among the first universities in Italy. The university runs an Institutional Repository (AperTO) and a publishing platform (SIRIO@UniTO) for Open Access journals. The Rector is strongly supportive of an Open Science approach.
For more information visit: unito.it
EKT – Greek National Documentation Centre – EL
Founded in 1980, EKT was formerly part of the National Hellenic Research Foundation (EIE). Since 2019, EKT is a legal entity with a public service mission governed by private law and supervised by Ministry of Digital Governance. EKT operates as a knowledge provider for policy makers, the research community and other stakeholders. Its core mission is to collect, aggregate and preserve digital content from selected and highly credible sources, caring for proper documentation to increase content dissemination and reuse from a variety of users. Also, EKT takes part in the formulation of the national strategy for Open Science and Open Access. EKT is officially engaged in the field of Statistics and Policy Monitoring. As a National Authority of the European Statistical System, it impartially collects, analyses and makes available statistics and accurate information relating to the Greek Research and Innovation System, actors and outputs. Transforming data to meaningful information, EKT provides valuable knowledge for the support of evidence-based decision and policy making. Committed to the promotion of innovation, as National Contact Point for European Research and Innovation Programmes, and Coordinator of the Enterprise Europe Network-Hellas, EKT supports research teams and enterprises to access EU funding and develop innovative products and services. EKT’s e-infrastructures for research place particular focus to the needs of SSH researchers (e.g. the epublishing services, services for a single access point to the metadata of all digitized cultural material in Greece, SaaS repository services etc.).
For more information visit: ekt.gr
Lexis – IT
Lexis Compagnia Editoriale in Torino is an Italian company active since 1988, providing advanced publishing services to a variety of private and public customers, with a focus on digital technologies and processes. In recent years it took over the direct management of academic and non-fiction brands (Rosenberg & Sellier, Celid, Accademia University Press, Kermes), adopting and/or experimenting open access policies in its publishing projects. It is partner in Italy of OpenEdition.
For more information visit: lexis.srl
Net7 – IT
Founded in April 2001, Net7 develop software for the web and for mobile solutions. Their services include IT consulting, analysis and software development, graphic and user interface design. The company has a commitment to the use of Open Source software and a strong interest in the research domain, in particular the Semantic Web. Over the years, Net7 has developed web and mobile solutions for dozen of private companies and Public Administration in the following areas: Content management, E-learning, E-commerce, Social Network Management, Enterprise Resource Planning systems, Workflows, Groupware, E-government and Digital Libraries. They have coordinated and participated in several Italian and EU-funded projects, especially in the fields of Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage, Semantic Web and Linked Open Data.
For more information visit: netseven.it
ZRC SAZU – The Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts – SI
ZRC SAZU consists of 18 research units or institutes throughout Slovenia. It has more than 300 employees, roughly 250 of whom are researchers. ZRC SAZU conducts basic research across a range of fields, including natural, earth, and spatial sciences, and the social sciences and humanities. In terms of applied research, the expertise of the ZRC SAZU institutes has, among others, direct application in lexicography and the creation of Slovenian monolingual dictionaries. The Založba ZRC / ZRC Publishing House, a constituent part of ZRC SAZU, publishes more than 50 book series and fourteen journals. Most of the journals and books are available in an open-access format.
For more information visit: https://www.zrc-sazu.si/en
DARIAH ERIC – FR
DARIAH (Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities) is a European research infrastructure supported jointly by a consortium of 18 member countries. Its mission is to empower research communities in the arts and humanities with digital methods to create, connect and share knowledge about culture and society. DARIAH’s work focuses on building a humanities-friendly component of the European Open Science Cloud for tools, services and data; developing and sustaining training materials and resources in Digital Humanities; enabling and encouraging interdisciplinary research around emergent research themes; advocating for humanities researchers in European policy fora.
And two associated partners from the United Kingdom:
Jisc is a not-for-profit providing the UK’s national research and education network, Janet, and technology solutions for its members – colleges, universities and research centres. It is funded by the UK higher and further education and research funding bodies and member institutions.
Jisc does three main things for its members:
- Operates and develops the super-fast and secure Janet Network and its built-in cyber security protection.
- Helps save time and money by negotiating sector-wide deals with IT vendors and commercial publishers.
- Provides trusted advice and practical assistance on digital technology.
Jisc’s vision is for the UK to be the most digitally advanced education and research nation in the world.
For more information visit: jisc.ac.uk
Ubiquity Press is an open access publisher of peer-reviewed, academic journals and books. Their flexible publishing model makes journals and books affordable, and enables researchers around the world to find and access the information they need, without barriers.
For more information visit: ubiquitypress.com
Further information:
For further information please contact Michael Kaiser (kaiser[a]maxweberstiftung.de), OPERAS-PLUS coordinator or Yannick Legré (yannick.legre@operaseuorg.wpcomstaging.com), OPERAS Secretary General.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only
and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Commission. Neither
the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.