Open Research Europe: An Update

" In October 2023 the European Commission announced F1000 had been awarded a second contract for the ongoing technology and publishing services for ORE. This second contract included taking steps towards supporting multilingual publishing and enhancing the interoperability of the platform with OpenAIRE. Progress has already started under this new contract as authors are now able to submit their abstracts in additional languages, in addition to the English abstract. These additional language abstracts are displayed on the site alongside the English abstract. This increases the discoverability of the content by allowing research papers to be searched for and found in other languages, as well as allowing the abstract to be read in other languages.

As well as these exciting developments, the eligibility criteria of the platform have also expanded. The platform is currently now open to submissions from all European Commission Framework Programmes in the Multiannual Framework Programme regarding their original peer-reviewed publications. Additionally, peer-reviewed publications produced by Commission staff and staff at European Union agencies are also eligible for publication on ORE. This reinforces the position of the European Commission as a funder that leads by example in operationalising open science and enlarging it to a wider range of beneficiaries. Find out more about the eligibility criteria expansion here.

Thinking longer term, the European Commission is working to expand the eligibility criteria even further. The ambition is for ORE to be a top quality, trusted collective open access publishing service for the public good. It should be collectively owned and supported by research funders and research institutions and operate as a service for researchers with no author facing fees. The aim is for the infrastructure of the platform to be open source and for the publishing service to be without eligibility barriers. To achieve this, conversations are ongoing between the European Commission and other national funders to finalise the vision and principles, put together a roadmap and explore not-for-profit business models and governance structures that might work...."