OPERAS and PKP join forces to launch “European Community in SSH” Forum

OPERAS, the Research Infrastructure supporting open scholarly communication in the social sciences and humanities in the European Research Area, and the Public Knowledge Project (PKP), the multi-university initiative that develops open source software to support scholarly communication and OPERAS international member, have joined forces to launch an open forum for the European social sciences and humanities (SSH) community. It offers the opportunity to discuss and exchange ideas, information and experiences on open scholarly communication topics.

The OPERAS Forum is hosted at the PKP Forum under the Regional Networks category and is called “European Community in SSH”. It aims to bring together stakeholders involved in various capacities in the scholarly communication process, such as publishers, editors, publishing platform managers, or reviewers and researchers to stimulate  dialogue. They are invited to discuss the transition process to open scholarly communication, their experiences and the extent to which these are common to other communities and the challenges they might be facing during this process. The Forum also seeks to focus (among others) on innovative initiatives in publishing practices and the prospects of the scholarly communication process. The Forum is open to everyone involved or interested in scholarly communication, not only to OPERAS community members or European stakeholders. 

Currently, there are two topics open: Business Models where colleagues from Serbia have shared their experiences from the use of publishing platforms and their tools, and Networking where colleagues from Germany present the setting up of OPERAS national node. In both cases, members seek to learn more from the experiences of other stakeholders. Other topic are also welcome, as a key element of the Forum is a top-down approach where the topics are suggested by the community rather than the forum moderators. 

The “European Community in SSH” is moderated by the National Documentation Centre/EKT (Greece) on behalf of OPERAS. For more information please contact Marina Angelaki (mangelaki(a)ekt.gr).

The OPERAS research infrastructure

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. 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 of society across Europe and worldwide, without barriers.

PKP International Initiative

The PKP is an international non-profit initiative which aims to improve the quality of scientific publications and promote Open Access to results of publicly funded research. Its key action is developing open software platforms for the conversion of scientific journals to electronic form, with Open Access to their content. The Public Knowledge Project was established in 1998 at the University of British Columbia. Since that time PKP has expanded and evolved into an international and virtual operation with two institutional anchors at Stanford University and Simon Fraser University Library.

Two of the software platforms available are OJS – Open Journal Systems for journals and OMP – Open Monograph Press for books, both of which EKT ePublishing uses. Open Journal Systems (OJS) is an open source software made feely available to journals worldwide for the purpose of making Open Access publishing a viable option, and intensifying impact on and contribution to the dissemination of knowledge on a global scale.