Meet the family. Open infrastructure group to collaborate with the view to exchange knowledge and build an Open Science Infrastructure Community of Practice.

SCOSS has successfully supported three pledging rounds to date, helping to gather over 4.5 million euros for Open Science Infrastructures. Since the launch of our Pilot cycle, the group of SCOSS-supported […]

The post Meet the family. Open infrastructure group to collaborate with the view to exchange knowledge and build an Open Science Infrastructure Community of Practice. appeared first on SPARC Europe.

National Policies relevant to EOSC deployment – Workshop Report | Zenodo

Carrillo, Rob, Giuffrida, Maria, & Drago, Federico. (2022). National Policies relevant to EOSC deployment – Workshop Report. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6584214

Abstract: On 4 May 2022, EOSC Synergy, together with EOSC-Pillar, EOSC Nordic, ExPaNDS, NI4OS-Europe, EOSC Future and FAIRsFAIR held a workshop, ‘National Policies Relevant to EOSC Deployment: Status, gaps, and steps towards harmonisation’ in Strasbourg.

During the workshop, the findings of the regional EOSC projects on national open science, funding, and access provisioning policies were presented. The workshop was timely as it was organised within the last year of the regional EOSC projects. The workshop was also organised right after the EOSC Policy Event organised by EOSC Future in collaboration with the European Commission, the EOSC Association, the EOSC Steering Board and the University of Strasbourg which tackled the same topic but more on a European policy level and context.

Ludek Matyska, EOSC Synergy opened the event and welcomed more than 100 online and on-site participants.
At the opening, he stressed the importance of implementing EOSC at all levels and having a proper geographical
coverage, which is one of the main themes of the event.

Workshop themes

Open Science and EOSC National Policies
Funding policies
Access Provisioning Policies

UNBIND: Reimagining the academic monograph – CRASSH

“The monograph, or the scholarly book, is today the dominant form of knowledge production in the humanities. But can there exist a more imaginative, creative, or performative alternative? Can we unbind the monograph and transform it into something that resists the marketisation and privatisation of public knowledge? Something that engages robustly with open platforms and public infrastructures?

Cambridge Digital Humanities invites monograph-writers, publishing scholars, publishers, editors, and open access activists for a day-long conversation on the future of the monograph form….”

Monitoring progress towards Open Science as the new norm: First results from the EOSC Observatory

“Monitoring National Contributions to the EOSC

• Understand to what extent open science policies and practices are progressively implemented

• Assess and deepen understanding of the positive impacts brought by these policies and practices.

• Mutual learning through more data, in-depth discussions and matchmaking of policies, strategies and best practices

• Next iteration: extended survey including all open science elements and content …”

Results of the 3rd Annual SSP Professional Skills Survey and the Updated Professional Skills Map

The SSP Career Development Committee’s Professional Skills Map is in its third iteration, and the results are presented here. The Skills Map aims to guide scholarly publishing professionals across industries and career levels in recognizing their personal strengths and interpersonal and technical skills, and then map those skill sets to fitting roles across the industry, empowering them to advance in their current roles and explore potential career paths they may not have previously considered.

The post Results of the 3rd Annual SSP Professional Skills Survey and the Updated Professional Skills Map appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.

OpenAIRE is present at the Open Repositories Conference 2022 – OpenAIRE Blog

“The 17th International Conference on Open Repositories to be held face-to-face in Denver, Colorado, USA, from 6th to 9th June 2022, will have the participation of OpenAIRE with several presentations.

This conference is the most relevant events for the repository community around the world, in which the most relevant Digital libraries initiatives and and Open Access infrastructures are present to showcase and share their services and developments to support the uptake and development of Open Access repositories. It is a place where repository managers and repository networks can share and discover the most recent and upcoming services developments as well to develop synergies among participants and initiatives.

OpenAIRE will attend this conference, as in recent editions, to present and share its services and new developments that are contributing to develop the Open Science ecosystem. We will highlight the following services targeting repository managers: PROVIDE and Broker service….”

Handbook of Research on the Global View of Open Access and Scholarly Communications | IGI Global

Handbook of Research on the Global View of Open Access and Scholarly Communications

Daniel Gelaw Alemneh (University of North Texas, USA)

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-9805-4

ISBN13: 9781799898054|ISBN10: 1799898059|EISBN13: 9781799898078

Funding Information: This book is being published under Platinum Open Access through IGI Global’s Transformative Open Access Initiative with University of North Texas, USA.

Description:

In an information and knowledge society, access to information and knowledge is a basic human right, making equitable and fair access to information and knowledge paramount. Open Access (OA) plays a huge role in addressing inequities as well as broad-based and inclusive scientific progress. On the surface, the number of publications discussing OA issues from various angles are on the rise. However, what is missing is a comprehensive assessment of the extent of OA implementation and a discussion of how to proceed in integrating OA issues from various perspectives.

The Handbook of Research on the Global View of Open Access and Scholarly Communications articulates OA concepts and issues while demystifying the state-of-the-art knowledge domain in the areas of OA and scholarly communications from diverse perspectives as well as implications for the information and knowledge society. Covering topics such as ethics, copyright challenges, and open access initiatives, this book is a dynamic resource for publishers, librarians, higher education administrators, policymakers, students and educators of higher education, researchers, and academicians.

 

Open science practices in general and internal medicine journals, an observational study | PLOS ONE

As part of the Open Science movement, this study aims to analyze the current state of open access and open data policies concerning the availability of articles and raw data of the journals belonging to the category “Medicine, General & Internal” of the Science Citation Index Expanded.

OPERAS’ Assembly of the Commons

In classical governance schemes, there is a separation of powers that leads funders and policy-making authorities to discuss and make decisions on their side with no or just indirect consultation of the community. We, at OPERAS, did not want that. The OPERAS AISBL governance scheme traverses the different layers of the organization, such as management, strategy, policy, and support. Furthermore, it establishes the levels of engagement of the different types of stakeholders in the development of the OPERAS Research Infrastructure. 

The Assembly of the Commons (AoC) is one of OPERAS’ governance bodies and it gathers all Ordinary Members of the infrastructure. It is convened at least once a year and the OPERAS’ second Assembly of the Commons took place virtually on May 11th, 2022 from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM CET. It had a double objective of discussing the work completed in the Special Interest Groups over the course of the previous year and electing the two representatives of the OPERAS community: Vanessa Proudman and Mark Huskisson.

You can find more information about the meeting, the vision and the representatives below.

Participants of the Assembly of the Commons (May 11, 2022)

Pierre Mounier, OPERAS’ coordinator, opened the Assembly of the Commons by giving a short overview of the meaning of the AoC and its place in the governance of OPERAS.

As a multi-stakeholder organization, OPERAS is governed through several assemblies that represent the diversity of stakeholders engaged in their development. The Executive Assembly (EA) gathers the core members of OPERAS. These are the organizations that are more committed than others to the development of the infrastructure, and they are responsible for (1) organizing their national communities, (2) leading the Special Interest Groups, and (3) taking the decisions related to OPERAS on a monthly basis. The General Assembly (GA) gathers the national authorities such as the ministries and research communities and the supporting members. It convenes once a year and approves the budget and global strategy of the infrastructure. The Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) advises us on scientific matters. The Coordination Team (OCT) manages the infrastructure on a daily basis.

The Assembly of the Commons (AoC) represents the community in its entirety and gathers all Ordinary Members. At the same time, the AoC is the addition of all the Special Interest Groups and their participants. We named the AoC as such in reference to the theory of Elinor Oström. According to her, goods are better governed collectively by a community than individually as private property. Those goods that are better governed as commons are some material goods such as forests, fisheries, and grazing lands, but also immaterial goods such as knowledge and its infrastructure. Therefore, we see the AoC as the assembly of all those people who take care of the tools, services, and platforms, and have the know-how that enables product sharing and knowledge dissemination.

After this highlight on the importance of the Commons for the infrastructure, the participants of the meeting had the opportunity to choose their delegates. The two candidates, Vanessa Proudman and Mark Huskisson, introduced themselves and engaged in a debate with the participants.

Vanessa Proudman is Director of SPARC Europe with 20 years of program management experience in facilitating access to knowledge in Europe and advocating for change to increase more equitable access to knowledge. 

Over the years her focus has been on Open Access, Open Science, Open Culture, and Open Education working with many leading universities and libraries worldwide. Research and knowledge exchange are her vehicles to inform, connect and advocate for change in these areas. Her focus has been to increase Open international, national and regional policy-making and practice in Higher Education in Europe. She has extensive experience in setting policy with a view to put this into action whilst connecting the specificities of policymaking with OS practitioners and vice versa to ensure effective OS implementation. Creating a more level-playing field in Europe to enable more equal opportunities to engage in Open Science and Open Education is also key to her work. By gaining an understanding of the needs of the research and OS support community through research activities and knowledge exchange, Vanessa Proudman will seek to ensure that an evidence-based approach is used to support the SSH community on its road to making open the default. 

Mark Huskisson is responsible for Business Development at the Public Knowledge Project (PKP), the developer and stewards of OJS, OMP, and OPS. PKP develops open-source software systems that manage the complete scholarly publishing workflow for journals, monographs, and preprints, and conducting scholarly communication research on questions of open access and open science.

Having worked in academic and scholarly publishing for thirty years, Mark Huskisson has developed and nurtured a collaborative and supportive network in commercial publishing houses, libraries, learned societies, and the rapidly growing scholarly communication technology ecosystem. Working at the nexus of the huge PKP community gives insight into the challenges and huge opportunities available to the open community if successful collaboration and sustainable pathways can be identified and secured. This new post offers a strategic benefit for learning and knowledge exchange between the OPERAS network and global OJS community.

During the debate, the candidates answered some questions from the community:

How do you see OPERAS in the open access landscape? (Pierre Mounier, OPERAS)

What is really unique about OPERAS is that it is a comprehensive and interconnected infrastructure community for the SSH, which does not exist in such a form for other subject domains. This is a great strength. OPERAS can and needs to inform the broader OA community and its decision-makers about the importance of the SSH domain so that we don’t dance to the tune of STEM and larger commercial publishers. There’s a lot of diversity and innovation in scholarly communications going on in this domain. And OPERAS can concretely demonstrate this to the whole community by presenting the work done by its various Special Interest Groups.

Vanessa Proudman

How do you see the European landscape? (Pierre Mounier, OPERAS)

There are a number of challenges across the continent and one is that there is not a single Europe in terms of access and ability to participate in academic publishing due to a number of barriers that the OPERAS Interest Groups are tackling. With large publishers dictating the narrative toward profit and focusing primarily on the wealthier, more powerful economies, the commercial STM sector has often defined models and development within the community despite the needs and demands – and often to the detriment – of SSH researchers and longform research outputs. So, to identify sustainable pathways in SSH across Europe, we need a more coordinated response to the OA challenge that is specific and tailored to research and publishing in the humanities and social sciences. And whilst there has been a huge development of open access and open science initiatives across the continent, they are often undertaken in national, regional, or commercial contexts. OPERAS offers a way to connect and coalesce the energy and drive of these initiatives, continually informed by the working groups (SIGs) to potential enormous effect.

Mark Huskisson

Regarding the multilingual dimensions of SSH, how might we defend and promote this dimension in OPERAS? (Olivier Bouin, RFIEA)

I have an international background and personally do not value any language over another. I believe that it is important to ensure that we share our knowledge in different languages particularly to embrace and respect the wide cultural and multilingual offering in Europe . In SPARC Europe, we created a tool that was translated into 16 languages by the community. Within OPERAS, perhaps we could create such multilingual resources, too.

Vanessa Proudman

What’s your vision about OA books in the global landscape? (Agata Morka, Sparc Europe)

I spent many years working with monographs in publishing and with leading libraries around the world and – as we transitioned from print to electronic media – the expereinces learned with Journals transitioning more easily and rapidly to digital influenced and determined the conversation around books. Even though the cases and contexts were not entirely analogous. And this has slowed the ability to foster and nurture a succesful and flourishing OA book ecosystem. One core challenge, which OPERAS members are solving and improving, is discovery and it is important for SSH in Europe and beyond that we share learning and solutions for the community and society as a whole. To bring a cohesive solution for different organizations that deal with OA books.

Mark Huskisson

The election counted with the participation of 23 organizations-member. Each organization voted once and anonymously. They could vote for both candidates, for one of them or for neither. With 83.33% and 54.17% of votes, respectively, Vanessa Proudman and Mark Huskisson became co-chairs of OPERAS’ Assembly of the Commons. Besides chairing the AoC during their 2-year mandate, the representatives shall also participate in the General Assembly once a year to represent the voice of the community. Otherwise, the General Assembly is composed of representatives of national councils and ministries of the European Countries and supporting members.

During the second part of the AoC, the leaders of the different Special Interest Groups presented the work done and some perspectives for the future.

  • Advocacy

Sona Arasteh (MWS), leader of this SIG, explained the meaning of advocacy, focusing on how it is a broader concept than lobbying. This SIG works as a kind of mediator, advocating for other SIGs. Currently, the group is advocating for the Tools and Platforms SIG.

  • Best Practices

The Best Practices SIG, led by Jadranka Stojanovski Zadar University), is currently working on a White Paper that will focus on the following topics: diamond journals, repositories altering scholarly publishing (preprints), research data in SSH, editorial and publishing policies, peer review, metadata quality, rights and licensing, research assessment, accessibility, and usability.

  • Common Standards and FAIR Principles

Iraklis Katsaloulisfocus (EKT), leader of this SIG along with Haris Georgiadis (EKT), explained that focusing on Common Standards & FAIR Principles is important as it offers a framework for collaboration, convergence, and integration towards enabling interoperability in SSH. Regarding future perspectives, this SIG intends to act as a bridge between the technical and procedural aspects of open science.

  • Multilingualism  

Delfim Leão (University of Coimbra), leader of the Multilingualism SIG, focused on some challenges regarding this topic: perceive multilingualism as a strong manifestation of bibliodiversity in SSH; avoid the risk of turning English, broadly used as a lingua franca, into lingua unica in terms of scientific and scholarly communication; enhance balanced multilingualism in innovative solutions. On the horizon, this SIG plans to achieve a full design and feasibility study to support the development of a translation service for OPERAS.

  • Open Access books Network

OABN is a new OPERAS SIG coordinated by Agata Morka (Sparc Europe), Lucy Barnes (Open Book Publishers), and Tom Mosterd (OAPEN/DOAB). The SIG advocates for open access book publishing, collates news, views, and developments specifically relevant to OA books, and connects a global community in the form of blogs, events, workshops, and other activities.

  • Open Access Business Models

 Graham Stones (Jisc) and Frank Manista (Jsic) lead this SIG that is currently working on focusing on collaborative models in OA book publishing. The previous White Paper (2021) presented an initial analysis and early observations of the study. The next step is to produce an in-depth analysis (a new version of the White Paper). Future questions to be explored include a better understanding of the publishers who do not take part in collaborative funding models and identifying the recommendations for OPERAS and other stakeholders.

  • Tools and Platforms

Formerly called Tools Research and Development, this SIG is coordinated by Céline Bartonat (CNRS) and Arnauld Gingold (CNRS). The SIG has focused on defining tools according to their functions, users, and nature. It deals with challenging issues such as a variety of functions and usage, the diversity of contexts and users, and its dynamic and chaotic environment.

Following this presentation, the participants joined breakout sessions for each of the Special Interest Groups.


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UT in charge of three ‘Perspectief’ research programmes

Three out of seven new ‘Perspectief’ research programmes will be led by UT scientists. Detlef Lohse is the programme leader on reducing virus transmission through the air, Marcel Karperien is going to do reseach on diagnostics and treatment on arthrosis. And Ton van den Boogaard would like to include more scrap in the steel production process. In two other programmes, the University of Twente is partner as well. The grants are awarded at the TEKNOWLOGY innovation festival today.

Responding to Open Access Needs: The OBC Position | Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM)

We created the Open Book Collective (OBC) (described in more detailed here) as part of the COPIM project, which is all about researching, establishing, and meeting the needs of a more sustainable, equitable OA book landscape. COPIM is an international partnership of OA publishers, academic librarians and researchers committed to a sustainable, equitable and diverse future for OA books. All of our research outputs related to the development of the OBC, including details of the methods we used to reach our findings, can be found via the tags on this Pubpub site and at our Zenodo page.

In what follows, we provide a short distillation on our work, presenting some of the reasons why we believe that the OBC is needed, as well as looking at some of the ways it will address those needs.

 

Navigating Open scholarship for neurodivergent researchers | FORRT – Framework for Open and Reproducible Research Training

“We are a group of early-career neurotypical and neurodivergent researchers that are a part of the Framework of Open Reproducible Research and Training (FORRT) community, aiming to make academia and the open scholarship community more open to neurodiversity. Everyone, no matter what they identify with, is welcome in this group. We aim to discuss how open scholarship can be intersected with the neurodiversity movement, and emphasise how differences should be highlighted and accepted, whilst supporting the idea of accessibility. Our neurodiversity team is a group that currently consists of individuals that have autism, dyspraxia/DCD, speech-language differences, ADHD, dyslexia, or are neurotypical allies. If you have these or other neurominorities and wish to be part of the team, you are more than welcome to join!…

Discussions have been, however, scarce regarding not only how open scholarship can advance the neurodiverse movement, but also how it can benefit from it. It is thus a priority to build community to discuss how the neurodiversity movement can be included in open scholarship, as the lived experience of neurodivergent individuals (including encountered barriers) may help to enhance accessibility, allowing open scholarship to be truly open (Whitaker & Guest, 2020)….”