Back to the future: Modernizing European repositories for the era of Open Science

Abstract Open Science is ushering in a new paradigm for research; one in which all researchers have unprecedented access to the full corpus of research for analysis, text and data mining, and other novel research methods. A prerequisite for achieving this vision, in a sustainable, equitable and innovative way, is a strong and well-functioning network of repositories that provides human and machine access to the wide range of valuable research outputs. Repositories also support much needed bibliodiversity in the system as they collect a diverse range of content types, domains and languages, and are fundamental for achieving Europe’s desired changes to research evaluation, whereby “assessment of research, researchers and research organisations recognises the diverse outputs, practices and activities that maximise the quality and impact of research”. With the exciting new functionalities being introduced through the COAR Notify Project - such as linking repository resources with peer review services - repositories are poised to take on an even more expansive role in the scholarly communications landscape, including being part of the diamond OA publishing ecosystem. Repositories, in particular, can play a key role in an innovative new model of publishing, referred to “Publish-Review-Curate”, which requires that authors first post a preprint of their article in an open access repository in order to be considered for peer review and publishing. Europe has one of the most well-developed networks globally with hundreds of repositories, many of which are hosted by libraries. Indeed, 20 years after their introduction as key open access infrastructures, institutional repositories have become a standard service offering for academic libraries in Europe, with the aim of making the research outputs created by their faculty widely available. However, there are significant variations across the European repository landscape with differing levels of support and funding; and, while some countries have strong national coordination, others do not. In a practical sense, this means that some repositories have access to the resources they need to provide a well-functioning service, while others find it a challenge to maintain up-to-date software platforms and suitable staffing levels. In January 2023, OpenAIRE, LIBER, SPARC Europe, and COAR launched a joint strategy aimed at strengthening the European repository network. Through this strategy the organizations will work together - and with other relevant organisations - to develop and execute an action plan that will reinforce and enhance repositories in Europe, helping them to take on this new and expanded role in the ecosystem. As a first step, a survey will be undertaken to gain a better understanding of the current repository landscape in Europe and identify priority areas of action. The survey will be disseminated in February 2023 with the aim of having the initial results available in May of 2023. This presentation will provide an overview of our future vision for repositories in Europe, present the results of the survey, and discuss next steps for how we can progress from the current position towards our future vision