OpenAIRE

EIFL partners in this major 50-country European Union initiative that facilitates open access to research publications and data

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Submitted by Iryna_K on Tue, 2017-10-10 19:45
The OpenAIRE team at an OpenAIRE conference at Göttingen State and University Library, 20 November 2012
The OpenAIRE team at an OpenAIRE conference at Göttingen State and University Library, 20 November, 2012.

BACKGROUND

The OpenAIRE (short for Open Access Infrastructure for Research in Europe) project was established in 2009 to support open access (OA) in Europe. A key objective of OpenAIRE was to promote widespread adoption of the policies set out in the European Research Council's guidelines on open access, and by the open access pilot launched by the European Commission (EC). Both policies mandated open access to research. 

The EC's open access pilot covered approximately 20% of research funded through FP7 - the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development. In 2014, the EC adopted a new policy, covering 100% of Horizon 2020-funded research. Horizon 2020 (H2020) is the European Union's biggest funding programme for research and innovation. In addition, the EC introduced an Open Data pilot in H2020, aiming to make research data generated by H2020-funded projects accessible with as few restrictions as possible.

EIFL has been a partner in OpenAIRE since its inception in 2009, contributing with over 60 other partners to the OpenAIRE, OpenAIREplus, OpenAIRE2020 and OpenAIRE-Advance projects. In 2018, with these projects ending, a not-for-profit organization, OpenAIRE A.M.K.E., was established by 16 organizations - including EIFL - to ensure a permanent open scholarly communication infrastructure to support European research. Today, OpenAIRE A.M.K.E. has 51 members. EIFL co-chairs the OpenAIRE A.M.K.E. Training and Support Standing Committee. 

EIFL'S MAIN ACTIVITIES IN THE OPENAIRE PROJECT AND OPENAIRE A.M.K.E.

  • Coordinating activities of the National Open Access Desks (NOADs) in 12 Eastern European countries: Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia;
  • Leading open science training;
  • Interacting with national networks and ministries;
  • Helping project coordinators to comply with funders' open access requirements; 
  • Supporting repository managers and journal editors and publishers to make their repositories and journals compliant with the OpenAIRE Guidelines; 
  • Working with national research funders to align their policies with the EC's open access policies, and 
  • Organizing conferences, workshops and other knowledge-sharing and community-building events and activities to promote availability of open access publications and research data.

TIMELINE

  • 2009 - 2021 - OpenAIRE, OpenAIREplus, OpenAIRE2020 and OpenAIRE-Advance projects. 
  • 2018 - ongoing - OpenAIRE A.M.K.E. 

ACHIEVEMENTS

  • Increased open access to research in Europe: By the end of 2023, the OpenAIRE portal included over 239,406,000 research products, including 171,478,000 publications, 59,622,488 research data, 389,000 research software tools and 7,916,000 other research products interlinked with publications from European and national funders and over 3.3 million research projects. 
  • Created an innovative repository for researchers:  The ZENODO repository was developed to enable researchers, scientists, EU projects and institutions to share and showcase multidisciplinary research results (data and publications). 
  • Developed useful tools and application programming interfaces (APIs) for researchers who receive funding from the European Commission: The tools and APIs help researchers compile project reports, for example, by compiling statistics that help to monitor the progress of open access and compliance with the EC’s open access policies.
  • Created materials to support open access, open science and open data practices: 20 ‪open science guides for researchers and project coordinators; seven guides for content providers, and four guides for funders on ‪open access, ‪open data, Research Data Management and ‪FAIR data. You can access the OpenAIRE guides here.

GET INVOLVED

  • OpenAIRE A.M.K.E. members and projects. 
  • Become a member.
  • Deposit your publications in open access repositories; link your research results to data-sets and project information, and spread the word. Visit the OpenAIRE portal to learn more.
Open Access Programme
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