OpenUP : a new EU-funded Open Science Project

OpenUP project – funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 - addresses challenges of the currently transforming science landscape and aspires to come up with toolboxes for the review-disseminate-assess phases of the research life cycle. Currently, the OpenUP Consortium is looking for projects that use Open Science methods and tools in their dissemination.


Open Access, Open Science, Open Scholarship, accompanied by sharing enabling technologies, have revolutionized the way scholarly outputs are evaluated, published and assessed. Consequently, traditional ways of publication and evaluation do not satisfy the needs of this changing landscape.

OpenUP* stands for “OPENing UP new innovative methods, indicators and tools for peer review, dissemination of research results, and impact measurement”. 

With a clear trend towards Open Scholarship, the OpenUP consortium has engaged partners (researchers, publishers, funders, institutions, industry and the public) with a proven outreach capacity in all aspects of the review-disseminate-assess cycle.

Through analysis, consultation, hands-on engagement with partners, OpenUP will:

  • define a framework with roles and processes, benefits and opportunities;
  • validate the proposed mechanisms through a series of pilots involving researchers from four scientific communities (Life Sciences, Social Sciences, Arts & Humanities, Energy);
  • come up with practical policy recommendations,  guidelines and  tools (for peer reviewing; set of indicators; dissemination methods for research results) to be used by EU, national and institutional policymakers at different settings;
  • engage with all stakeholders via a series of outreach and training events, and the creation of an Open Information Hub - a collaborative web based Knowledge Base that will host a catalogue of open tools/services, methodologies, best practices from various disciplines or settings, success stories, reports.

This level of engagement and knowledge will feed into the development of research and innovation policies that aim to support and complement Open Science.

Help OpenUP with gathering existing examples of innovative dissemination practices

Are you involved in a research project that reaches out to other researchers, practicioners, journalists or citizens in an open and innovative way?

Currently, OpenUP is studying cases of innovative dissemination.

Please, simply go to this spreadsheet and add your project with a little bit of context information.

After a number of projects for in-depth case studies are selected,  they will be shared with stakeholders under CC BY 4.0.

* OpenUP not to be confused with OpenUp! Opening Up the Natural History Heritage for Europeana (free access to over one million items belonging to the world’s biodiversity heritage).

On the occasion of the Peer Review Week 2016 OpenUP published a number of briefs related to the history of peer review, successful examples of the transforming peer review system, and opportunities related to a more open Peer Review system.

See also:

OpenUP on Twitter
OpenUP on Facebook
OpenUP related-projects

Related contents:

Have you signed up for openness in research?

Open access and the research lifecycle: a guide for researchers

OSI 2016-25: the Open Scholarship Initiative

Open Peer Review Module: Open access repositories start to offer overlay peer review services

LEARN : LEaders Activating Research Networks