Open Science NL has awarded €35 million to 45 projects aimed at improving access to scholarly data, software, and publications in the Netherlands. OpenAIRE is collaborating with SURF in two of these four-year initiatives, DURF and BROCCOLI, which are focused on building a shared and community-governed research infrastructure.
The Dutch Repository Federation (DURF) project is designed to establish a unified infrastructure for research outputs across the Netherlands. Currently, more than 70 institutional repositories and CRIS systems operate without a common governance structure, resulting in inconsistencies in metadata quality, preservation, and visibility. DURF will address these issues by integrating systems and establishing shared governance to improve interoperability and global discoverability.
OpenAIRE contributes to DURF through multiple technical components. OpenAIRE PROVIDE will function as a metadata harvester and validator aligned with CERIF standards and Dutch application profiles. The OpenAIRE Graph and Broker will support data aggregation and enrichment, including identifiers such as ROR, ORCID, and DOI. The Netherlands Research Portal, powered by OpenAIRE CONNECT, will include enhanced features such as expert finder and Single Sign-On integration through SURFconext.
The BROCCOLI project focuses on creating an open and transparent research information environment to support evidence-based decision-making. Building on the existing UKBsis infrastructure, which already hosts data on more than 500,000 Dutch research articles, BROCCOLI will expand accessibility and enable monitoring of publisher agreements, responsible research evaluation and assessments, and large-scale Open Science monitoring for institutions, funders, and policymakers.
Within this ecosystem, OpenAIRE acts as both a data provider and recipient, with BROCCOLI feeding enriched research information back into global systems such as the OpenAIRE Graph. These initiatives aim to reduce reliance on commercial systems, streamline repository workflows, and align national infrastructure with the European Open Science Cloud and global indexes.
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