The OPERAS-PL development strategy for local open scholarly communication

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7557/5.6650

Keywords:

open scholarly communication, humanities, social sciences, research infrastructure, open access sustainability models

Abstract

OPERAS is a European consortium-based research infrastructure for the social sciences and humanities (SSH). It has been established as an non-commercial initiative aimed at transforming the European research area of scholarly communication and therefore it is targeted at researchers, librarians, publishers and infrastructure providers in over a dozen of European countries. This rich and diverse group of stakeholders is the key to OPERAS’s success. The proposed poster will discuss this leading idea on the example of the OPERAS-PL – the Polish national node of the infrastructure.

Maintenance of infrastructures, or simply speaking: digital tools and services facilitating scholarly communication, is certainly one of the biggest challenges from the economic point of view (Edmond, 2020). However, the other challenging aspect is actually making truly useful, used and vivid tools, adjusting to stakeholders’ needs and fulfilling them (Anderson, 2013; van Zundert, 2012). One of OPERAS’s strategic plans for this to happen is the network of national nodes established in each of the partner countries (Consortium OPERAS, 2022). The nodes’ primary goal is to disseminate OPERAS services, attract users and involve new partners. However, their mission should be perceived wider. As national points of contact they actually may become the levers of the whole infrastructure’s development and perseverance – similarly to DARIAH-EU (the Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities) whose sustainability relies precisely on its scattered and bottom-up structure (Edmond, 2020)

Our poster presents the development strategy for the Polish National Node OPERAS-PL, along with its mission, primary goals and milestones, targeted audiences, funding scheme, management methods and tools and risk mitigation. The strategy is analysed as a scalable model for similar initiatives which strive to enhance open scholarly practices in their respective communities. The poster builds on the recently launched project funded by the Polish Ministry of Education and Science and introduces two pilot research pursuits aiming at recognising the needs of the Polish SSH communities. The first pilot will study academic publishers’ needs in the field of open access. Through a design thinking technique we will recognise their needs and create a sustainability model for open access book publishing that will accomodate the specificity of Polish stakeholders. The second one will examine the potential of digital monographs as equivalent to traditional monographs in the Polish academic evaluation system. We will use our infrastructure for digital editions and adapt it to address the needs of book authors and publishers. The results of the pilots will be disseminated in the coming years at the Munin Conference on Scholarly Publishing and other events.

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Author Biographies

Magdalena Wnuk, Institute of Literary Research at Polish Academy of Sciences

Magdalena Wnuk, PhD, academic researcher, policy analyst, project manager. Currently as an Open Science Specialist at IBL PAN she is involved in open scholarly communication projects of OPERAS research infrastructure for social sciences and humanities. Her research interests concern migration, ethnicity, European integration, anthropology of policy and open science. In her studies she uses interdisciplinary approach and combines different methods of analysis and sources, like various administration data, personal documents and interviews.

Marta Świetlik, Institute of Literary Research at the Polish academy of Sciences

Marta Świetlik is a UX researcher, art curator, PhD student. Currently employed as a specialist in Digital Humanities Centre at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences, where she is involved in designing digital infrastructure for DARIAH-PL and scientific community building of digital humanities. In her dissertation, she develops innovative research on the usefulness of art exhibitions, combining cultural studies tools and UX design methodologies. More: www.marta.swietlik.pl

References

Anderson, S. (2013). What are Research Infrastructures? Edinburgh University Press, https://doi.org/10.3366/ijhac.2013.0078

Consortium OPERAS (2022). OPERAS Annual Report 2021. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6618693

Edmond, J. (Ed.). (2020). Digital Technology and the Practices of Humanities Research. Open Book Publishers, https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0192

Van Zundert, J. (2012). If You Build It, Will We Come? Large Scale Digital Infrastructures as a Dead End for Digital Humanities. Historical Social Research, 37(3). https://doi.org/10.12759/HSR.37.2012.3.165-186

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Published

2022-11-14

How to Cite

Wnuk, M., & Świetlik, M. (2022). The OPERAS-PL development strategy for local open scholarly communication. Septentrio Conference Series, (1). https://doi.org/10.7557/5.6650