NEWS

OPERAS receives funding to develop and sustain
the infrastructure and its services

The OPERAS Research Infrastructure receives 2,7 million Euros by the European Commission to further develop and sustain the infrastructure and its services under Grant Agreement number 101079608. OPERAS is the Research Infrastructure dedicated to support open scholarly communication for the Social Sciences and the Humanities in the European Research Area (ERA). The OPERAS-PLUS project started on September 1, 2022 and gets funding from the Horizon Europe framework Infra-Dev in order to support new ESFRI research infrastructure projects in their preparatory phase.

OPERAS was selected in 2021 as new infrastructure on the ESFRI Roadmap for the excellence of its scientific case and for its strategic importance for the European Research Area and the structuring of the European research infrastructure ecosystem. OPERAS is now on its path to become operational as an ERIC in 2028.

The OPERAS-PLUS project aims at supporting this process and the development of the infrastructure in its preparatory phase and on its way towards implementation. It will empower OPERAS to further

• Strengthen its governance structure in regard to financial, legal and human resources
• Support the network of national nodes and their national activities
• Develop the services portfolio providing both required technology and a monitoring system for services development
• Maximise OPERAS’ impact in the ERA and at international level by extending it beyond its current scope and onboarding new members and countries in the infrastructure.

The body of work will stand in the continuity of work already realised in the former projects (OPERAS-D, OPERAS-P, HIRMEOS) and collaborate with the running projects COESO, TRIPLE, and DIAMAS, and soon with other projects to come in 2023.

The 3-years project has a consortium of 13 partners from 12 countries:

• Max Weber Stiftung – DE
• OPERAS – BE
• CNRS (OpenEdition and Huma-Num) – FR ? Affiliated partner: AMU – FR
• UniZd – HR
• IBL PAN – PL
• Coimbra University – PT
• OAPEN – NL
• Unito – IT
• EKT – EL
• Lexis – IT
• Net7 – IT
• ZRC SAZU – SI
• DARIAH ERIC – FR

And two associated partners from the United Kingdom: Jisc and Ubiquity Press. OPERAS-Plus is coordinated by Michael Kaiser, head of the department perspectivia.net, library and IT affairs at the headquarters of the Max Weber Stiftung (Bonn, Germany).

“In the past years OPERAS has developed amazingly. Now, OPERAS-PLUS gives us the chance to even improve the coordination of all our activities. And even increase the impact of OPERAS. Thereby we also can push forward, offering all our services to the EU countries”.

The Kick-Off will take place from 4 to 5 October, 2022 in Brussels.

More information soon: operas-eu.org/projects/operas-plus/