OPERAS is the European Research Infrastructure for the development of open scholarly communication in the social sciences and humanities.
Definition and Mission
OPERAS is the Research Infrastructure supporting open scholarly communication in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) in the European Research Area. Its mission is to coordinate and federate resources in Europe to efficiently address the scholarly communication needs of European researchers in the field of SSH.
Vision
OPERAS’ aim is to make Open Science a reality for research in the SSH and achieve a scholarly communication system where knowledge produced in the SSH benefits researchers, academics, students and more generally the whole society across Europe and worldwide, without barriers.
Value Proposition: Why OPERAS is needed
The European landscape of scholarly communication in the SSH is currently patchy, fragmented and not organized enough to be efficient, particularly to address the challenge of transitioning to Open Science. This is due to several factors, such as the small size of resource providers, the historical underfunding and lack of sustainability in this area, the variety of technical skills and resources across the community. The nature of the SSH disciplines also adds specific challenges which are not correctly addressed at scale, such as the diversity of publication languages, the entrenchment in diverse cultural backgrounds and the need for specific forms of scholarly communication (monographs, critical editions, and edited bibliographies, amongst others).
By fulfilling its mission, OPERAS provides the research community with the missing brick it needs to find, access, create, edit, disseminate and easily and efficiently validate SSH outputs across Europe. In one word, OPERAS unlocks scholarly communication resources and enables the whole field to reinvent itself in the new Open Science paradigm.