Open Science is around the corner. Scientists and organizations see it as a way to speed up, improve quality and reward, while policy makers see it as a means to optimize cost of science and leverage innovation. Open Science is an emerging vision, a way of thinking, whose challenges always gaze beyond its actual achievements. De facto, today’s scientific communication ecosystem lacks tools and practices to allow researchers to fully embrace Open Science. OpenAIRE-Connect aims to provide technological and social bridges, and deliver services enabling uniform exchange of research artefacts (literature, data, and methods), with semantic links between them, across research communities and content providers in scientific communication. It will introduce and implement the concept of Open Science as a Service (OSaaS) on top of the existing OpenAIRE infrastructure, delivering out-of-the-box, on-demand deployable tools. OpenAIRE-Connect will adopt an end-user driven approach (via the involvement of 5 prominent research communities), and enrich the portfolio of OpenAIRE infrastructure production services with a Research Community Dashboard Service and a Catch-All Notification Broker Service. The first will offer publishing, interlinking, packaging functionalities to enable them to share and re-use their research artifacts (introducing “methods, e.g. data,software, protocols). This effort, supported by the harvesting and mining “intelligence” of the OpenAIRE infrastructure, will provide communities with the content and tools they need to effectively evaluate and reproduce science. OpenAIRE-Connect will combine dissemination and training with OpenAIRE’s powerful NOAD network engaging research communities and content providers in adopting such services. These combined actions will bring immediate and long-term benefits to scholarly communication stakeholders by affecting the way research results are disseminated, exchanged, evaluated, and re-used.

Under the new 72-month GN5 Framework Partnership Agreement in Horizon Europe (GN5-FPA), this proposal responds to Horizon Europe Call HORIZON-INFRA-2021-NET-01-SGA-2 (Work Programme ’21-22 Other Actions: 2. SGA for investments on International connectivity and collaboration), received 1 February 2022. GN5-IC1 sets out a new plan and implementation for the first phase of a new intercontinental connectivity investment programme, meeting the huge growth in network capacity demands and leading the network through a paradigm shift in the digital science and computational infrastructures in the next 10 to 15 years. It builds on the successful and relevant experience in planning and procuring and introducing into operation direct intercontinental links, such as BELLA S1, as well as a number of other existing bilateral and reciprocal arrangements for operational links negotiated with other intercontinental partners. This project will help ensure sufficient capacity is put in place through procurements and implementations of links during the project term or through setting a roadmap for future investments beyond this timeframe. The GÉANT Consortium has a long established and successful track record in securing long-term intercontinental network connectivity, interconnecting with an increasing number of gateways in the network, in co-ordination with global peers. Applying proven skills and expertise, GÉANT is well placed to maximise the value of the links to be procured, with innovative contracts and to secure reciprocal global peering contributions to increase the impact of the resources available in GN5-IC1.