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Sources and methodology

OpenAIRE builds an open scholarly graph of research products (publications, datasets, software and other types of research products), linked to each other and to fundings, projects and organizations. The information used to build the graph is collected from the OpenAIRE network of trusted content providers and is inferred by OpenAIRE algorithms.

The trusted content providers of OpenAIRE include a network of more than 1K institutional and thematic repositories, national and regional aggregators, research data archives, journals and publishers (Crossref and DOAJ included), Microsoft Academic Graph, Unpaywall, ORCID. Information about projects, organisations and data sources are collected from trusted registries of the open scholarly communication landscape: re3data, OpenDOAR, DOAJ, grid.ac, national and international funders.

OpenAIRE algorithms are capable of detecting duplicates and mining information from the full-texts of Open Access publications, like links to funding projects, affiliations, links to datasets and much more.

For more details about the construction of the graph, please check here.

Thanks to the OpenAIRE Research Community Dashboard, the BE OPEN consortium released thisOpen Research Gateway on Transport Research to offer dedicated services to the stakeholders in the field of Transport research. The gateway is a single-entry point to all research products relevant in the domain of Transport Research available in the OpenAIRE Research Graph.The content available in the gateway is identified by a set of criteria specified by “community curators”, members of the BE OPEN consortium who are experts in the domain and aware of the needs of the community:

  • List of relevant projects: all research outcomes funded by the selected projects are included in the gateway. You can check the list of selected projects at Search --> Projects
  • List of relevant content providers (aka data sources): all research outcomes available from the selected sources are included in the gateway. You can check the list of selected sources at Search --> Content Providers. The BE OPEN consortium also asked the inclusion of datasets published by the EU JRC. They will be included soon: the integration of metadata from the European Union Open Data Portal is ongoing.
  • List of relevant subjects/keywords: all research outcomes with at least one of the selected subject terms in the subject/keywords metadata are included in the gateway. The list of keywords has been initially created from the top terms of the "Glossary for Transport Statistics 5th edition" co-published by Eurostat, UN, and ITF, and then expanded to include discipline-specific recurring terms used in the metadata records that OpenAIRE collects from its sources. You can check the list of the selected subjects/keywords at About --> Subjects
  • List of relevant Zenodo communities: the BE OPEN consortium created a Zenodo community where contributions in every field of transport research are accepted. All the contributions available there are automatically included in the gateway. In addition, curators identified a number of other relevant Zenodo communities in the domain whose content is also automatically included in the gateway. For the list of selected Zenodo communities, go to Deposit and click on"Use Related Zenodo Communities".

Finally, the relevance for the community is "automatically propagated" from one research outcome to another, if they are linked with a "strong semantic relationship" of type "is supplement to/is supplemented by".

Is there something our configured algorithm missed? Use our Link functionality to claim that a research result is relevant to your community.

For additional details, you can read the deliverable D3.2 TOPOS development (section about the TOPOS Observatory for organisations) available on the BE OPEN project web site.

How can I get and re-use the data available in the gateway?

The OpenAIRE Research Graph and its sub parts are Open Access resources with a CC-BY license.

Depending on your use case you may want to get a dump of the research products available in this gateway:

  • Dumps for research communities and infrastructures: DOI(look for the Transport_Research.tar file). Best use case: bulk consumption of all products of the community (e.g. for analysis, statistics, intersection with other datasets). Check out the documentation page to learn more about all the different dumps produced by OpenAIRE.
  • Search API, using the parameter community=beopen to get only the research products available in the gateway. Best use case: selective access to research products with queries that are expected to return a limited set of results(e.g. all community products funded by the European Commission; all research products published after a given date). Check out the documentation page to learn more about the OpenAIRE HTTP Search API.
How to join OpenAIRE with your data source

Read the guide on how your data source (e.g. repository, journal, archive, CRIS) can comply with the OpenAIRE guidelines. According to the OpenAIRE Content Acquisition policies, any source providing metadata records about research products is welcome in the OpenAIRE network!

Register the data source with the OpenAIRE PROVIDE Dashboardand discover all services offered for free by OpenAIRE to become a building block of the Open Research community and the European Open Science Cloud.

Let us know if you are a thematic source for this community writing an email to rcd-helpdesk at openaire.eu. If the data source manages objects of different domains, those that are relevant for this community will be automatically identified thanks to the criteria described above. If this does not happen, then contact us at rcd-helpdesk at openaire.eu and help us fine tuning the OpenAIRE algorithms!

How to suggest a thematic data source

Write an email to rcd-helpdesk at openaire.eu to suggest a thematic data source for this community. The gateway curators and the OpenAIRE team will get in touch with the responsible organisation and will guide them in the integration process.

Should the data be published elsewhere (e.g. journals, conferences) before it can appear in the gateway?

Yes, in order for something to be findable in the gateway, it must be available on a trusted content provider. The DEPOSIT functionality of the gateway allows users to discover which are those trusted providers that can be used for deposition. In addition, easy access to domain specific Zenodo communities that users can choose to deposit research products of any type and let them automatically discoverable via the gateway is provided.

Can I find resources in different languages?

Yes, OpenAIRE aggregates metadata records of research products of different countries and different languages. You can find publications written in many languages. Accompanying metadata is usually provided in English. Given the internationality of the research community, it is suggested to include metadata in English also when depositing on Zenodo.

The gateway itself is not multi-lingual and, although users can perform searches using terms in any language, the back-end technology that implements the search is configured to work best with English.