The OPen scholarly communication in the European Research Area for Social Sciences and Humanities (OPERAS) is a distributed RI to enable Open Science and upgrade scholarly communication practices in the Social Sciences and Humanities in line with the EOSC. OPERAS pools resources and offers services to enable all SSH stakeholders to streamline their activities and maximize the societal impact, in an interdisciplinary, mission-driven approach. OPERAS fosters the co-creation and adoption of scholarly communication services addressing research needs in terms of discovery, content creation, quality assurance, dissemination, outreach, and evaluation of outputs. It catalyses knowledge and know-how sharing, practices adoption, and increases return on socio-economic investments.

The OPERAS Concept and Design Phase dates back to 2012- 2018 when the coordinated actions to establish the network and shaping the project began. This effort lead to the recognition of OPERAS as a project addressing High strategic potential area for research in SCI in the ESFRI Roadmap 2018. OPERAS started its Preparation Phase in 2019 by developing the business plan and governance model and promoting services creation and alignment for EOSC catalogue and transnational access. In 2019, OPERAS established the status of International non-profit Association under Belgian law (AISBL). Entered the ESFRI Roadmap 2021, OPERAS is striving to efficiently guarantee an efficient move to the Operation Phase with a coherent approach to technical, administrative, and financial issues and the establishment of OPERAS ERIC.