OPERAS community joins initiatives to support Social Sciences and Humanities in Ukraine

The OPERAS consortium released, on Monday 14, its statement on initiatives and measures to support the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) community in Ukraine. The statement brings together initiatives and practical measures to support the preservation of the country's cultural and research infrastructures. With the declaration, the OPERAS community underlines its recognition of the central role of SSH research in strengthening democracies by promoting fundamental human values and fostering equality, inclusion and diversity.

In this context, the main objectives of the OPERAS community are: to support the preservation of the cultural and scientific heritage of Ukrainian society; to sustain Ukrainian scholarly communication and scholarly publishing; to strengthen collaboration between the SSH community of EU and Ukrainian researchers, and to facilitate the integration of research outputs from Ukraine into the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).

Relating to these objectives, OPERAS lists four sets of support measures. Firstly, the TRIPLE project (one of the dedicated services of the OPERAS infrastructure) intends to add Ukrainian scholarly content to the GoTriple platform, collecting numerous scientific resources in SSH. Through this activity, OPERAS aims to explore different possibilities and opportunities for data collection and cooperation with Ukraine's scientific institutions, as well as data and metadata providers.

Secondly, OPERAS will actively contact Ukrainian institutions, scholarly publishers and scholarly journals to find out how to best support them in preserving their data and scientific content.

Thirdly, through its Research for Society service, the OPERAS consortium is exploring possibilities to help Ukrainian researchers engage in resilience-building activities with their citizens, employing public humanities approaches.

Finally, the OPERAS community is engaged in and supports ongoing initiatives targeting the Ukrainian SSH community:

1. ScienceForUkraine - a platform collecting support opportunities for Ukrainian academics and students affected by war.

2. SUCHO - Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online - an initiative archiving important cultural heritage material available online.

Community engagement

The OPERAS consortium invites all its members to actively contribute to these efforts and to work on support programmes in their own institutions and communities. The OPERAS community believes that through joint efforts of the European academic community, cooperation with Ukrainian colleagues will not only be sustained through the conflict but will effectively become stronger.

The University of Coimbra, as a member of the Executive Assembly of OPERAS and a member of the TRIPLE project, joins these initiatives and invites its academic community to contribute to them.