Continuous improvement of services and achievement of performance targets have contributed to a strong usage of the site, especially by ERC funded researchers. ERC grant holders are some of the most active users, when compared to all other funders of the project. This not only shows the relevance and importance of this infrastructure to the wider research community, but also points to Europe PMC being a valued tool for ERC funded researchers to comply with ERC’s open access strategy.
Moreover, this project is working towards leading and supporting the development of open publication workflows. By the end of the project, it is expected preprints will be made more discoverable and more integrated into Europe PMC. This development has several potential impacts. Firstly, it enables Europe PMC to support existing policies on preprints and rapid publications that both the ERC and other current or future funders have in place. Additionally, it strengthens the view of preprints being perceived as a first class-research object, thereby encouraging researchers to publish preprints. Ultimately, the wider publication and discoverability of preprints may have wider societal and socio-economic implications, streamlining the research pipeline and producing more accurate, applicable results.
Integration of open access literature with information found in major research outputs such as data, software, authors, grants, and institutions will yield several expected results. For example, introduction of institutional identifiers (RORs) into grant data can lead to the integration of institutional persistent identifiers into publications in the future. Europe PMC has developed a workstream, focusing on text-mining RORIDs from article XML and therefore adding RORIDs as structured article metadata. This is expected to benefit ERC grant holders who currently hold an ERC Horizon Europe grant and are recommended to include institutional persistent identifiers as part of their article metadata requirements.
This project was specifically designed to facilitate the ERC’s open access strategy; thus, an expected impact is an increase in the level of compliance with the ERC's Open Access Guidelines for researchers funded by the ERC in the life sciences. The ERC’s approach to Open Access has wide-reaching societal implications, and significant potential socio-economic impact. Its smooth implementation, via Europe PMC, is an important factor in achieving its maximum impact.
