Open Scholarly Communication (OSC) is an important and evolving field that is gaining increasing attention in the scientific community. During the recentEOSC Winter School 2024, SciLake representatives and other leading experts gathered to discuss various aspects of OSC, from its definition to the challenges it faces, and its future trajectory. This blog post summarizes the key takeaways from this session.

Feb 11, 2024

Defining Open Scholarly Communication

The session started with a detailed exploration of the definition of open scholarly communication. The definitions provided by various entities such as SPARC, DOAJ, OpenAIRE, and MIT Libraries were examined. OSC was collectively emphasized asa process where research outputs are shared and disseminated openly and freely without barriers, enabling the democratisation of knowledge. The discussion highlighted that the research lifecycle (researching-writing-publishing-assessing) begins with infrastructures. Among these, OpenAIRE is a non-profit partnership of 50 organizations with the mission to establish a permanent open scholarly communication infrastructure to support European research. In addition to its infrastructure and services, the ongoing CRAFT-OA project aims to consolidate the Diamond Open Access publishing landscape and integrate it with EOSC and other large-scale aggregators. OPERAS is another infrastructure spanning 27 domains, primarily covering the EU but also involving international collaborations, with the goal of becoming an ERIC by 2027.

Challenges in Open Scholarly Communication

While OSC holds great promise for the future of knowledge dissemination, it does come with its challenges. These include the interdisciplinary nature of research, different research methods, a variety of publication formats, the need for multilingualism, the existence of numerous open access initiatives, and fragmentation of actors. The session also highlighted the issue of volume limitation for the number of publications processed per month and the challenge of achieving true interoperability. Despite having technical standards in place, achieving real interoperability requires a lot of manual work and collaboration between stakeholders, and resistance to change often hinders this process.

SciLake's Role

SciLake is a comprehensive project designed to assist scientific communities in constructing their own scientific knowledge graphs (SKGs). One of its primary challenges is enabling interoperability between domain-specific research and domain-agnostic databases such as the OpenAIRE Graph. The project is in line with theEOSC interoperability framework and actively collaborates with other scientific knowledge graphs to define core model entities through theResearch Data Alliance (RDA) SKG Interoperability Framework.

The Future of Open Scholarly Communication

Looking ahead, the discussions pointed to the need for a clearer understanding of EOSC's scope. There was a suggestion to consider running theDiamond model as part of EOSC. This model, which combines open access, no author processing charges (APC), and scholarly ownership, was seen as a potential route to facilitate open scholarly communication. The future of OSC also hinges onimproved interoperability. Even though technical solutions and platforms exist, the human resources level remains a challenge. The session concluded with a proposal to form a Task Force on Open Scholarly Communication. This team will focus on concrete actions that require resolution and cannot be addressed within a single project.

Conclusion

The EOSC Winter School 2024 provided a valuable platform for in-depth discussions on Open Scholarly Communication, fostering an understanding of its definition, evaluating the challenges it faces, and envisioning its future. It became clear that while OSC is a powerful tool for democratizing knowledge and enhancing research impact, it requires strategic interventions to overcome challenges, particularly in terms of interoperability. As the field continues to evolve, the scholarly community looks forward to continued dialogue and progress in OSC.

Read a full recap of the eventhere.

SciLake recently participated in the 7th Joint Workshop on Graph Data Management Experiences Systems (GRADES) and Network Data Analytics (NDA), held on June 14, 2024, in Santiago, AA, Chile. This prestigious event unites researchers from academia, industry, and government sectors worldwide to discuss and share the latest breakthroughs in large-scale graph data management and graph analytics systems. It also provides a platform to discuss novel methods and techniques to address domain-specific challenges in real-world graphs.

July 2, 2024

Daan de Graaf (TU/e) at GRADES-NDA ‘24

Our SciLake partner, Daan de Graaf, had the opportunity to present an accepted article on behalf of authors Wilco van Leeuwen, George Fletcher, and Nikolay Yakovets, all from Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). The team showcased "HomeRun", a tool specifically designed for comparing different cardinality estimation techniques in graph databases.

For those new to the topic, the cardinality of a graph database refers to the number of elements in a set, such as the number of edges connected to a node or the total number of nodes in the database. Accurate cardinality estimation is crucial for optimising the performance of queries, as it helps plan the most efficient way to retrieve data.

One of HomeRun's key features is its ability to evaluate the performance of different cardinality estimation techniques in given usage scenarios. The tool generates visualisations automatically, helping users understand the trade-offs between various techniques. This tool is particularly useful for database developers when they face performance issues, like long-running queries, with specific query and dataset combinations.

In SciLake, HomeRun is being used to optimise the database system performance in the context of the WP2 Data Lake Search and Navigation.

For more information about HomeRun, you can refer to the paper:

• Wilco van Leeuwen, George Fletcher, and Nikolay Yakovets. 2024. HomeRun: A Cardinality Estimation Advisor for Graph Databases. In Proceedings of the 7th Joint Workshop on Graph Data Management Experiences & Systems (GRADES) and Network Data Analytics (NDA) (GRADES-NDA '24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 6, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1145/3661304.3661902 

14 September 2023

SciLake will be at the Open Science Fair (OS FAIR) 2023.

Our members will participate in theworkshop "Open Science Knowledge Graphs (SKGs): Transforming the Way we Manage, Explore, and Analyze Scientific Knowledge", presenting our mission of building a comprehensive scholarly communication graph and our technical solutions under development. The workshop, organised byOpenAIRE andAthena Research Center, will be an excellent opportunity to explore potential areas of cooperation and common goals with ESFRI's research communities and hear about their ongoing work to create and maintain domain-specific SKGs and their current challenges. The workshop aims to provide insight into SKG use in Open Science activities and their impact on research outputs and collaborations and is targeted at research infrastructures, research communities, publishers, content providers, research administrators, policy makers, funders, service providers and innovators, as well as EOSC organizations. 

OurSIRIS partners will give a lightning talk entitled "Exploring trends and impact of scientific publications based on open access journals: an application in the archaeological research domain", where they will present significant advancements in our smart impact-driven discoveryservice.

OurISTI-CNR partners will present aposter on methodologies for disambiguating multiple entities in a graph entitled “The three processes for de-duplication of organisations, data sources, and results of the OpenAIRE graph”.

OS FAIR will be held in Madrid from 25 to 27 September 2023. The event aims to bring together and empower open science communities, identify common practices related to open science, explore synergies for creating and operating services that work for many, and learn from each other's experiences from around the world.

For more information visithttps://www.opensciencefair.eu/