OPERAS Code of Conduct

Our Vision

OPERAS’ vision is to make Open Science a reality for research in the social sciences and the humanities and achieve a scholarly communication system where knowledge produced in the social sciences and the humanities benefits researchers, academics, students and more generally the whole society across Europe and worldwide, without barriers.

Our Mission

OPERAS’ mission is to coordinate and federate resources in Europe to efficiently address the scholarly communication needs of European researchers in the field of social sciences and humanities.

Our Core Values

  • Collaboration and coordination: We are dedicated to a bottom-up and distributed approach in community management. OPERAS coordinates the different stakeholders, i.e. researchers, research institutions, libraries, platforms, publishers and funders, on their scholarly communication activities.
  • Direct impact: Robust services will directly enhance research outputs, particularly regarding their socio-economic impact, open access to high quality content will facilitate the research process, and sharing of technologies and knowledge will noticeably improve scholarly communication infrastructures and initiatives.
  • Diversity and respect: We encourage and welcome diversity of stakeholders, users, members and partners, and within the OPERAS consortium, including, but not limited to, gender, nationality, ethnicity, language, religion, age. We treat all people, communities and cultures with dignity and respect.
  • Evolvement of research: Information and studies on the impact of evaluative methods, metric systems, new business models and sustainability strategies will serve as driver for new concepts on impact and measurement of academic merit and will influence the way research is communicated.
  • Inclusiveness: We highly value inclusiveness by providing opportunities for our many stakeholders, users, partners, members and the OPERAS consortium to be represented and heard across all activities.
  • Integrity and reliability: We keep our commitments and carry out our work with the greatest accountability and responsibility.
  • Service: We strive to be of benefit to our stakeholders, the research community and the public at large.
  • Sustainability: We seek to establish robust and sustainable and tangible, lasting results.
  • Transparency and openness: OPERAS will introduce the principle of Open Science and ensure effective dissemination and global access to research results in the social sciences and humanities. At the same time, we commit to transparency in the way we organize and coordinate the Research Infrastructure and we maintain transparency in our relationship with all stakeholders, users, members, partners and the OPERAS consortium.
  • Variety of interpretation: OPERAS is committed to diversity of interpretation and believes that many ways can lead to our common goal, reflecting standard practices in the social sciences and humanities. 

The OPERAS Research Infrastructure and its members fully commit to this vision, mission and core values. In case of non-compliance of any of the principles listed, please contact our Ombudsperson (somebody from SAC will be chosen soon).

OPERAS Code of Conduct has been approved by the OPERAS Executive Assembly on 10 February 2020.