Developing the National Open Access Monitor, Ireland: Stakeholder Webinar. Sept 22, 2023, 2pm (BST) | Irish Research eLibrary (IReL)

Project Overview: The National Open Access Monitor project is managed by IReL and is funded by NORF as a priority action under Ireland’s?National Action Plan for Open Research 2022-2030. Following a public tender process, OpenAIRE has been awarded the contract to develop the National Open Access Monitor, based on public open data, to analyse and track progress towards 100% Open Access in Ireland. Webinar Purpose: This webinar introduces stakeholders to the National Open Access Monitor. “Stakeholders” encompass all individuals involved in, interested in, or benefiting from monitoring Open Access to Ireland’s research. Whether you play a part in Open Access monitoring, plan to, or will utilise the Monitor, you’re encouraged to attend, share insights, and help refine the platform.

Vacancy: Project Manager (maternity cover), NORF Ireland. End of play: Aug 30, 2023 | Royal Irish Academy

Applications are invited for the position of Project Manager (maternity cover), National Open Research Forum (NORF) at the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI), located at the Royal Irish Academy. Closing date 30 August.

Department: Digital Repository of Ireland
Contract Type: Specific Purpose
Reports to: Daniel Bangert, National Open Research Coordinator, Digital Repository of Ireland

Overview

Applications are invited for the position of Project Manager (maternity cover), National Open Research Forum (NORF) at the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI), located at the Royal Irish Academy. NORF has released a multi-annual National Action Plan for Open Research and a fund has been made available from the HEA and Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science to progress actions in the plan via a series of calls for proposals. DRI is the coordinating organisation for NORF and is managing this fund. See: https://norf.ie/(link is external)

The DRI, a certified trustworthy digital repository for the arts, humanities and social sciences, is a national infrastructure for preserving and providing access to Ireland’s social and cultural digital data. DRI also operates as a community hub for policy, advocacy, training and best practice in digital preservation, digital archiving, FAIR data management and Open Science. DRI is headquartered at the Royal Irish Academy. See: https://dri.ie/(link is external)

The Royal Irish Academy is a predominantly publicly funded institution established for the promotion of learning in the sciences and humanities across the island of Ireland. The Academy’s latest strategic plan for 2019–23 is available here: 

Key purpose of role

This is a specific purpose contract to cover maternity leave working as a Project Manager to support the implementation of Ireland’s National Action Plan for Open Research(link is external). This plan sets out objectives and actions for the next chapter in Ireland’s transition towards Open Research. The successful candidate will contribute to the implementation of this plan by ensuring efficient administration of funded activities, facilitating cross-project coordination and alignment, liaising with internal and external stakeholders, and assisting with NORF communications and outreach. The NORF Project Manager will be based at the Digital Repository of Ireland at the Royal Irish Academy and will work closely with the National Open Research Coordinator and the National Open Research Forum.

Key accountabilities

The NORF Project Manager responsibilities are to:

Work closely with the National Open Research Coordinator and Ireland’s National Open Research Forum (NORF) to support the implementation of Ireland’s National Action Plan for Open Research
Support the Digital Repository of Ireland in delivering its NORF responsibilities, including ongoing administration (financial, monitoring, evaluation) of projects funded by the NORF Open Research Fund
Liaise with NORF projects (18 projects estimated) to support individual project progress, measure progress against National Action Plan objectives and priorities, and facilitate exchange between funded projects.
Develop and deliver a plan for consistent project updates to key stakeholders, ensuring effective internal communications within NORF and NORF-funded projects.
Support the full events management cycle, from identifying required events through to planning, logistics and delivery.
Identify opportunities to widen the scope of researcher engagement and stakeholder awareness of NORF activities and raise awareness of Open Research across the Irish higher education and research landscape.
Manage and populate key external communications platforms including the NORF website, newsletter and social media.
Seek out and identify opportunities for funding to support implementation of the National Action Plan and assist with funding proposal writing.

Person specification

Essential qualifications

A third-level qualification in a relevant discipline
A minimum of three years’ experience in a project management or operations management function, including financial administration (e.g. managing budgets, tender processes, etc.)
Demonstrable understanding of Open Research/Open Science policies and practices in a research context
Evidence of the ability to work with numerous diverse stakeholders towards common goals and to use initiative to address roadblocks.
Evidence of excellent personal communication skills, with demonstrable ability to engage and communicate effectively with a wide

Call for Proposals: Ireland’s National Open Research Festival | National Open Research Forum

“We are inviting submissions from members of the research community to present a lightning talk or lead an interactive in-person workshop at Ireland’s National Open Research Festival 2-3 November 2023. 

Day 1 of the event will feature three rounds of lightning talks (max. 7 mins), each focusing on a theme of the National Action Plan. We anticipate a total of 12 lightning talks. Lightning talks are an opportunity for individuals, teams and projects to share work related to the broad themes and actions of the National Action Plan. 

Day 2 will consist of workshops (duration 90 mins). Workshops should be interactive, and proposals that encourage the participation of attendees will be given priority.

Workshops and sessions will be held in-person only at the Royal Irish Academy. We expect all presenters (or their representatives) to be able to attend the event on the premises, unless otherwise agreed for exceptional circumstances. Day 1 sessions will be live streamed….”

WorldFAIR Project (D13.2) Cultural Heritage Image Sharing Recommendations Report | Zenodo

Abstract:  Deliverable 13.2 for the WorldFAIR Project’s Cultural Heritage Work Package (WP13). Although the cultural heritage sector has only recently begun to think of traditional gallery, library, archival and museum (‘GLAM’) collections as data, long established practices guiding the management and sharing of information resources has aligned the domain well with the FAIR principles for research data, evidenced in complementary workflows and standards that support discovery, access, reuse, and persistence. As explored in the previous report by Work Package 13 for the WorldFAIR Project, D13.1 Practices and policies supporting cultural heritage image sharing platforms, memory institutions are in an important position to influence cross-domain data sharing practices and raise critical questions about why and how those practices are implemented.

Deliverable 13.2 aims to build on our understanding of what it means to support FAIR in the sharing of image data derived from GLAM collections. This report looks at previous efforts by the sector towards FAIR alignment and presents 5 recommendations designed to be implemented and tested at the DRI that are also broadly applicable to the work of the GLAMs. The recommendations are ultimately a roadmap for the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) to follow in improving repository services, as well as a call for continued dialogue around ‘what is FAIR?’ within the cultural heritage research data landscape.

WorldFAIR Project (D13.2) Cultural Heritage Image Sharing Recommendations Report –

“Deliverable 13.2 for the WorldFAIR Project’s Cultural Heritage Work Package (WP13). Although the cultural heritage sector has only recently begun to think of traditional gallery, library, archival and museum (‘GLAM’) collections as data, long established practices guiding the management and sharing of information resources has aligned the domain well with the FAIR principles for research data, evidenced in complementary workflows and standards that support discovery, access, reuse, and persistence. As explored in the previous report by Work Package 13 for the WorldFAIR Project, D13.1 Practices and policies supporting cultural heritage image sharing platforms, memory institutions are in an important position to influence cross-domain data sharing practices and raise critical questions about why and how those practices are implemented.

Deliverable 13.2 aims to build on our understanding of what it means to support FAIR in the sharing of image data derived from GLAM collections. This report looks at previous efforts by the sector towards FAIR alignment and presents 5 recommendations designed to be implemented and tested at the DRI that are also broadly applicable to the work of the GLAMs. The recommendations are ultimately a roadmap for the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) to follow in improving repository services, as well as a call for continued dialogue around ‘what is FAIR?’ within the cultural heritage research data landscape.

The report is available on Zenodo.”

Learning from national open access platforms | Royal Irish Academy

“Publish OA (link is external), co-led by the Royal Irish Academy and Trinity College Dublin, is pleased to announce a webinar that will focus on the founding and evolution of national open access (OA) platforms.

Publish OA was created in response to the Irish government’s target of achieving 100% open access to publicly funded scholarly publications by 2030 and is funded by the National Open Research Forum (NORF). The project will run until November 2024; its key objective is to evaluate the feasibility of establishing a national OA platform for journals and books for Ireland.

Existing national OA platforms have been successful in helping publishers comply with OA requirements and have agreed to share their experiences through this webinar. The presentations will cover the creation of the platforms, principles adhered to, technical requirements, business models used to sustain these platforms and any lessons learnt.

These presentations are open to the public.

Panelists include Antti-Jussi Nygård and Sami Syrjämäki of journal.fi(link is external), and Jan Willem Wijnen from openjournals.nl(link is external). Journal.fi is a journal management and publishing service provided by the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies. It features 130 Finnish scholarly journals. Openjournals.nl is a diamond open-access platform for scientific journals, which was launched in 2021. It now hosts 24 journals, with a new journal being added almost every month….”

Learning from national open access platforms | Royal Irish Academy

“Publish OA (link is external), co-led by the Royal Irish Academy and Trinity College Dublin, is pleased to announce a webinar that will focus on the founding and evolution of national open access (OA) platforms.

Publish OA was created in response to the Irish government’s target of achieving 100% open access to publicly funded scholarly publications by 2030 and is funded by the National Open Research Forum (NORF). The project will run until November 2024; its key objective is to evaluate the feasibility of establishing a national OA platform for journals and books for Ireland.

Existing national OA platforms have been successful in helping publishers comply with OA requirements and have agreed to share their experiences through this webinar. The presentations will cover the creation of the platforms, principles adhered to, technical requirements, business models used to sustain these platforms and any lessons learnt.

These presentations are open to the public.

Panelists include Antti-Jussi Nygård and Sami Syrjämäki of journal.fi(link is external), and Jan Willem Wijnen from openjournals.nl(link is external). Journal.fi is a journal management and publishing service provided by the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies. It features 130 Finnish scholarly journals. Openjournals.nl is a diamond open-access platform for scientific journals, which was launched in 2021. It now hosts 24 journals, with a new journal being added almost every month….”

Irish higher education institutions and Elsevier sign a new transformative agreement to continue to support open access for research in Ireland | TU Dublin

“A consortium of Irish higher education institutions (members are listed below) has been negotiating with Elsevier since 2022 to secure continued access to ScienceDirect content and supports for open access publishing.  The ScienceDirect Ireland Consortium has been consistent from the outset about the need for an agreement that made significant progress towards delivering open access (OA) on the ScienceDirect platform to publications by authors from the 16 consortium member institutions….”

National call to Register Open Repositories to Strengthen Ireland’s Openness, Alignment, Equity, and Diversity in Open Publishing

“Help spread the word to create a national inventory of Open Repositories. Repository owners/managers can register their Irish Open Access Repository at https://universityofgalway.ie/openrepositories/register/ by Thursday, 16 March 2023, at 17:00….

This is the first step in a National Open Research Forum (NORF) project where many great partners are aiming to create a sustainable national community for Irish Open Repositories. This project strengthens our existing national network of repositories for open access publications. Work will audit, reinforce, and align the repository network to each other and to international best practice….”

Introducing the National Open Access Transition Programme project | National Open Research Forum

“In this blog post, Lucy Hogan, Project Manager at the Royal Irish Academy for the NORF-funded Priority Action targeting Open Access (OA) Transition in publishing, introduces the work of the project and invites stakeholders to engage with the project through upcoming surveys, webinars and events so that the result is community-driven serving the need of authors, readers, publishers and funders in Ireland. Led by the Royal Irish Academy, with its executive partner, Trinity College Dublin, this consortium of 18 institutional and organisational partners addresses the call in Theme 2 of the NORF National Action Plan for Open Research 2022–2030 to achieve “100% open access to research publications”….”

Funding of €1.9 million to support Ireland’s National Action Plan for Open Research announced by Minister Harris

“Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science Simon Harris has today announced funding of €1.9 million to advance Ireland’s National Action Plan for Open Research.

Open research offers the public free access to research findings and encourages collaboration and sharing of information for the benefit of science and society.

This funding will be used to do a number of things including increasing public engagement with research and citizen science, establishing a culture of open research and working towards 100% open access to research publications….”

WorldFAIR Project (D13.1) Cultural Heritage Mapping Report: Practices and policies supporting Cultural Heritage image sharing platforms | Zenodo

Abstract:  Deliverable 13.1 for the WorldFAIR Project’s Cultural Heritage Work Package (WP13) outlines current practices guiding online digital image sharing by institutions charged with providing care and access to cultural memory, in order to identify how these practices may be adapted to promote and support the FAIR Principles for data sharing.

The report has been compiled by the Digital Repository of Ireland as a key information resource for developing the recommendations forthcoming in Deliverable 13.2. The DRI is Ireland’s national repository for the arts, humanities and social sciences. A Working Group of cultural heritage professionals has been invited to contribute feedback.

There are well-established standards and traditions driving the various approaches to image sharing in the sector, both local and global, which influence everything from the creation of digital image files, their intellectual organisation and level of description, to statements of rights governing use. Additionally, there are technological supports and infrastructures that have emerged to facilitate these practices which have significant investment and robust community support. These practices and technologies serve the existing communities of users well, primarily the needs of government, business and higher education, as well as the broader general public. Recommendations for adapting established collections delivery mechanisms to facilitate the use of cultural heritage images as research data would ideally not supersede or duplicate processes that also serve these other communities of users, and any solutions proposed in the context of the WorldFAIR Project must be made in respect of these wider contexts for image sharing.

University of Limerick-headquartered Lero wins Yerun Open Science award | University of Limerick

“Lero, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software based at University of Limerick, has been awarded a European prize recognising its commitment to open science principles.

The centre launched its Open Science Charter and an Open Source and Open Science Programme Office last October.

The Young European Research Universities Open Science Awards were announced on February 14 at an online ceremony. This is the second year of the awards which recognise Open Science initiatives, of different kinds, across the YERUN network….”