OPERAS aims to establish a distributed e-infrastructure for open access publishing in the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) across Europe. The principal goal of the OPERAS initiative/network is to coordinate university-led publishing activities in Europe in the SSH with a view to enable Open Science as the standard practice, with particular reference to publishing research. OPERAS will coordinate services, practices and technology between the main actors in the SSH scholarly communications in Europe in order: to provide joint services; to improve the accessibility and dissemination of publications in the SSH through a single access point; to coordinate activities of strategic actors and stakeholders (research institutions, libraries, platforms, publishers, funders) in their transition to open science, and in particular open access publishing; to develop common good practice standards for digital open access publishing, infrastructures, services, editorial qualities, business models and funding streams, and explore alternative measurements of impact in the SSH; offer sustained training, embodying common standards, to researchers on all of the above. Publishing in the SSH has always taken place primarily outside the corporate publisher environment and OPERAS will provide the opportunity to unite the fragmentary university-led publishing ecosystem in the SSH in Europe to the benefit of research and society. The OPERAS e-infrastructure initiative, for which the proposed project OPERAS-D lays the groundwork, is complementary to the activities for open access through repositories funded by the member states and the European Commission, and will become embedded in these initiatives and in the European Open Science Cloud. The ultimate effect of this will be to boost the visibility of publishing in the social sciences and the humanities, to improve the capacity of service providers in terms of high quality services to shared standards, and to help the research institutions and researchers move to practices aligned to the Open Science paradigm.
Why is it important for society?
Research in humanities and social sciences have a direct impact on society : they help understand major social issues and find solutions to overcome them. Publications in those disciplines can benefit directly to the different socio-economic actors to improve their practices, anticipate future trends or overcome challenges everytime a cultural or social context is involved. Unfortunately, most of the publications in humanities and social sciences are not open access or, if they are, not easily discoverable for the lay reader. Therefore, an important part of the knowledge produced by publicly funded research remains unknown or inaccessible to the society because of technical and organizational barriers. OPERAS mission is very important to unlock or unlatch knowledge and make it effectively used outside academia.
What are the overall objectives?
The Operas-d goals are a) to support the 5 main partners (“core group”) of the OPERAS network in the development of a new European e-infrastructure for open access publishing in the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH). b) to address long-term requirements (roadmap) for the development of the e-infrastructure and community building, as well as seek to expand to include other interested parties within and beyond Europe, and in diverse fields of the SSH.
To achieve this goal the operas-d objectives are :
1. Carry out research and gather specific information through various means (research, workshops and surveys) such that will inform the formulation of a strategy and a roadmap for the proposed e-infrastructure OPERAS.
2. Develop services and the business and governance model of the OPERAS e-infrastructure
3. Develop a design study that will define the technical requirements, business and governance model, services and long-term sustainability plans for the future e-infrastructure of OPERAS, as well as the roadmap for the implementation of the e-infrastructure
4. Engage the current partners of the OPERAS network and enlarge the network by bringing in more partners that will share similar standards, policies, practices, this enabling the institutional publishing environment in Europe
5. Develop a solid communication and dissemination strategy and plan and make sure project outputs are openly accessible as widely as possible, also to the citizens.
