Category Archives: oa.operas

OPERAS Innovation Lab | Septentrio Conference Series

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“Scholars see innovative means of disseminating their work and data as a chance to improve the process of sharing ideas with different audiences, thanks to technological affordances. They understand innovation either in terms of form (novel means of communicating ideas through different media), or access (opening up outputs and making them easily accessible) (cf. Maryl and B?aszczy?ska 2021, p. 34). What we consider a “scholarly text” has thus become understood as an expression that can employ different media and engage creatively with underlying data.

However, engaging with novel forms of communication poses new challenges to scholars, who may lack competencies, know-how, or adequate resources to take full advantage of innovative outputs (Tasovac et al. 2018). This poster will outline the means of support provided by OPERAS Innovation Lab in establishing interdisciplinary, collaborative workflows for supporting innovative outputs in social sciences and humanities (SSH) throughout their lifecycle. The Lab provides guidelines on how to create and sustain FAIR innovative outputs in the SSH.

In the current infrastructure-development project (OPERAS-PLUS) Lab’s website was created (https://lab.operas-eu.org/) and serves as an innovation observatory, collecting and storing data and studies on innovative outputs as well as current research in that field. Apart from the general introduction to the Lab, the poster will showcase three diverse case studies analysed in the ongoing project. They all aim at addressing the actual needs faced by SSH researchers who decide to use innovative forms of disseminating their output:

The novel publication of project outputs: scholarly toolkit;
Management of an interdisciplinary online journal;
Prototyping software services for open science on the example of a recommender system for open access books based on text and data mining (Snijder 2021)….”

 

TAKE 5 With PALOMERA partners: OAPEN

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The “Take 5 with PALOMERA partners” is a blog series featuring the members of the PALOMERA project, you can get to know them in 5 questions and a quick read! 

The PALOMERA project is dedicated to understand why so few open access funder policies include books, and to provide actionable recommendations to change this situation. PALOMERA is funded for two years under the Horizon Europe: Reforming and enhancing the European R&I System .

For the debut of the series, we talked to Niels Stern, from the OAPEN Foundation.

Banner for the series "Take 5 with PALOMERA partners". A green background with the logo for the series, the name of the partner and a visual graphic from the project. In the footer, the PALOMERA project logo and the EU funding logo.

1. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself as an organisation and your role in it? 

I represent the OAPEN Foundation, which is a not-for-profit organisation providing open infrastructure services for scholarly books. Together with OpenEdition we also operate the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB), which is an index of over 70,000 peer-reviewed open access books. Whereas DOAB is an index, OAPEN hosts the books (full-text) on our open source DSpace platform.

It all began as a project among a handful of university presses 15 years ago. Today there are more than 30,000 books from several hundred publishers in the OAPEN Library.

Recently we had this article published about the evolution of OAPEN. I think it’s a fascinating story that I’m fortunate to be part of, firstly as a project partner back in 2007 and for the past couple of years as its director. As the momentum for open access (OA) books is growing, I see OAPEN as a longstanding, very much used and fully open infrastructure centrally positioned in a fast-evolving landscape. This spring we published our POSI self-audit (Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure) to share how we work and how we strive to comply with these important principles. Being transparent about our operations, finances, and governance is important to us and to our main stakeholders, the libraries. We are very pleased that thousands of libraries integrate the OAPEN Library and DOAB in their discovery systems and that over two hundred of those also support us financially through our library support programme. We are greatly thankful for that. Without this support, we could not operate. Four years ago, we were selected by SCOSS which helped our library support campaigning efforts immensely. 

Niels Stern, OAPEN Director.

2. Why do you think the PALOMERA project is relevant and timely?

With a few exceptions, books have been left on the side of OA policymaking for many years. This is unfortunate because policies are important drivers of change. As mentioned, we now see a momentum for OA books and a lot of interest. However, we don’t have a proper overview of the landscape. PALOMERA will help us to develop that, at least in part, by investigating the European Research Area. Furthermore, the project will analyse all the data that we are busy gathering which can give us a better understanding of challenges and bottlenecks preventing policies from emerging.

Such understanding will enable us to better help funders and institutions who want to implement new or improve existing OA policies for books.

The project has also given us the opportunity to convene research funders and policymakers in what we have called a Funder Forum focussed on OA books. Our first meeting in that forum saw representation from over 20 countries, which I think shows the increasing level of interest. We look forward to our next meeting on 20 November – maybe more will join.

Two years ago I was co-organising an OA Books Network event called ‘Voices from the OA books community’ which saw a lot of engagement from actors across the board of scholarly communication. Around 450 people participated in the five events that were held. In PALOMERA we want to build on that engagement. We have therefore just issued a survey (https://bit.ly/3QODjA0), we are performing interviews, and importantly we have planned what we call validation exercise events. Those are inclusive events with the purpose of getting feedback on our work from anyone who’s interested in open access books. It is essential that our scope remains broad because funder policies and institutional strategies for open access books affect all who are engaged in scholarly book publishing.

3. What is your role within the project?

I am the scientific coordinator of the project. So, I drafted the first pages of the application, coordinated the application process and chair our Executive Committee/WPL meetings. However, this is of course a collective effort of highly skilled and very friendly people from 16 different organisations across Europe plus an excellent international advisory board. I guess the central role was given to OAPEN because we have years of experience working closely with research funders, including DFG, FWF, SNSF, NWO, ERC and Wellcome. Using the OAPEN infrastructure we can provide these funders with a number of services that they ask for. I also hope PALOMERA will give us a better understanding of how we should develop these services and see more funders making use of them.

4. In your opinion, what is the biggest impact PALOMERA will have within the scholarly communication sphere?

I hope our study of policies and related documents in 39 countries that we are investigating, and the community validation thereof will give us an increased and generally accepted understanding of the landscape. The analysis of our vast data collection will help us structure all this data and get a fuller picture of the challenges in OA book policy making. Currently the picture is a bit scattered; we need this overview. The data and the analyses will be stored in our knowledge base and made publicly available for everyone to make use of. Once we get towards the end of the project, we will issue recommendations that should be helpful to funders and institutions – whether they have policies in place or not.

All in all, I think the impact of the project will be an increased focus on open access to books in scholarly communication, raising the general level of knowledge in the area, and providing insights that can be used as points of reference in future conversations and studies.

The knowledge base will be maintained by OAPEN after the project ends as part of the OAPEN OA Books Toolkit. We also plan to continue the Funders Forum in some form after the end of the project. So, it is my hope and our ambition that the impact will be enduring.

5. How do you see things evolving after the project finishes? 

As mentioned above, we plan to sustain the main project results like the knowledge base (containing the data, analysis, and recommendations) and the Funder Forum. These will all be essential components of something like a future capacity centre or an information hub for OA books. We draw inspiration from the ongoing EC-funded project DIAMAS which aims to create a federated capacity centre for Diamond OA journals. What a future capacity centre for OA books should look like, I am not really sure about at this moment. I think that would require another project to figure out. But I am excited about the idea, and I think PALOMERA is the perfect stepping-stone to get us there.

To get to know more about the PALOMERA project: visit the project’s page. 

This series is produced by the Work Package 5 team from the PALOMERA project. Stay tuned for the next posts coming soon! 

OpenEdition recrute un·e chargé·e de la coopération internationale pour développer la communauté française d’OPERAS. Date Limite Candidature : lundi 28 août 2023 | L’Édition électronique ouverte

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Informations générales

Lieu de travail : Marseille
Type de contrat : CDD Technique/Administratif
Durée du contrat : 12 mois
Date d’embauche prévue : 2 novembre 2023
Date limite de candidature : 28 août 2023
Quotité de travail : Temps complet
Rémunération : entre 2 350€ et 2 634€ bruts mensuels selon expérience
Niveau d’études souhaité : Niveau 6 – (Bac+3 ou 4)
Expérience souhaitée : 1 à 4 années
BAP : Gestion et Pilotage
Emploi type : Chargé·e de la coopération internationale

Missions

Le·la chargé·e de coopération internationale met en œuvre la stratégie d’OpenEdition en matière de coopération internationale et veille à ce qu’elle soit cohérente avec la stratégie générale de l’Unité. Il·elle participe pleinement au développement de l’infrastructure OPERAS coordonnée par OpenEdition Center.
Il·elle a plus particulièrement en charge la coordination et le soutien de la communauté française d’OPERAS, regroupant potentiellement l’ensemble des acteurs de la communication savante de sciences humaines et sociales en France, qui cherchent à mettre en oeuvre une stratégie de coopération et de développement européenne et internationale. Il·elle a également un rôle d’orientation des acteurs français vers les infrastructures SHS (Cessda, Dariah, etc…) qui peuvent répondre plus pertinemment à leurs besoins.

Activités

Accompagner les acteurs français de la communication scientifique ouverte en SHS vers une intégration dans la communauté des infrastructures européennes, en particulier OPERAS, notamment via la participation aux activités (groupes de travail, services, projets)
Organiser des rencontres, événements, actions de communication en direction de la communauté cible entre autres pour mieux faire connaître les actions et perspectives liées aux projets européens en France et à l’étranger
Collecter auprès de la communauté cible, tous types d’information sur ses besoins en matière de coopération européenne et internationale
Promouvoir à l’international les outils, services, projets développés au sein des infrastructures participant au projet COMMONS et travailler à leur intégration dans l’EOSC
Exercer une veille stratégique sur les acteurs internationaux susceptibles de collaborer avec les infrastructures impliquées dans COMMONS
Mettre en place et animer les dispositifs de communication permettant à la communauté d’échanger de manière continue
Représenter OpenEdition et OPERAS dans les réunions nationales, communautaires et internationales traitant de la communication scientifique, de l’accès ouvert et des humanités numériques
S’impliquer dans des réseaux professionnels, notamment pour les actions communautaires

Compétences

Connaissance approfondie en communication et animation des communautés
Connaissance approfondie des acteurs de la publication scientifique et de l’édition en accès ouvert en sciences humaines et sociales
Connaissance générale des infrastructures et des politiques de la science ouverte en Europe, y compris l’EOSC
Connaissance générale des mécanismes de financement par projet par la Commission Européenne
Connaissance générale de l’organisation et fonctionnement de l’enseignement supérieur et de la recherche publique
Connaissance générale des outils et technologies de publication scientifique en ligne et de traitement des données
Connaissance générale de l’organisation de l’Information Scientifique et Technique au niveau français et international
Connaissance générale des pratiques et problématiques de recherche en sciences humaines et sociales
Capacité d’analyse et de synthèse
Aptitude à utiliser les logiciels spécifiques à l’activité (documents collaboratifs, messagerie instantanée)
Maîtrise de l’expression écrite en français et anglais
Langue française : C1 à C2 (cadre européen commun de référence pour les langues)
Langue anglaise : B1 à C2 (cadre européen commun de référence pour les langues)
Goût du travail en équipe

Contexte de travail

Le·la chargé·e de coopération internationale travaillera dans le cadre du projet COMMONS, projet EquipEx+ obtenu par les infrastructures OpenEdition, Huma-Num et Métopes pour le développement de moyens mutualisés pour des services et données ouvertes en SHS. Le projet COMMONS vise à couvrir l’ensemble de la chaîne de production des connaissances, de la constitution des données à leur diffusion dans la sphère publique, assurant à la fois l’accès aux publications et aux données, ainsi que la liaison réciproque entre publications et données. Pour ce faire, COMMONS construira un environnement intégré adapté aux parcours et aux besoins des utilisateurs et utilisatrices de l’équipement.
Le·la chargé·e de coopération internationale est positionné au sein d’OpenEdition C

OPERAS Conference 2024. 24–26 April 2024, Zadar, Croatia

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The European Council called in May 2023 for transparent, equitable, and open access to scholarly publications. For European public research and innovation actors, scholarly knowledge is a public good. Publicly funded research and its results should be immediately and openly available without barriers such as subscription fees or paywalls. This is essential in driving knowledge forward, promoting innovation and tackling social issues.

OPERAS welcomes this Council Conclusion that fits with our aim to make Open Science a reality for Social Sciences and Humanities, and we are convinced we can only achieve this with collaboration, opening collaboration for community-driven scholarly communication.

This conference is organised by the OPERAS-PLUS project to support the development of the OPERAS Research Infrastructure, supporting open scholarly communication for Social Sciences and Humanities in the European Research Area and to open up collaboration and facilitate exchange.

The OPERAS Conference aims to be a discussion hub in which different stakeholders such as researchers, decision-makers, publishers, librarians, and institutional service providers can share and compare their take on the current scholarly communication system and their vision for a sustainable future. The OPERAS conference will address issues relevant to the Social Sciences and Humanities field in the Open Science paradigm involving equitable publishing, multilingualism, bibliodiversity, and other related topics. 

We want to discuss transparent, equitable publishing in a broad context and welcome presentations, workshops and posters focusing on the following issues: 

Open collaboration for scholar-led publishing 
Open Science policies and strategies
Sustaining the open scholarly communication infrastructure
Open Access usage data and metadata: exchange, aggregation, curation
Publication and data: citation, visualisation, licences
Scholarly communication support and services for citizen science
Multilingualism and collaboration
Equitable publishing models
Engagement and collaboration within  research communities
Research assessment and peer review
Innovative services, tools and technologies supporting Open Science and emerging trend in Open Science and publishing

 

Job: Project Management Officer | OPERAS

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Job Summary

The Project Management Office at OPERAS serves as the central hub for the supervision and operations related to OPERAS projects portfolio:

Identification of relevant calls aligned with OPERAS Strategy;
Coordination of proposals writing and submission;
Implementation of project awarded;
Monitoring of budget and resources, defining appropriate metrics;
Risk and quality management across projects through adequate processes;
Cross-project reports (participated and coordinated);
Closure of projects and final reports.

The Project Management team is under the supervision of the CFAO.

The Project Management Officer works closely with the Secretary-General (SG), the Partnership Coordinator and the CFAO, partly for the daily administration of the OPERAS’ projects and partly for the daily operations of the AISBL.

The combination of this role is closely linked to the building of the ERIC through the OPERAS- PLUS project. The tasks and responsibilities are organised into three priorities:

The combination of this role is closely linked to the building of the ERIC through the OPERAS- PLUS project. The tasks and responsibilities are organised into three priorities:

1. Assisting the SG and CFAO in the daily operations of the AISBL headquarters in Brussels:

Finance: Daily management of purchase orders, Employees’ travel arrangements and expense claims.
Office management

Managing office supplies, stock, and place orders,
Organising filing system for company documents (digital and hard copy as needed),
Distributing and storing correspondence (e.g., letters, emails and packages),
Maintaining a company calendar and scheduling appointments,
Preparing the organisation of events planned in the headquarters.

2. Assisting the SG and the Partnership Coordinator in their tasks related to the building of the ERIC and in particular:

OPERAS projects

contribution to deliverables (source of information, writing, quality check, etc),

supporting activities related to impact monitoring and research assessment, under the supervision of the Partnership Coordinator.

3. Project finances and administration

Supporting the team with European-funded projects administration

getting acquainted with the EU regulations,

getting involved in the preparation of intermediate and periodic reports including financial statements and analysis,

getting acquainted with the project management processes as part of the Integrated Management System.

Supporting grant agreement implementation, in collaboration with the Project Manager.
Participation in proposal writing and submission under the supervision of the Partnership Coordinator.

Relationships

Supporting the team with European-funded projects administration

getting acquainted with the EU regulations,
getting involved in the preparation of intermediate and periodic reports including financial statements and analysis,
getting acquainted with the project management processes as part of the Integrated Management System.

Supporting grant agreement implementation, in collaboration with the Project Manager.
Participation in proposal writing and submission under the supervision of the Partnership Coordinator.

Job Requirements

At least 1-2 years of experience in European Commission Framework Programme project finances and associated legal issues or diploma in project management with expertise on EU-funded projects.
Background or experience in Social Sciences and Humanities would be an asset.
Experience with office management software like MS Office (MS Excel and MS Word, specifically).
Fluent in English; Speaking French or Dutch in addition is an asset.
Excellent organisational and time management skills with a good attention to detail.
Self-motivated to learn new concepts and participate in new projects.
Ability to communicate clearly, concisely and concretely in writing (project reporting, minutes, official exchanges with externals)
Natural ability to work effectively in a team.

Offer

The position is offered for an open-ended contract.
This is a full-time position based in Brussels.
Annual salary including bonus: 40k to 48k
Salary depends upon the experience of the successful candidate. The full package includes holiday allowance, pension, commuting costs, meal vouchers, eco-chèques, and home- office allowance.

Job: Service Marketing and Community Outreach Officer | OPERAS

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Job Summary

The Service Marketing & Community Outreach Officer works closely with the Chief Technology Officer, the Partnership Coordinator, the Community Manager, and the Communication Manager, and is part of the OPERAS Coordination team.

The role of the Service Marketing and Community Outreach Officer combines service marketing strategies with community engagement and outreach initiatives. The primary objective is to promote the organization’s services while actively engaging and connecting with the community.

Key Responsibilities

Contribute to developing marketing strategies and campaigns to promote OPERAS services to the target audience.
Implement marketing strategies related to OPERAS services.
Conduct market research to identify the needs and preferences of the community.
Create and implement community outreach programs and initiatives.
Organise and participate in community events, workshops, and seminars.
Coordinate with internal teams to ensure the delivery of quality services to the community.
Develop and maintain relationships with existing users and community members.
Monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of marketing and outreach efforts.
Organise, attend and present at events and conferences to raise OPERAS visibility and influence in the European and international landscape.
Contribute to the preparation and improvement of presentations and other promotional material for the different services, projects, and activities.
Contribute to maintaining the IT Service Management system of OPERAS, especially the Customer Relationship Management process.
Manage the relevant work packages, tasks and deliverables under the responsibility of OPERAS AISBL in European Commission-funded GraspOS, OPERAS-PLUS and Skills4EOSC projects.

[…]

 

OPERAS Annual Report 2022 | Zenodo

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“OPERAS is the Research Infrastructure supporting open scholarly communication in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) in the European Research Area. Its mission is to coordinate and federate resources in Europe to efficiently address the scholarly communication needs of European researchers in the field of SSH.

The OPERAS Annual Report provides a detailed record of the OPERAS AISBL within 2022: News from the OPERAS Assemblies, activieties, Special Interest Groups and projects within 2022. It provides an overview about the main services and FAIR activities as well as the engagement in Europe.”

The growing world of open access books | OPERAS Innovation Lab

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Authors: Marta B?aszczy?ska, Graham Stone
Reviewers: Jadranka Stojanovski, Ronald Snijder

 

Welcome on board, scholarly innovation aficionados!

2023 is a very important year for open access books due to the high number and variety of developments supporting them. So, it felt like a great area to focus on with our first blog post from the series Innovation Lab’s Observatory. 

While the Lab aims to bring fresh news about novel approaches to different spheres of scholarly communication, we also wish to summarise and present highlights of important initiatives and projects that support innovation. 

Today’s topic is open access books, using this opportunity to introduce activities of the OPERAS Special Interest Groups (OA Business Models, Open Access Books Network) and projects (OPERAS-P, COPIM, Open Book Futures, PALOMERA) related to book publishing and the recently published ‘Collaborative models for OA book publishers’ white paper by the OPERAS Open Access Business Models Special Interest Group.

[…]

 

OPERAS welcomes Spain

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Welcome Spain

Please scroll down for the Spanish version: Desplácese hacia abajo para ver la versión en español

OPERAS is pleased to welcome two new members from Spain: the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) as new core member and the Spanish National Research Council State Agency (CSIC) as ordinary member. This is a very important step for OPERAS to extend the community to Spain. Together with Spain, OPERAS is now active in 22 countries.

The participation of Spain comes at a very interesting moment to align actions in favour of Open Science:

Pilar Rico-Castro (Head of the Unit for Open Access, Repositories and Academic Journals at FECYT):

FECYT is joining OPERAS as the national node for Spain. This will reinforce our role as public service providers for the diamond academic publishing system and open the door for all our research-performing organisations’ national community to join OPERAS as ordinary members. FECYT is a public entity depending on the Ministry for Science and Innovation that contributes to the design and implementation of the Open Science policies. We provide technical support, funding and certification services to our National academic publishing community, both journals and books, and to our institutional repositories. These include the ARCE service for the professionalisation of Spanish scientific journals, the biennial open call for scientific journals assessment, the annual call for collections of monographs assessment, the OJS-based open edition platform RECYT and our role in DIAMAS, which aims to create a European standard of good publishing practices. Becoming members of OPERAS will deeply benefit the implementation of the National Open Science Strategy based on sustainable, non-commercial and public-based digital infrastructures and will contribute to support the development of an ecosystem of science based on accessible, interoperable, and open scientific information. Besides, it will reinforce our public services’ internationalisation strategy set through our role in the EOSC Steering Board, the EOSC Association, OpenAIRE, LA Referencia and COAR.

Elea Giménez Toledo (Tenured Scientist at the Institute of Philosophy at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and Chair of the OPERAS Scientific Advisory Committee:

Joining OPERAS means for Spain a great opportunity to connect the scientific community of the Humanities and Social Sciences with the main lines of work in scholarly communication, scholarly publishing, open science, knowledge transfer, research evaluation or terminology. It will allow us to strengthen the internal debate on all issues affecting scholarly communication in the Humanities and Social Sciences and to put our projects and realities in contact with European ones.

Pierre Mounier (OPERAS Co-Coordinator):

Having FECYT and CSIC as new OPERAS members is of primary importance for us and the coronation of a long-term effort from multiple sides. The representation and the inclusion of Spain in the OPERAS community is particularly crucial for us: Spain is an essential part of European culture and knowledge production and has a strong tradition of high-quality scholarly publication in humanities and social sciences. The linguistic dimension of this cooperation is also essential as Spanish has a global scope that extends well beyond the limits of Europe. I want to sincerely thank Elea Gimenez Toledo and Pilar Rico Castro for their constant support all along the process and want to share with our Spanish colleagues from all parts of the country our enthusiasm and impatience to start collaborating with them to widen open access to knowledge in the humanities and social sciences.

OPERAS is glad to do this important step and welcome the Spanish community. Find more details about the new members below:

Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT)

The Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology, F.S.P. (FECYT), is a public foundation under the Ministry of Science and Innovation. Its mission is to catalyse the relationship between science and society, promoting the growth of Spanish scientific culture and fostering knowledge transfer through outreach, education, training, information, and advice. It collaborates with other agents and stakeholders in the Science, Technology, and Innovation System to internationalise Spanish science, generate and analyse data, and provide support in scientific information management and open science promotion.

Its vision is a society that actively engages with and benefits from a science-informed perspective within an open and inclusive Science, Technology, and Innovation System. This framework enables progress in critical thinking and personal and civic development.

Its values are: Collaboration, FECYT believes in creating value through strategic institutional partnerships, promoting cooperation, participation, and interdisciplinary teamwork; Innovation, FECYT works openly to identify and incorporate emerging trends, adapting to changes in our environment, and fostering a culture of innovation; Social commitment, FECYT is ethically committed to citizens, demonstrated through transparent management, citizen participation, gender equality, citizen education, promotion of scientific culture, and open and accessible science for all;  People-oriented, FECYT team is its most valuable asset, responsible for its achievements and outcomes; Excellence, through d continuous improvement for the best use of our resources and for increasing quality, allowing for more satisfactory results and generating new capabilities and skills; and Interdisciplinarity, FECYT form multidisciplinary teams to manage projects, with the ability to address actions from different professional areas.

Agencia Estatal Consejo Superior De Investigaciones Cientifícas (CSIC)

The Spanish National Research Council State Agency (CSIC) is the largest public research organisation in Spain, the fourth-largest public research institution in the European Union and the sixth in the world. Attached to the Ministry of Science and Innovation, with an independent legal personality, the CSIC plays a key role in scientific and technological policy in Spain and around the world. 

Its aim is the promotion, coordination, development and dissemination of multidisciplinary scientific and technological research to contribute to the advancement of knowledge and economic, social and cultural development, as well as the training of personnel and advice to public and private entities in these fields. 

The CSIC carries out research, innovation and training in all fields of knowledge – from the most basic or fundamental aspects of Science to the most complex technological developments – distributed in three global areas: Life, Society and Matter. These areas include human and social sciences, food science and technology, biology, biomedicine, physics, chemistry and materials, natural resources or agricultural sciences, among others.

For this purpose, it has more than 11,000 employees, of which almost 4,000 are research staff, distributed in its 121 research institutes throughout the Spanish territory, except the Spanish School of History and Archaeology in Rome (Italy). Of these, 69 are fully owned by the CSIC. Of the other 52, 50 are co-owned and two are associated centres, all in collaboration with other Spanish universities or research institutions. Additionally, it has three National Reference Centres (INIA, IGME and IEO).

In February 2021, the CSIC received the HR Excellence in Research logo, in recognition of the institution’s commitment to developing a human resources strategy for researchers, to reinforce its alignment with the Charter & Code principles.

Spanish version:

OPERAS da la bienvenida a España

OPERAS se complace en dar la bienvenida a dos nuevos miembros de España: la Fundación Española para la Ciencia y Tecnología F.S.P. (FECYT) como nuevo miembro principal y al Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) como miembro ordinario. Se trata de un paso muy importante para que OPERAS extienda su comunidad a España.Con la adhesión de España, OPERAS está presente ya en 22 países.

La participación de España llega en un momento muy interesante para alinear acciones a favor de la Ciencia Abierta:

  • La reciente publicación en España de la Estrategia Nacional de Ciencia Abierta.           
  • Las recientes reformas legales de la Ley de la Ciencia, la Tecnología y la Innovación en 2022 y de la Ley Orgánica de Universidades en 2023, a favor de la Ciencia Abierta.
  • El papel protagonista de FECYT en el proyecto Developing Institutional Open Access Publishing Models to Advance Scholarly Communication (DIAMAS), la primera iniciativa financiada por el programa narco Horizon Europe que aborda nuevos modelos de publicación académica .
  • El proyecto especial del Gobierno de España con fondos europeos de recuperación PERTE Nueva economía del lenguaje, cuyos motores están directamente relacionados con los grupos de trabajo y acciones de OPERAS.
  • Las iniciativas a favor de la reforma de la evaluación de la investigación y el debate sobre modelos editoriales más sostenibles.
  • La Presidencia española del Consejo de la Unión Europea en el segundo semestre de 2023.

Pilar Rico-Castro (Jefa de la Unidad de Acceso Abierto, Repositorios y Revistas Académicas de FECYT):

FECYT se incorpora a OPERAS como nodo nacional para España. Esto reforzará nuestro papel como proveedores de servicios públicos para el sistema de publicación académica diamante y abrirá la puerta a que toda la comunidad nacional de instituciones de investigación pueda unirse a OPERAS en calidad de miembros ordinarios. FECYT es una entidad del sector público estatal, dependiente del Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, que contribuye al diseño e implementación de las políticas de Ciencia Abierta. Prestamos servicios de apoyo técnico, financiación y certificación a la comunidad de edición académica nacional, tanto de revistas como de libros, y a los repositorios institucionales de acceso abierto. Entre ellos destacan el servicio ARCE para la profesionalización de las revistas científicas españolas, la convocatoria bienal de evaluación de revistas científicas, la convocatoria anual de evaluación de colecciones de monografías, la plataforma de edición abierta RECYT basada en OJS y nuestro papel en DIAMAS, a través del cual colaboramos en crear un estándar europeo de buenas prácticas editoriales. Convertirnos en miembros de OPERAS beneficiará profundamente a la implementación efecyiva de la Estrategia Nacional de Ciencia Abierta, basada en infraestructuras digitales públicas, sostenibles y no comerciales y contribuirá a apoyar el desarrollo de un ecosistema de ciencia basado en información científica accesible, interoperable y abierta. Además, reforzará la estrategia de internacionalización de nuestros servicios públicos establecida a través de nuestro papel en el EOSC Steering Board, la Asociación EOSC, OpenAIRE, LA Referencia y COAR.

Elea Giménez Toledo (Científica Titular del Instituto de Filosofía del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) y Presidenta del Comité Científico  de OPERAS:

La adhesión a OPERAS supone para España una gran oportunidad para conectar a la comunidad científica de Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales con las principales líneas de trabajo en comunicación académica, publicación académica, ciencia abierta, transferencia de conocimiento, evaluación de la investigación o terminología. Nos permitirá reforzar el debate interno sobre todas las cuestiones que afectan a la comunicación académica en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales y poner en contacto nuestros proyectos y realidades con los europeos.

Pierre Mounier (Co-Coordinador de OPERAS):

Contar con la FECYT y el CSIC como nuevos miembros de OPERAS es de suma importancia para nosotros y la coronación de un esfuerzo a largo plazo desde múltiples frentes. La representación y la inclusión de España en la comunidad OPERAS es especialmente crucial para nosotros: España es una parte esencial de la cultura europea y de la producción de conocimiento, y tiene una fuerte tradición de publicaciones académicas de alta calidad en humanidades y ciencias sociales. La dimensión lingüística de esta cooperación también es esencial, ya que el español tiene un alcance global que se extiende mucho más allá de los límites de Europa. Quiero agradecer sinceramente a Elea Giménez Toledo y a Pilar Rico Castro su apoyo constante a lo largo de todo el proceso y deseo compartir con nuestros colegas españoles de todas las partes del país nuestro entusiasmo e impaciencia por empezar a colaborar con ellos para ampliar el acceso abierto al conocimiento en humanidades y ciencias sociales.

La Fundación Española para la Ciencia y Tecnología, F.S.P. (FECYT)

La Fundación Española para la Ciencia y Tecnología, F.S.P. (FECYT) es una fundación pública dependiente del Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación. Su misión es catalizar la relación entre ciencia y sociedad, promoviendo el crecimiento de la cultura científica española y fomentando la transferencia de conocimiento a través de la divulgación, la educación, la formación, la información y el asesoramiento. Colabora con otros agentes y actores del Sistema de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación para la internacionalización de la ciencia española, la generación y análisis de datos y el apoyo en la gestión de la información científica y la promoción de la ciencia abierta.

Su visión es una sociedad que participa activamente y se beneficia de una perspectiva informada por la ciencia dentro de un Sistema de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación abierto e inclusivo. Este marco permite avanzar en el pensamiento crítico y el desarrollo personal y cívico.

Sus valores son: Colaboración, FECYT cree en la creación de valor a través de alianzas institucionales estratégicas, promoviendo la cooperación, la participación y el trabajo en equipo interdisciplinar; Innovación, FECYT trabaja abiertamente para identificar e incorporar tendencias emergentes, adaptándose a los cambios de nuestro entorno y fomentando una cultura de innovación; Compromiso social, FECYT está éticamente comprometida con los ciudadanos, demostrado a través de una gestión transparente, la participación ciudadana, la igualdad de género, la educación ciudadana, la promoción de la cultura científica, y la ciencia abierta y accesible para todos; Centrada en las personas, el equipo de FECYT es su activo más valioso, responsable de sus logros y resultados; Excelencia, a través de dinámicas de mejora continua que optimicen los recursos e incrementen la calidad, permitiendo obtener resultados más satisfactorios y generar nuevas capacidades y habilidades; e Interdisciplinariedad, FECYT forma equipos multidisciplinares para la gestión de proyectos, con capacidad para abordar actuaciones desde diferentes ámbitos profesionales.

El Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) 

El Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) es la mayor institución pública dedicada a la investigación en España y una de las primeras de Europa. Adscrita al Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, su objetivo es la promoción, coordinación, desarrollo y difusión de la investigación científica y tecnológica multidisciplinar para contribuir al avance del conocimiento y al desarrollo económico, social y cultural; así como la formación de personal y el asesoramiento a entidades públicas y privadas en estos campos. Su actividad científica se desarrolla a través de dos estructuras fundamentales: los institutos de investigación y los centros nacionales. Actualmente, el CSIC cuenta con más de 13.000 trabajadores en 121 institutos de investigación distribuidos por todo el territorio nacional, a excepción de la Escuela Española de Historia y Arqueología de Roma (Italia); de los cuales 69 son de titularidad propia, 50 mixtos y dos asociados. Asimismo, existen tres centros nacionales (INIA, IGME e IEO).

EU Funding

OPERAS welcomes EU Council Conclusions ‘supporting diversity and ensuring equity in scholarly publishing’

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EU Council May 23

The Council of the European Union adopted on May 23 conclusions on the ‘high quality, transparent, open, trustworthy and equitable scholarly publishing’, in which it calls for immediate and unrestricted Open Access in publishing research involving public funds (Council conclusion).

OPERAS welcomes this official positioning of the council on diversity and equity in publishing academic results and the emphasis on:

that immediate and unrestricted open access should be the norm in publishing research involving public funds, with transparent pricing commensurate with the publication services and where costs are not covered by individual authors or readers

(Council conclusion p. 5)

The OPERAS Research Infrastructure aims to make Open Science a reality for research in the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) and achieve a scholarly communication system where knowledge produced in the SSH benefits researchers, academics, students and more generally the whole society across Europe and worldwide, without barriers.

To express our compliance with and pleasure about the conclusions we participate in a joint statement:

Open Science: stakeholders welcome European efforts towards publicly owned and not-for-profit scholarly communication

For European public research and innovation actors, scholarly knowledge is a public good. Publicly funded research and its results should be immediately and openly available to all without barriers such as subscription fees or paywalls. This is essential in driving knowledge forward, promoting innovation and tackling social issues.

Key representative organisations of the public research and innovation sector have welcomed today’s adoption of the ‘Council conclusions on high-quality, transparent, open, trustworthy, and equitable scholarly publishing’.

In a joint response, the signatories urge EU member states and institutions to continue their efforts towards a high-quality, transparent, open, trustworthy and equitable scholarly communication ecosystem, through stakeholder engagement, constructive dialogue with the public research and innovation sector, and with evidence-based reforms underpinned by the principles of open science.

Signatories include the European University Association (EUA), Science Europe, the Association of European Research Libraries (LIBER), the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities (ALLEA), the Association of ERC Grantees (AERG), the Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA), the European Council of Doctoral Candidates and Junior Researchers (Eurodoc), cOAlition S, OPERAS, and the French National Research Agency (ANR).

The public research and innovation sector is actively pursuing a not-for-profit scholarly communication ecosystem. Notable examples, among other initiatives, include: backing for not-for-profit open access publishing models (e.g. the Action Plan for Diamond Open Access); demand for more dependable and comparable data on the state of scholarly communication (e.g. the Journal Comparison Service); and emphasis on infrastructure development (e.g. OPERAS).

As such, the statement welcomes the Council of the EU’s encouragement of initiatives that align with the objective of developing a not-for-profit scholarly communication ecosystem and reiterates the signatories’ commitment to launch activities that will further engage their members in shaping the future of scholarly communication.

Joint statement

And OPERAS is especially delighted about the mentioning of Open Access books in the conclusions, a topic OPERAS has advocated for since its beginning:

ACKNOWLEDGES that publishing practices vary across disciplines, and EMPHASISES that some publication formats, such as monographs, books and long-text formats, especially in the social sciences and humanities, should continue to be supported, while promoting open access publishing and allowing for a diverse range of formats to co-exist, and for publishing in a range of languages

(Council conclusion p. 5)

The OPERAS Research Infrastructure develops services to directly support researchers, publishers, scholarly communication service providers and more on this path to publicly owned and not-for-profit scholarly communication. 

Besides the services catalogue OPERAS supports three EU-funded projects supporting community-driven pathways to equitable open scholarly publishing. OPERAS participates in CRAFT-OA and coordinates Diamas and PALOMERA. Despite their separate focus areas, together their efforts work towards a broad and common vision for a more open and equitable scholarly publishing ecosystem.

Join us on 20th June at 1 PM CEST to learn how three EU-funded projects – CRAFT-OA, DIAMAS, and PALOMERA – are working for an equitable future for scholarly communication, with academic communities at the centre.

In the webinar, you will be introduced to each project and their individual aims. Following this, the discussion will focus on how, despite their separate focus areas, their efforts work towards a broad and common vision for a more open and equitable scholarly publishing ecosystem.

CRAFT-OA empowers regional journal platforms and publishing service providers to upscale, professionalise, and reach stronger interoperability with other scientific information systems, by providing services and tools.

The DIAMAS project is developing common standards, guidelines and practices to build capacity for the Diamond publishing sector. Formulating recommendations of this kind aims to create a more sustainable future for Open Access Diamond Publishing in Europe.

PALOMERA has set out to provide actionable recommendations and concrete resources to support and coordinate aligned funder and institutional policies for Open Access books. Doing so involves assessing challenges and bottlenecks that currently slow the widespread implementation of Open Access book policy.

Advancing a publicly owned and not-for-profit scholarly communication ecosystem based on the principles of open science

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“Joint response by the European University Association (EUA), Science Europe, Association of European Research Libraries (LIBER), European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities (ALLEA), Association of ERC Grantees (AERG), Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA), European Council of Doctoral Candidates and Junior Researchers (Eurodoc), cOAlition S, OPERAS, and French National Research Agency (ANR). We welcome the adoption by the Council of the European Union (EU) of the conclusions on highquality, transparent, open, trustworthy, and equitable scholarly publishing. As key public research and innovation actors in Europe, we are committed to supporting the development of a publicly owned, not-for-profit scholarly communication ecosystem in collaboration with policymakers in Europe and beyond….”

Job: Project manager | OPERAS

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Job Summary

The Project Manager works closely with the Secretary General for the daily implementation and management of the OPERAS’ projects portfolio. The Project Manager will be primarily in charge of OPERAS’ coordinated projects and, on demand, support the coordination of OPERAS’ contribution to participated projects. The main tasks and responsibilities are centred around the day-to-day administration of the consortium, the monitoring of the resources, the development and implementation of the quality and risk management plans and consist of:

Leading preparation of the contractual documentation: grant agreement and consortium agreement;
Supporting the technical or scientific coordinator and the project boards (General Assembly, Project management boards), organising the meetings and writing minutes;
Implementing the consortium progress monitoring;
Coordinating, supervising and submitting the EU periodic reports (financial and technical);
Managing the project budget, distribution of the prefinancing, redistribution of budget in case of amendment;
Set up the necessary procedure for quality and risk management (only for coordinated projects);
Organising the EC review(s) in liaison with the project boards members;
Representing OPERAS vis à vis the EU project officer.

The Project Manager will also contribute to developing the project proposals and set up the Grant Agreement to launch project proposals granted. The Project Manager will be responsible for maintaining and evolving the project management processes as part of the Integrated Management System.

 

Collaborative models for OA book publishers (Version 2.0) | Zenodo

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B?aszczy?ska, Marta, Melinš?ak Zlodi, Iva, Morka, Agata, Proudman, Vanessa, & Stone, Graham. (2023). Collaborative models for OA book publishers (Version 2.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7780754

Given the dynamic rate of change in the OA books business models landscape, the OPERAS Open Access Business Models Special Interest Group launched a survey in 2021 to 1) improve our understanding of the scholarly publishing landscape and of the challenges that publishers face in the context of publishing OA monographs; and 2) to identify main trends (including opportunities and challenges) and the knowledge of collaborative funding and infrastructure models in OA publishing in Social Science and the Humanities. This white paper updates and expands an earlier version published in 2021, which presented the preliminary analysis of the findings.

Despite a small sample of presses meaning that no strong trends ought to be discussed, several insights were drawn and should be considered important directions for the future. Key findings in the report have been grouped into three main areas: collaboration, funding, and support.

The report found that, although not opposed to the idea, a majority of presses do not engage in collaboration, specifically collaborative models for shared infrastructure, mainly due to the lack of knowledge and information, or perceived lack of need. This indicates that, for OA books, we are still at the early stage of the adoption curve for collaborative shared infrastructure.

In terms of funding, most publishers perceive themselves to be somewhat sustainable. For institutional publishers, parent organisations are crucial as providers of financial or non-monetary support of OA. In addition, most publishers stress the need to have more resources and rely on more than one funding source, including grants and subsidies.

The report found that awareness-raising and targeted support and training could be used to engage the presses but further incentivisation may be required to encourage publishers to collaborate more widely.

We believe that the insights from this white paper may be interesting to a number of projects, such as DIAMAS, OPERAS-PLUS, and Palomera and have presented areas for further research and more specific actionable points for these projects.

 

£5.8 million funding to significantly expand and accelerate COPIM open access infrastructures | Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM)

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The Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs project (COPIM) is delighted that Arcadia and the Research England Development (RED) Fund are supporting a new initiative that will build on the pioneering work of the COPIM project.

The Open Book Futures project (OBF), led by Lancaster University, will significantly expand key infrastructures created by COPIM to achieve a step change in how community-owned Open Access (OA) book publishing is delivered.

Open Book Futures will follow the principles of ‘Scaling Small’ that guided the work of the COPIM project, further developing the infrastructures, business models, networks and resources that are needed to deliver a future for Open Access books led not by large commercial operations, but by communities of scholars, small-to-medium-sized publishers, not-for-profit infrastructure providers, and scholarly libraries.

Among its activities, OBF will deepen and accelerate the work of:

the recently launched Open Book Collective, which makes it easier for academic libraries to provide direct financial support to small- and medium-sized OA publishing initiatives;

the Thoth metadata management and dissemination platform;

the Opening the Future revenue model;

the forthcoming Experimental Publishing Compendium; 

the forthcoming Thoth Archiving Network.

Open Book Futures, which will run from 1 May 2023 to 30 April 2026, will increase COPIM’s long-term impact and ensure that a wide range of voices have the opportunity to shape the future of open access book publishing. In order to amplify bibliodiverse and equitable community-led approaches to OA book publishing, OBF aims not just to strengthen existing networks in the UK and North America, but also to engage further with publishers, universities, and infrastructure providers in a diverse set of national and linguistic contexts, including Africa, Australasia, Continental Europe, and Latin America.

With that in mind, OBF will reunite many of the COPIM project partners, including Birkbeck, University of London, Coventry University, Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB), Jisc, Loughborough University, Open Book Collective (OBC), Open Book Publishers (OBP), punctum books, Thoth, and Trinity College, Cambridge University, and they will also be joined by a wide range of new partners including Continental Platform/University of Cape Town, the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative (COKI), the Digital Preservation Coalition, the Educopia Institute, Knowledge Futures, Lyrasis, OPERAS, Public Knowledge Project (PKP), Research Libraries UK (RLUK), SciELO Books, Scottish Universities Press/SCURL, and SPARC Europe. The project is also supported by Lancaster University Library.

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£5.8 million project to deliver a more sustainable future for Open Access books | Lancaster University

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A new project that works to increase access to valuable research is to receive more than £5.8 million in funding.

Led by Lancaster University, the Open Book Futures (OBF) project will develop and support organisations, tools and practices that enable both academics and the wider public to make more and better use of books published on an Open Access basis. Open Access books can be accessed and used online free of charge.

In particular, the project, which is also supported by Lancaster University Library, aims to achieve a step change in how community-owned Open Access book publishing is delivered.

Funded by Arcadia and the Research England Development (RED) Fund, the project marks a shift in the ambition, scope and impact of community-owned Open Access book publishing.

It will significantly increase and improve the quantity, discoverability, preservation and accessibility of academic content freely and easily available to all.

This will be done by building the infrastructures, business models, networks and resources that are needed to deliver a future for Open Access books led not by large commercial operations but by communities of scholars, small-to-medium-sized publishers, not-for-profit infrastructure providers, and scholarly libraries.

This includes expanding the work of the recently launched Open Book Collective, which makes it easier for academic libraries to provide direct financial support to Open Access publishing initiatives, as well as the Thoth metadata management platform, the Opening the Future revenue model and the forthcoming Experimental Publishing Compendium.

Open Book Futures, due to start on May 1st, builds on the pioneering work of the Community-Led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM) project. COPIM, a strategic international partnership led by Coventry University, began the work of establishing the key open, community-led solutions required to address the barriers to the wider impact of Open Access books.

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