OPERAS infrastructure launches new Open Access-related projects and services

The launch of three new projects in January 2023, the definitive release of new services, a new visual identity and the arrival of new members are some of the news from the OPERAS infrastructure in its first newsletter of this year. The University of Coimbra is one of the members of OPERAS' Executive Assembly, being the representative institution of Portugal and the leader of one of its Special Interest Groups, in the area of Multilingualism.

The UC integrates two of the three projects launched in January: CRAFT-OA and PALOMERA. While PALOMERA focuses on harmonising policies that encourage Open Access books, CRAFT-OA will provide a sound technical infrastructure to support Diamond Open Access publishing - when no fees are charged to authors and readers. In addition to the two projects mentioned above, GraspOS is the third project integrated by OPERAS and started last January, dedicated to supporting and enabling policy reforms for research evaluation.

In this text, OPERAS co-coordinator Pierre Mounier explains the importance of the Open Access and Open Access Diamond projects. Together with the DIAMAS project, OPERAS is now collaborating on two projects that support the Diamond Open Access model, which is strategically important for the infrastructure – helping to achieve its goal of unlocking scholarly communication resources and enabling the entire field of Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) to reinvent itself in the new Open Science paradigm.

Services in their final version – The OPERAS infrastructure has recently made two services available in their final version: the discovery platform for the Social Sciences and Humanities, GoTriple, and the Peer Review Information Service for Monographs (PRISM). The former helps researchers, editors, librarians, journalists and all stakeholders in the SSH field to discover publications, projects and researcher profiles in a multilingual and multicultural way, as well as offering innovative services for annotation, visualisation, collaborative funding and a social network that aims to stimulate collaboration. PRISM, in turn, provides transparency about peer review processes, helping to build trust in the publication of Open Access scholarly books.

New members and community activities – OPERAS has just welcomed two new members: the University of Abertay as an ordinary member and UK's first university; and ERIH PLUS as a new core member, bringing a new country to OPERAS' two leading decision-making councils. After the Arctic University of Norway, ERIH PLUS is the second member from Norway to join OPERAS.

More updates from the OPERAS community can be checked in the full newsletter, published last Friday, March 3rd, and available at this link. Check out upcoming events, updates on ongoing projects and reading tips, audio and videos produced by the members of the community.

Read the full newsletter.