CO-OPERAS IN: Integration And Cooperation To Face Fragmentation And Address Complexity In The SSH

Complexity in the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) can take the shape of the fragmentation of research fields, across many disciplines and subdisciplines, usually grounded in regional, national and linguistic specific communities. SSH data are fragmented themselves across different types, formats, languages, disciplines, resulting in a major impediment to their discovery and to their reuse from outside the specific and often small communities where they were produced. “Big data” does not apply to SSH, where data can often need to be very precisely qualified, described, curated and managed: they are smart and small data, which means they have to be specifically managed, all the more so in the perspective of being integrated in the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) landscape, as a major component of the IFDS.
At the same time, SSH disciplines have undergone a major change in their communication practices, driven by the development of digital technologies and the Open Science paradigm: the boundaries of the “scholarly record” are now blurring, and the research monograph -  the traditional primary form of research dissemination - is being challenged by technical innovations such as text and data mining, open annotations, data embedding, and collaborative writing.
This short paper will present CO-OPERAS - Open Access in the European Research Area Through Scholarly Communication -, which is an Implementation Network (IN) within the GoFAIR initiative. CO-OPERAS IN aims to build a bridge between SSH data and the EOSC, widening the concept of “research data” to all types of digital research outputs linked to scholarly communication that are, in SSH, part of the research process, whereas the concept of “continuous communication” underpinning the SSH research lifecycle holds an immense potential as an inspiring model of Open Science with direct societal impact.
CO-OPERAS IN is based upon a solid international framework, grown through strong collaboration, and years of consensus building between more than 36 partners from 13 countries, representing diverse stakeholders and service providers encompassing the entire cycle of scholarly communication in SSH.
CO-OPERAS IN aims to bring the FAIR principles into the SSH research environment, leveraging on existing scholarly communication services and platforms to connect them as components of an emerging EOSC, and more broadly to the global SSH communities.
This short paper will try to explain how “integration” is a way to face fragmentation. This is the keyword of CO-OPERAS IN, while its core strategy is coordination rather than competition, nurturing existing realities. The first part of the paper will be dedicated to highlight this CO-OPERAS unique approach based on synergies between researchers, publishers, and libraries and the complex organization of the IN, with special regard to the number and varieties of partners through the presentation of its work plan and scheme of governance.
The second, more techinal part will present the CO-OPERAS IN building blocks for the Discovery, Certification, Research for Society services and the tools to support the FAIRification of the research process and resources in the SSH, which is of utterly importance to bring Humanities and Social Sciences into the European Open Science Cloud. The paper wil provide some insights on identification and certification processes, metadata enrichment, interoperable standars, discovery tools based on a multilingual approach, and licensing practices.