Product Overview: OpenAIRE
OpenAIRE is a comprehensive European project dedicated to supporting the Open Science movement by establishing an open and sustainable scholarly communication infrastructure. Here’s a detailed look at what OpenAIRE does and its key features:
Purpose and Scope
OpenAIRE aims to promote and facilitate Open Science practices by providing a technical infrastructure that gathers, manages, and makes research findings accessible. It serves researchers, project managers, repository managers, funders, and content providers across Europe and beyond.
Key Features and Functionality
Integrated Scientific Information
OpenAIRE integrates publication, dataset, and project information from various data providers, presenting them in a unified platform. This allows for easy access and linking of research outputs associated with specific funders, projects, or content providers.
Training and Support
The platform offers training sessions and support on all subjects related to Open Science and Open Science policy. This includes workshops, webinars, and the dissemination of training materials to help researchers adopt Open Science practices.
Data Management and Curation
OpenAIRE employs advanced data curation mechanisms, including automated and semi-automated processes for data ingestion, normalization, de-duplication, and enrichment. It uses the D-NET software to manage and link diverse data sources, ensuring high-quality metadata and provenance information.
Metadata Exchange and Content Discovery
The platform enables the exchange of metadata and content amongst data providers, facilitating the discovery of Open Science outputs per project, funder, and data provider. This is supported by guidelines for repository managers to improve the discoverability of research output and meet Open Access requirements.
Monitoring and Reporting
OpenAIRE provides tools for monitoring trends in Open Access to research data and publications. It offers reporting mechanisms for research output per institution and funder, allowing for easy project reporting by linking dissemination activities to research funding.
Open Science Helpdesk and Community Support
The platform includes an Open Science helpdesk and a pan-European network of 34 National Open Access Desks (NOADs), which comprise local Open Science experts. These experts work to develop and implement Open Access and Open Science policies at national and international levels.
Repository and Data Services
OpenAIRE supports various repositories, including the general-purpose repository Zenodo. It also integrates with other services like ORCID, enabling researchers to identify and add their works to their ORCID records efficiently through the OpenAIRE EXPLORE discovery service.
Usage Statistics and Analytics
The platform offers a usage counts service using the Matomo Open Source Analytics platform. This service provides reliable, comparable statistics for repository items, including bot filtering and standardized API access for third-party reuse.
OpenAIRE Research Graph
At the core of OpenAIRE is the OpenAIRE Research Graph, which interlinks over 124 million publications, 1 million research data, and 78,000 research software items with researchers, their organizations, funding agencies, and specific research communities. This graph facilitates a comprehensive and interconnected view of the research ecosystem.
Future Directions
OpenAIRE is continually evolving, with plans to expand its services through initiatives like Open Science as a Service (OSaaS). This will involve synergistic efforts from multiple organizations to define guidelines and enhance the exchange of metadata across all scientific fields, further promoting social and technological ease in scholarly communication.