How OpenAIRE Supports Data and Software Management Plans

Updated

OpenAIRE supports data and software management planning by offering a service to create FAIR, machine-actionable Data and Software Management Plans (DMPs and SMPs) that evolve with a project across its lifecycle. The service is aimed at researchers and project teams who need plans aligned with open science and EOSC expectations, and it sits alongside OpenAIRE's broader open scholarly communication infrastructure for open access, data sharing, and research lifecycle support.

What the service is designed to do

According to OpenAIRE's own description of its services, the planning tool is intended to let you:

  • Create FAIR, machine-actionable plans — the plans are structured so that both people and machines can read and act on them, rather than being static documents.
  • Let plans evolve with the project — a plan is treated as a living artifact that can be updated as the project changes, not a one-off deliverable written at the start and filed away.
  • Align with open science and EOSC expectations — the tool is positioned within OpenAIRE's EOSC-ready service portfolio, so plans are built to match the interoperability and openness expectations of that ecosystem.

Who it is for

The service is described as supporting the full research lifecycle for researchers, institutional leaders, funders, and infrastructure providers. For data and software management planning specifically, the practical users are researchers and project teams who need to document how data and software will be managed, shared, and preserved — and who want that documentation to remain useful and machine-readable throughout the project.

How it fits into OpenAIRE's wider infrastructure

The planning tool is one component of a connected set of services. Related capabilities that matter for planning work include:

Related service Relevance to management plans
Scientific Knowledge Graph Interlinked graph of publications, data, software, and projects for discovery and scientometrics
Repository and CRIS aggregation Interconnects content from repositories, CRIS systems, and journals with EOSC-compliant metadata
Repository/data source validation Checks that a repository or data source meets OpenAIRE and EOSC interoperability standards
Data anonymization tool Anonymizes research data to protect privacy while preserving utility
Organization identifiers Disambiguates and maps research-performing organizations across data sources

The connection matters because a management plan is only as good as the infrastructure it points to. If a plan commits to depositing data in an EOSC-compliant repository, the validation service and metadata aggregation described by OpenAIRE are the pieces that make that commitment checkable.

What to keep in mind before adopting it

  • Confirm current availability and access conditions directly. OpenAIRE's service page lists some offerings as "Coming Soon" (for example, the narrative CV and Open Science profile). The page evidence does not state pricing, login requirements, or terms of use for the planning tool, so check the service page for the current status rather than assuming it is free or open without registration.
  • Plan for maintenance, not just creation. The value of a machine-actionable, evolving plan depends on your team actually updating it. Assign someone to revisit the plan at project milestones.
  • Check EOSC alignment against your funder's requirements. OpenAIRE positions the tool as EOSC-ready, but your specific funder or institution may have its own template or mandatory fields. Verify compatibility before committing to a single format.

For a concrete case: a project team preparing a grant application could draft a plan in the tool, link it to the repositories and identifiers they intend to use, and then revise it at each reporting period so that the final plan reflects what was actually done with the data and software — which is exactly the "evolves with your project" behavior OpenAIRE describes.