OpenAIRE and the STARS EU University Alliance have entered into a strategic collaboration to strengthen Open Science practices, enhance research visibility, and support evidence-based decision-making across the alliance. Through a dedicated OpenAIRE CONNECT Gateway and MONITOR Dashboard, STARS EU will gain a unified view of research activities and outputs, helping overcome fragmentation between institutions and enabling a clearer understanding of the alliance’s collective scientific contributions.

This partnership will provide STARS EU with the capacity to discover, analyse, and assess research outputs across all member universities, supporting alignment with internal Open Science strategies, boosting regional and international visibility, and opening new opportunities for collaboration. By consolidating outputs into a single, trusted environment, the alliance will be able to identify shared strengths, emerging thematic areas, and strategic priorities for future development.

A shared commitment to advancing Open Science

At the core of the collaboration are two complementary OpenAIRE services: CONNECT and MONITOR.

The CONNECT Gateway will provide a public-facing portal aggregating research outputs from all STARS EU members, improving discovery for students, researchers, institutional leaders, and external partners. Meanwhile, the MONITOR Dashboard will offer evidence-based insights into Open Access trends, levels of collaboration, policy alignment, and thematic contributions, supporting strategic planning at both institutional and alliance levels.

Together, these two services will enable STARS EU to:

• Visualise research outputs across institutions in one place
• Track Open Science adoption and policy alignment
• Identify collaboration patterns and emerging multidisciplinary areas
• Strengthen reporting to stakeholders, funders, and society
• Support informed, data-driven governance

Powered by the OpenAIRE Graph

The CONNECT Gateway and MONITOR Dashboard are powered by the OpenAIRE Graph, one of the world’s the largest and most interconnected scholarly communication databases collecting and linking research outputs (publications, software, data, and more) with projects, funders, researcher identifiers, and institutions. By offering a continuously updated graph of global research activity and relationships, STARS EU benefits from high-quality, enriched, and interoperable research information.

This foundation brings STARS EU into a growing network of European University Alliances, making use of OpenAIRE services to overcome data fragmentation and strengthen cross-institutional collaboration.

A strategic collaboration

The alliance’s move to partner with OpenAIRE responds to three core priorities:

• Building the digital co-creation campus
• Advancing Open Science policies and practices
• Reinforcing dissemination, outreach, and impact.

Because the required infrastructure goes beyond the internal technical capacity of individual universities, STARS EU launched a joint public tender for a shared, open infrastructure platform. OpenAIRE was selected as the provider that best met the alliance’s scientific, technical, and governance requirements, and as a core building block for discovering, disseminating, and monitoring research outputs.

Kick-off milestones and the road ahead

The partnership was officially launched on 2 December 2025 with the successful completion of the kick-off meeting. During this first milestone, OpenAIRE delivered the customised CONNECT Gateway and the MONITOR Dashboard, giving all nine partner universities a shared infrastructure to discover, visualise, and analyse their research outputs under a common identity. The first demonstrations highlighted clear opportunities to support Open Science practices across the alliance.

From early 2026, the collaboration enters an implementation and refinement phase. Universities will establish small working groups to refine data sources, curate institutional records, and configure their Gateways. OpenAIRE will provide targeted training on CONNECT, MONITOR, and data curation, as well as guidance on repository onboarding and dashboard management. This collaborative process will ensure that each institution strengthens its capacity to manage research information and adopt shared Open Science workflows. By the end of the year, the alliance will not only operate a unified infrastructure but also reinforce its commitment to transparency, collaboration, and evidence-based research assessment.

• “I am particularly excited that, with OpenAIRE, we will for the first time gain a clear, shared view of the research landscape across all nine STARS EU universities. The CONNECT gateway and MONITOR dashboard will turn our Digital Campus into a living map of our scientific strengths, collaborations, and emerging themes. It is a foundation we need to plan joint programmes, better support our researchers, and communicate our impact more effectively.” Prof. Daniel Stavárek, Silesian University in Opava, leader of WP5 STARS EU Co-Creation Campus and member of the STARS EU Steering Committee.
• “Today, it is surprisingly hard to answer simple questions such as: How much of our research is open access? Where do our teams collaborate most? Which topics are gaining momentum across the alliance? MONITOR and CONNECT will help us overcome this fragmentation. They give us a shared evidence base for decision-making, from designing new curricula to prioritising support for researchers and engaging with our regions.” Prof. Ernesto Pereda, Dean and Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of La Laguna and member of the STARS EU Steering Committee.
• “European University Alliances like STARS EU are reshaping how research is organised, assessed, and shared. With CONNECT and MONITOR, our goal is to provide an open, trusted infrastructure that helps alliances move from fragmented institutional views to a truly collective understanding of their research activities. This collaboration shows how Open Science can directly support strategic governance, collaboration, and evidence-based decision-making at alliance level.” Giulia Malaguarnera, Outreach & Engagement Officer, OpenAIRE

(Originally published on OpenAIRE website by Alane Brunschweiger and  Giulia Malaguarnera).

One of STARS EU’s priorities is to promote open science through the extensive use of open data. In fact, these topics are part of one of the work packages of the European project that the alliance has been developing since July 2023, when it was designated European University.

For this reason, it has launched an online training programme on these topics, which will take place on 19, 22, 24 and 26 April, given by two renowned specialists in the field of open data: Eloy Rodrigues, form University of Minho (Portugal), and Ángel Delgado, from University Pablo de Olavide (Spain).

This training is specifically designed for STARS EU members responsible for Open Science and Open Data, although the sessions will be streamed, so they can also be followed by people from the allied universities interested in these topics. Details on how to follow the sessions are available on the STARS EU website.

Among other topics, the training will cover general aspects of open sciecne and open data; research data management; legal and ethical issues; models of publication and communication; and a practical session as a closure of this programme.

Speakers

Eloy Rodrigues is the Director of the University of Minho Libraries. Has been working on repositories, Open Access and Open Science for almost two decades, having established University of Minho institutional repository in 2003, and coordinating the UMinho team which works on RCAAP (Portugal Open Access Science Repositories) since 2008.

At international level, he has being working on several EU funded projects (like OpenAIRE and FOSTER) related with Open Access and Open Science and is member of the European University Association Expert Group on Open Science. Eloy was the Chair of the Executive Board of COAR, the Confederation of Open Access Repositories from 2015 to 2021, and in that role contributed actively to Next Generation Repositories initiative, the Pubfair conceptual model and the ongoing Notify Project, in which he is one of the Principal Investigators.

Eloy is currently member of the Executive Board of OpenAIRE and of the Advisory Committee ofSciELO Portugal.

Ángel Delgado holds a degree in Humanities from the Universidad Pablo de Olavide and a degree in Documentation from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. He holds a Master’s degree in Libraries and Digital Information Services from the Universidad Carlos III. He works as Head of Learning and Research Support Services at the Library/CRAI of the Universidad Pablo de Olavide.

He trains and provides support on issues related to digital research methods, open science, and scientific evaluation and publication, both to researchers, researchers and publishers of academic publications. He provides advice on scientific evaluation tasks to evaluators and decision makers. He has given numerous courses on these subjects to researchers and professionals of research support services in various institutions. He is an assistant professor in the Library and Information Science Department at the Universidad Pablo de Olavide, in Seville, where he is also Coordinator of the Official Master’s Degree in Digital History and Humanities.

He also directs the University Expert Degree in Research Support Services: information, data, evaluation and scientific publication.

The Second Edition of the International Conference on Co-Creation Process (IN2COP) was recently held at Bragança Polytechnic University, marking a significant collaboration with STARS EU partners. Distinguished personalities such as Vanessa Dubois, from the European Commission, and Tia Loukoula, from OECD, took the stage as plenary speakers, sparking insightful discussions on the future of higher education within the framework of European Alliances and the evolving landscape of future skills demanded by the job market.

The event provided a platform for Portuguese Polytechnic Universities, as members of European University Alliances, to exchange insights on governance models and legal frameworks pertinent to European Alliances. Participants from diverse backgrounds, including professors, students, researchers, academic staff, and external stakeholders representing various scientific domains and economic sectors, convened to share best practices and prototype outcomes of co-creation processes.

One of the highlights was the public unveiling of a microcredentials programme at Bragança Polytechnic University, codesigned with regional stakeholders. The event also featured a presentation by the president of Compete 2030, shedding light on funding opportunities available to both companies and higher education institutions.

The conference’s final day was dedicated to showcasing Erasmus+ projects implemented at Bragança Polytechnic University, offering a unique platform for six schools and four research centers to exchange experiences, establish connections, and disseminate their findings.

The STARS EU Steering Committee took advantage of this gathering to reflect on past achievements and outline future endeavors, underscoring the event’s importance as a catalyst for collaboration and innovation in higher education.

More pictures of the event

The Polytechnic Institute of Bragança, the Silesian University in Opava and the Bremen University of Applied Sciences are partners, together with the National Institute of Administration and the FEFAL Foundation, of the INNlocal project, whose kick-off event took place last December 2023 at the Communication, Administration and Tourism School in Mirandela of the Portuguese institution of higher learning.

The aim of this project is to create practical solutions that adapt to the needs of society, with a view to new local public policies capable of facing increasingly current challenges such as environmental sustainability, diversity and inclusion and citizenship and participation.

The official kick-off was attended by representatives from all partners, and it was focused on discussing the mission of this project, which appears within the scope of the European consortium STARS EU.