Read the National Pilot Interview from Greece and explore all the progress of OSTrails pilot studies. Check the latest on their national activities and learn how they’re progressing with the integration of open science and research assessment. This month we had the pleasure of speaking with Zisis Simaioforidis, Technical Coordinator, Theodora Karaiskou, Librarian and RDM Support Officer at HEAL-Link and Maria Kontopidi, associate at the Athena Research Center. Enjoy!

"The Greek pilot leverages the collaboration between OpenAIRE NOADs, Athena Research Center, and HEAL-Link—two organisations actively involved in shaping policies and enhancing infrastructure to support Open Science implementation in Greece. We are excited to contribute to standardising practices across the three phases of research, which will help us align more closely with the EOSC and create streamlined pathways between services, making it easier for researchers to manage and share all types of scientific information and research outputs."

 Elli Papadopoulou, Athena Research Center. 

-Can you briefly introduce your organisations? How do they contribute to EOSC?

The Greek pilot for OSTrails builds on the successful collaboration of OpenAIRE NOADs: Hellenic Academic Libraries (HEAL-Link) and Athena Research Center (ARC). The two organisations have been instrumental in advancing the Research Data Management (RDM) landscape in Greece towards more transparent and FAIR practices. Through their involvement in the Hellenic Open Science Initiative (HOSI), which published the National Open Science Plan in 2020, these organisations are actively implementing Open Science policies within their institutions and contribute to the Plan’s wider adoption by Greek research funders and institutions. OSTrails provides us with the opportunity to invest in FAIRifyng data and in management the planning of data activities and outputs, the latter supported by CITE SA.

HEAL-Link manages significant infrastructure projects such as HARDMIN, a federated data repository infrastructure that supports 15 Greek universities and serves as the academic backbone of HELIX, the Hellenic Data Service managed by ARC. These initiatives are designed to enhance the interoperability of Greek data repositories with the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) by integrating services such as Persistent Identifiers (PIDs) and machine-actionable DMPs (maDMPs). Furthermore, ARC is a member of the EOSC Association, a founding member of OpenAIRE that serves as a pillar infrastructure for EOSC, and recently has been coordinating the project that is building and deploying the EOSC EU Node.

Our work complements each other to ensure that Greece is well-integrated into the EOSC ecosystem, facilitating open and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) data practices across its regions and public sectors.

-What are you most excited about in OSTrails? What are you looking forward to?

As part of the Greek pilot, at HEAL-Link we are particularly enthusiastic about the opportunity to significantly enhance the adoption of FAIR principles within the national research ecosystem. The pilot is working on developing customised DMP templates that align with the specific needs of Greek institutions and national policies. These templates will be machine-actionable, allowing for greater automation in data management processes and improving the interoperability of Greek data services with the broader European infrastructure.

This project represents a critical step towards breaking down silos within the Greek research community, fostering better communication between researchers and data stewards, and aligning national practices with European standards. With ARC and CITE we share the prospect of culminating these efforts to shift the Greek research landscape into a FAIR-enabling and open research ecosystem.

-How is planning, tracking and assessing research being realised in your country?

In Greece, research planning, tracking, and assessment are guided by a combination of national policies and institutional frameworks. The National Open Science Plan, published by HOSI in 2020, serves as the foundation for Open Science practices across Greek institutions. Both of us, HEAL-Link and ARC, lead the developments of HOSI, guiding and supporting others in implementing these policies. This year, the General Secretariat for Research and Innovation included open access requirements in national calls of EREVNO KAINOTOMO, while similar provisions had been introduced in the past by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (ELIDEK).

At the university level of HEAL-Link, we perform research assessment by manually collecting and analysing data, primarily focusing on bibliometrics. At ARC we are developing tools for tracking and assessing research outputs, including a demo monitor for projects funded by the GSRI. ARC’s involvement in the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) and its participation in projects like GRASPOS further highlight its commitment to reforming the research assessment landscape in Greece.

The Greek pilot also plans to test and evaluate new methods and tools for research assessment, with a focus on aligning these practices with both national and European standards. This work will help ensure that Greece’s research ecosystem is not only compliant with Open Science principles but also competitive on the global stage.

-Can you provide some details on your pilot's main actors, services and priorities? How will your pilot adopt the results of OSTrails? 

The Greek pilot is spearheaded by HEAL-Link and ARC and supported by CITE SA, a key service provider in the Greek public sector. Our primary focus is to enhance the interoperability of Greek data repositories and enrich their metadata and semantics by utilising the OpenAIRE Graph as well as configure and connect them with tools to support FAIR data management planning and sharing. The services that will be employed for the pilot’s implementation are HARDMIN data repository infrastructure, ARGOS-GR DMP platform, and PID infrastructure.

 Key activities to be performed include the development of maDMP templates, the assessment of FAIRness in university repositories, and the implementation of policies that align with the National Open Science Plan.

The Greek pilot will co-develop and adopt the results of OSTrails by integrating them into the national research ecosystem. This involves our existing national and thematic data services to follow the interoperability frameworks for SKGs, DMPs and FAIR assessment delivered by the project so that their outputs are exchanged seamlessly and in an automated way. Moreover, we will configure maDMP templates to meet the specific needs of Greek institutions and funding bodies.

-Ongoing activities and Next Steps? 

Currently, the Greek pilot is in the preparatory phase of establishing the necessary technical infrastructure to support its objectives. This includes the development of suitable metrics for Research Data Management (RDM) and the assessment of data deposit policies within Greek universities. The pilot is also working on aligning its activities with the upcoming national policies that GSRI intends to implement, particularly concerning Open Access and DMPs in national project calls.

Next steps for the pilot include:

• Community Engagement to establish a community of stakeholders, including researchers, librarians, and data stewards, who will be involved in testing and refining the tools and services developed by the pilot.
• Cross-Pilot Collaboration within the OSTrails project to share best practices, align methodologies, and contribute to the overall success of the project.

To learn more about our Open Science efforts, visit also:

• OpenAIRE country page
• HEAL-Link
• HEAL-Link Scholarly Communication Unit

Read the National Pilot Interview from Serbia and explore all the progress of OSTrails pilot studies. Check the latest on their national activities and learn how they’re progressing with the integration of open science and research assessment. This month we had the pleasure of speaking with Obrad Vučkovac from the University of Belgrade, “Vinča” Institute of Nuclear Sciences - Library department. Enjoy!

 - Obrad Vučkovac

"The Serbian research ecosystem, particularly its funding bodies and policymakers, stands to benefit significantly from the OSTrails national pilot. One of the biggest challenges in advancing Open Science practices lies in the effective planning and assessment of research. The introduction of tailored, machine-actionable DMP templates, integrated with the national CRIS system and institutional repositories, alongside automated FAIR assessment tools, will enhance the quality and compliance of research outputs. These efforts are expected to strengthen Serbia's position within the EOSC and foster a more robust Open Science culture nationwide."

-Can you briefly introduce your organisation(s)? How does it/do they contribute to EOSC?

Established in 1808, the University of Belgrade is the oldest and largest higher education institution in Serbia and one of the leading academic institutions in South-East Europe and the Mediterranean region. Dedicated to promoting Open Science practices, the University of Belgrade embraced Serbia’s national Open Science policy in 2019 and is an active member of the EOSC Association. The University is actively participating in the OSTrails national pilot through its Computer Centre RCUB (in Serbian: Računarski centar Univerziteta u Beogradu) and the Library of the “Vinča” Institute of Nuclear Sciences. This initiative will involve collaboration with three additional RPOs to assess their institutional repositories and train their researchers. RCUB is the leading service provider of institutional repositories in Serbia, operating more than forty repositories. All RCUB’s repositories are designed in compliance with the OpenAIRE’s Guidelines and integrated with the OpenAIRE Research Graph. Several repositories were onboarded at the EOSC Marketplace. It serves as the OpenAIRE National Open Access Desk (NOAD) and has been involved in numerous Open Science projects and initiatives, including GEANT, BE-OPEN, OpenAIRE Advance, and NI4OS-Europe. The “Vinča” Institute of Nuclear Sciences’ Library represents the growing community of research librarians in Serbia, who have been active in managing institutional repositories and promoting Open Science practices, particularly in areas such as Research Data Management, FAIR and Open Data, and Open Access. Research librarians in Serbia are positioning themselves as leaders and advocates for Open Science by offering educational activities and providing research support to facilitate the publication of FAIR and open research results. Some of these initiatives have even been awarded through Horizon Europe-funded projects.

-What are you most excited about in OSTrails? What are you looking forward to?

The Serbian national pilot aims to address some of the current challenges researchers in Serbia face when practicing Open Science activities, particularly those mandated by the National Policy on Open Science and by the Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia, the national research funder. One pressing issue is the absence of a proper DMP template in the Science Fund’s research calls. The OSTrails national pilot aims to address this by developing a machine-actionable DMP template aligned with FAIR principles, enabling the Science Fund to better integrate and utilize DMPs in their workflows. Additionally, the pilot will address the need for a FAIR assessment tool, which is crucial for evaluating research outputs in line with the mandated FAIR principles. This tool is essential for fostering Open Science practices and ensuring that data, software, and research outputs align with the broader goal of integrating into EOSC. Projects and activities like this are expected to significantly influence researchers in adopting Open Science practices. This national pilot will address all current issues and fill the gaps necessary to fully embrace the culture of Open Science in Serbia.

-How is planning, tracking and assessing research being realised in your country/scientific domain?

The Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia mandates Data Management Plans (DMPs) but lacks a suitable template, leaving researchers without effective guidance. While previous initiatives, including those by the EOSC Secretariat, have promoted DMP culture and developed a template in Argos DMP platform, it remains vague and insufficiently tailored for specific disciplines, particularly in managing sensitive data. This national pilot will address these gaps by creating two machine-actionable DMP templates in Argos—one for Science Fund applicants and another for University of Belgrade PhD students—aligned with Science Europe’s guidelines and FAIR principles. Additionally, guidelines for manual DMP evaluation and a FAIR assessment tool will be integrated. By 2023, all research outputs in Serbia are tracked via the national CRIS, eNauka, which automatically aggregates outputs from institutional repositories, library OPAC catalogues, and CrossRef and researchers' ORCID. The planned deposition of DMP into institutional repositories through Argos and integration with other digital entities is expected to enhance overall data management practices by promoting greater transparency and usability of research outputs. Although both the national Open Science policy and the national research funder require adherence to FAIR principles for research data and outputs, there is currently no recommended or customized service for FAIR assessment. DMPs are evaluated manually, without clear guidelines on quality assessment or FAIR compliance. The existing national regulation for the assessment of research outputs primarily focuses on research articles, monographs, and similar publications, and does not adequately address the assessment of research data, software, or Open Science activities. The integration of automated FAIR assessment metrics, resulting from the OSTrails project, is expected to significantly improve the evaluation process, particularly in the project planning phase, by providing early insight into the compliance of research outputs with FAIR principles.

-Can you provide some details on your pilot's main actors, services and priorities? How will your pilot adopt the results of OSTrails? 

The implementation of Serbia's national Open Science policy in 2018 mandates that research funded by the Ministry be publicly accessible and deposited in trusted repositories. This policy led to the rapid establishment of institutional repositories across research institutions in Serbia, with the RCUB playing a crucial role in developing the infrastructure. RCUB-developed repositories feature clear policies, long-term preservation, and integration with the OpenAIRE Research Graph. Notably, the DAIS repository of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts received the Core Trust Seal certificate in 2022. RCUB's expertise in infrastructure design and standards has been crucial to building the national CRIS, eNauka, launched in 2023. The librarian community is familiar with the Argos platform for writing and publishing DMPs, thanks to an EOSC Secretariat-funded initiative in 2020 aimed at creating a model for local capacity building in research data management, tailored to the needs of non-EU Western Balkans countries. This project produced an initial DMP template for the Science Fund, complete with guidelines. As the main priority in the OSTrails national pilot, we will continue developing Argos by designing customized, machine-actionable DMP templates. Institutional repositories and the eNauka CRIS will be enhanced with new digital object types to accommodate machine-actionable DMPs and to integrate current repositories and machine-actionable DMP tools with the OpenAIRE Graph and other SKGs. The Serbian national pilot will also support the implementation of RDM policies, promote FAIR principles, and evaluate their application in digital objects.

-Ongoing activities and Next Steps? 

Though the national pilot officially begins in the 18th month of the OSTrails project, preparatory work is already underway. One of our key tasks is designing a machine-actionable DMP template for the national funder. We held an initial meeting with the Science Fund to present our ideas for the template and the evaluation guidelines, which received a positive response. 

Before the pilot’s official start, the following steps are planned:

a) Identifying research groups for assessing the DMP templates. 

b) Promoting the OSTrails project and our involvement in the national pilot at the “Open Science Days” conference, organized by the University of Belgrade in November 2024. 

c) Discussing the design of the DMP template for PhD students with the University representatives. 

We expect this national pilot to build on our previous efforts and significantly improve the adoption of FAIR principles and research practices in Serbia. A new national Open Science policy is forthcoming, which will cover more aspects of Open Science, such as Research Data Management, Open Data, Open Software and Hardware, and Open Infrastructures. The OSTrails project results are expected to significantly impact on the implementation of these new policies. By thoughtfully implementing machine-actionable and integrated DMPs in research processes, tracking and connecting research results with SKGs, and assessing digital objects for FAIRness, Serbian science could see substantial improvements in research support.

Read the National Pilot Interview from Austria and explore all the progress of OSTrails pilot studies. Check the latest on their national activities and learn how they’re progressing with the integration of open science and research assessment. This month we had the pleasure of speaking with Daniel Spichtinger and Victoria Eisenheld from the Univerisity of Vienna (UNI WIEN), Tomasz Miksa from the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) and Ilire Hasani-Mavriqi from the Graz University of Technology (TU Graz). Enjoy!

 "OSTrails provides the Austrian community with the means to further enhance the quality and interoperability of RDM services. Specifically, it helps us to digitally transform data management planning at TU Graz, TU Wien, Uni Wien, and AUSSDA by maximizing the uptake of maDMPs and the FAIR principles in Austria and thus benefiting researchers by lowering the effort involved in data management."

-Can you briefly introduce your organisation? How does it/do they contribute to EOSC? 

Three universities — TU Graz, TU Wien, and Uni Wien — collaborate to implement the Austrian national pilot. Each of these universities has significantly contributed to the EOSC:  

Uni Wien, member of the EOSC Association since 2020, is actively involved in several EOSC-related projects and task forces, both nationally and internationally, including major EU projects like EOSC BEYOND and EOSC Future. TU Wien has been engaged in EOSC from the early stages through its involvement in the EOSC Secretariat, participating in various EOSC projects and contributing to national initiatives. TU Graz is a member of the EOSC Focus project consortium that works towards aligning the technical development of EOSC. All three organisations are members of the EOSC Support Office Austria (the operational branch of the Austrian Mandated Organization of the EOSC Association). 

-What are you most excited about in OSTrails? What are you looking forward to? 

In OSTrails, we are looking forward to contributing to the Plan-Track-Assess framework components by considering several use cases in the pilot, with each organisation focusing on complementary aspects. Our common goal is to enhance DMP support, which we aim to achieve through extending, aligning and integrating DMP tools, enhancing DMP support to researchers, supporting data stewards in creating discipline-specific DMPs, providing further support implementing RDM policies, promoting FAIR principles and assessing their implementation in digital objects, as well as contributing to relevant national and international initiatives. TU Wien is specifically looking forward to adoption of the Interoperability Frameworks developed by OSTrails to better integrate their RDM services, e.g. DMP Tool based on DAMAP with repositories, SKGs, and environments where researchers work with data.

-How is planning, tracking and assessing research realised in your country/scientific domain? 

In Austria, the current situation is as follows:

Planning is primarily addressed through the development and support of Data Management Plans (DMPs), including tools such as DAMAP. TU Graz, TU Wien and Medical University Graz run DAMAP as an institutional tool. They integrate it with their internal systems to maximise the reuse of information and to help in planning. Additionally, other Austrian universities participating in the national project SharedRDM are considering using DAMAP, with roll-out of the tool ongoing in some cases, and others still in the planning phase. Furthermore, many universities, including Uni Wien help researchers to meet funder requirements by manually reviewing DMPs, clarifying questions and offering trainings for researchers who write DMPs.

Tracking: Most of the universities in Austria use a CRIS system to track publications. However, these systems do not track other types of digital research objects systematically. Users can manually update relevant entries, sometimes by integration with ORCID. There is no national SKG or a comparable tracking mechanism for all types of digital research objects.

Assessing: As mentioned, staff of participating universities manually reviews DMPS on request before submission to funders. Funders usually perform simple checks of DMPs. To our knowledge, the production of digital research objects – other than publications – is not systematically reflected in the assessment of researchers’ performance at the moment. Hopefully, this will change with the adoption of CoARA.  

-Can you provide some details on your pilot's main actors, services and priorities? How will your pilot adopt the results of OSTrails? 

All universities in the Austrian pilot, Uni Wien, TU Wien and TU Graz, have approved institutional RDM policies to guide the implementation of the FAIR principles.¹ They provide extensive RDM-services, including support for creating and implementing DMPs, and offer workshops and training to help researchers understand and apply FAIR principles in their work. They are also involved in EOSC initiatives and projects to align with national and international standards and policies. 

Uni Wien hosts the institutional repository PHAIDRA and is the coordinator of AUSSDA, the Austrian Social Science Data Archive consortium, which serves as the Service Provider of CESSDA ERIC for all of Austria, offering services for the social sciences. PHAIDRA facilitates the long-term storage of research output from all scientific disciplines and multiple institutions use its open-source software across Europe. AUSSDA is certified with the Core Trust Seal that recognises it as a “trustworthy repository”. The two repositories allow and encourage the use of open licenses and provide permanent addresses for research data, along with comprehensive metadata. Uni Wien has also implemented training programs for data stewards to help bridge the gap between researchers and data management requirements.² Furthermore, Uni Wien is involved in several large international open e-infrastructures, sometimes as a coordinator and in a leading role. The Open Data movement is a significant component of this involvement. One of Uni Wien’s primary priorities in OSTrails is to develop standardised DMP evaluation practices in line with national funder requirements and thereby improve the quality of their feedback processes to researchers.

TU Wien supports researchers to publish their research output according to FAIR principles by addressing relevant issues early on with the machine-actionable DMP tool DAMAP. They also provide a data repository that offers persistent identifiers, standardized and machine-readable usage licenses, and open, free, and standardized communication protocols. FAIRness is further assured by allowing metadata to be exported in various machine-readable formats and by adding interfaces for other external services. Additionally, TU Wien integrates FAIR principles into regular workshops and a course for master students. TU Wien also serves as the primary contact for the GO FAIR Austria office, reinforcing their commitment to FAIR data principles.  

TU Wien will deploy the extended version of DAMAP that follows OSTrails Interoperability Framework for DMPs. This will allow them to have a standardised way to access information on ongoing experiments through a standardised API. Furthermore, the university plans to integrate DAMAP with software running in laboratories, where researchers conduct their experiments, to ensure better integration and to enable DMPs to become true live documents: changing contributors in a DMP created with DAMAP will result in a change of privileges in other systems, like the experimentation environment, or data repository. 

TU Graz has ratified two discipline-specific RDM policies to implement the FAIR principles. The university has been a seminal contributor to efforts such as FAIR Data Austria, developing tools and repositories for FAIR data management, and has also instituted a marketplace for FAIR/RDM-related projects. 

The primary priority of the universities in the Austrian pilot is the enhancement of DMP support. This includes enhancing DMP support to researchers and supporting data stewards in creating discipline-specific DMPs. TU Graz, in collaboration with TU Wien, also focus on technological integration by improving and aligning machine-actionable DMP tools. Additionally, both universities aim to connect current repositories and machine-actionable DMP tools to the OpenAIRE Graph and other SKGs. Other goals of the Austrian pilot include to further support implementing RDM policies, promoting FAIR principles and assessing their implementation in digital objects, as well as contributing to national and international initiatives. 

-Ongoing activities and Next Steps? 

Given that the national pilot is supposed to start in month 18 of the project, we are still in the early stages of establishing the next steps in our retrospective organisations. As a next activity, we will organise another online meeting of the Austrian National Pilot. On a more technical level, AUSSDA will upgrade its repository software to increase its score in the F-UJI FAIR metric. TU Wien’s next steps will be: a) to identify groups of researchers for whom integration of DAMAP via the DMP IF could be beneficial, b) to flesh out specific use cases and collect specific requirements, and c) to analyse the pathways described in Deliverable D1.1. and to discuss which of them are relevant to what extent for the university.

Thank you for the interesting discussion! 

¹ Uni Wien:RDM policy: https://rdm.univie.ac.at/fileadmin/user_upload/p_forschungsdatenmanagement/Dokumente/RDM_Policy_UNIVIE_v1_en.pdf 

TU Wien: RDM policy: https://www.tuwien.at/index.php?eID=dms&s=4&path=Directives%20and%20Regulations%20of%20the%20Rectorate/Policy%20for%20Research%20Data%20Management.pdf

TU Graz:RDM policy: https://www.tugraz.at/sites/rdm/policies/tu-graz-framework-policy-for-rdm

² See the websiteData Stewards at the University of Vienna for further information : https://rdm.univie.ac.at/data-stewards-at-the-university/

OSTrails has set the ambitious goal of delivering a FAIR-enhanced, interconnected and machine actionable environment along with the pathways to navigate scientific information shared across services that enable and support planning, tracking and assessing research activities. To realise this, our efforts in the first six months of the project’s establishment have concentrated on understanding the technical capabilities and limitations towards harmonisation of information and practices shared between service providers of SKGs, DMP platforms, and FAIR assessment tools.

More specifically, the consortium has made significant progress in identifying the pathways and drafting the Interoperability Reference Architecture (IRA). Pathways, highlighted in D1.1. Plan-Track-Assess Pathways, are essential blueprints that outline the interactions between DMPs, SKGs and FAIR assessment tools, depicting the sequence of steps and processes required to achieve effective integration and functionality. These pathways help us understand and document the flow of data and operations, ensuring that all components of OSTrails can interact seamlessly to deliver optimal value to researchers, data managers, and other stakeholders.

Our preliminary results depict both the actions that users of the services perform and of the interactions of the services in exchanging information and automating their workflows. So far, three main pathways were identified:

_{Generic pathways diagram.}

• Plan - Focuses on refining the creation and assessment of Data Management Plans (DMPs), enhancing integration with Scientific Knowledge Graphs (SKGs) and repositories, and improving metadata evaluation.
• Track - Utilizes SKGs to monitor and evaluate the FAIRness of research outputs, recommending better tracking functionalities and integration with DMP platforms and FAIR assessment tools.
• Assess - Emphasizes comprehensive evaluation tools for DMPs and research outputs, ensuring interoperability with SKGs and repositories, and offering both automated and manual assessment options.

The Interoperability Reference Architecture (IRA), discussed in M4. Interim Products Establishment for Cross-Task Collaboration, complements these pathways by providing a detailed framework that specifies the technical standards and protocols needed to achieve interoperability among these different components. This framework involves developing three key APIs for accessing machine-actionable Data Management Plans (DMPs), Scientific Knowledge Graphs (SKGs), and FAIR assessment tools. The project incorporates insights from other EOSC projects and communities like the Research Data Alliance (RDA) to ensure alignment with current standards. The first stable draft of this architecture is expected to be completed by month 12 of the project.

_{Current draft of the OSTrails architecture depicting three main components and showing the role of Interoperability Frameworks.}

The IRA serves as a comprehensive guide for developers and integrators, ensuring that all tools and services can communicate and work together without technical barriers. By establishing a robust IRA, we lay the groundwork for a cohesive and efficient system where SKGs, DMP platforms, and FAIR assessment tools can operate in harmony, facilitating enhanced data management and scientific knowledge sharing.

Lastly, we established a glossary (detailed in M3. Methodology Establishment) to achieve consensus on the definitions of terms and concepts used within the project. This tool captures existing terminology, but also serves as an index of new terminology that our project generates ensuring that all stakeholders have a common understanding and can communicate and collaborate effectively.

Learn more by reading our deliverables and milestones reports (D1.1. Plan-Track-Assess Pathways, M4. Interim Products Establishment for Cross-Task Collaboration, M3. Methodology Establishment)  and stay tuned for more updates as we continue to make progress in our mission to enhance data management and scientific knowledge sharing.