HEAL-Link and HELIX open collaboration to facilitate and promote scholarly communication through Open Access and engage Research Infrastructures in Open Science

HEAL-Link and HELIX open collaboration to facilitate and promote scholarly communication through Open Access and engage Research Infrastructures in Open Science

The quinquennium of 2018-2022 will bring dramatic changes in the field of scientific research, providing added value to global and national academic and research communities. Open Science, the leading policy priority for EU science, comprises inextricably linked horizontal e-Infrastructures and vertical Research Infrastructures to accommodate both the generic-purpose and domain-specific needs of the community. In this landscape, we observe an emerging convergence of scholarly communication with scientific data management, aiming to provide researchers with a comprehensive suite of services for the management, discovery, sharing, use, archiving of scientific data. The Hellenic Data Service (HELIX) is a new national eInfrastructure supporting this paradigm, with a mandate to accommodate the entire lifecycle of data-intensive research. HELIX will deliver services for storing, managing, discovering, processing, analyzing, visualizing, and archiving diverse open and proprietary scientific data that will be shared and reused in a cross-domain and cross-discipline manner. HELIX will support scalable and interactive computing, lowering the entry barrier for researchers, and offering a single point to discover, share and reuse high-value scientific data assets linked with publications and software. The HEAL-Link Consortium (Hellenic Academic Libraries Link) is actively involved in projects, initiatives, developments to the scientific publication landscape and its goal is to act in a way that is beneficial to its members and to the scientific community in Greece. HEAL-Link has a mandate to promote Open Access policies and power sustainable knowledge in the digital age. Its strategic goals are to facilitate and promote scholarly communication through Open Access, cultivate the digital skills of scientists, and engage Research Infrastructures in Open Science. Within this role, HEAL-Link has initiated an open collaboration with HELIX to engage its members, comprising all Academic institutions in Greece, and operate a scientific data catalogue/repository integrated within the broader HELIX ecosystem. HEAL-Link will also organize, coordinate and train the personnel of the Academic Institutions on: (a) generic and discipline-specific Data Management Plans (DMPs), (b) drafting and promoting policies to adopt and enforce Open Access/Open Science. We argue that the joint activity of HEAL-Link and HELIX represents a new evolutionary step for scholarly communication, facilitating and accelerating the scientific process, while also streamlining the re(use) of scientific output.