OPERAS and CESSDA sign a Memorandum of Understanding to cooperate in joint activities

The OPERAS RI (Open Scholarly Communication in the European Research Area for Social Sciences and Humanities) and CESSDA ERIC – the Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives – have recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to collaborate and enhance mutual interactions, further synergies, and share expertise and know-how in all areas of commons interest. Both infrastructures are glad to intensify collaboration in the coming years. 

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 society across Europe and worldwide, without barriers.

CESSDA provides large-scale, integrated and sustainable data services to the social sciences. It brings together social science data archives across Europe, with the aim of promoting the results of social science research and supporting national and international research and cooperation.

With the MoU, OPERAS and CESSDA agree to combine their efforts in six main areas:

1. Training and learning, for joint training courses in areas of mutual interest; 
2. Communication and dissemination, to improve the communication of the collaboration results to the research community, data experts, Open Access publishers, funders (national governments and the EU), the general public, and other stakeholders of interest. 
3. CESSDA Data Catalogue, with joint efforts to add more relevant thematic datasets for the social sciences. Researchers can find OPERAS data relevant to their searches, metadata, and procedures for gaining accreditation and access. 
4. Impact and benefits, so that joint or aligned policies and practices can capture the benefits of the research projects enabled by data access.
5. European Open Science Cloud (EOSC): both OPERAS and CESSDA agree to work together in tackling challenges and related aspects of social sciences and humanities research infrastructures in Europe.
6. GoTriple platform – OPERAS and CESSDA are both involved in the development of the GoTriple platform, the discovery service of OPERAS, and they agree to support the service depending on their role and implication.

The MoU has a three-year duration, with automatic renewal, until dissolution.

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