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Open Access and Open Scholarship have revolutionized the way scholarly artefacts are evaluated and published, while the introduction of new technologies and media in scientific workflows has changed the “how” and to “whom” science is communicated, and how stakeholders interact with the scientific community and the broader public. The EU funded project OpenUP is connecting people, information and tools and provides a knowledge hub and a validated framework for the review, assessment and dissemination aspects of the research lifecycle, under the prism of a gender-sensitive Open Science.

Citizens are shaping their food preferences and expressing their food experiences on a daily basis reflecting their way of living, culture and well-being. In this paper, we focus on food perceptions and experiences in the context of smart citizen and tourist sensing. We analyze Foursquare user reviews about food-related points of interest in ten European cities, and we explore the imprint of a city as it is shaped based on the spatial distribution of food-related topics and sentiments. The topic modelling and sentiment analysis results are visualized using geo-referenced heat maps that enrich the cities maps with information that allows for a more insightful navigation across their different geographical regions providing insights not available in the original data.

The acquaintance of Museums and Cultural Heritage (CH) institutions with the digital age challenges is of no question a matter of survival. Nevertheless, the dialogue between CH and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) do not always lead to a harmonious symbiosis. Moreover, the question of if and how ICT could add value to collections, museums and cultural sites and enhance access and communication between stakeholders and users/visitors is a critical open question from many perspectives. In this paper we discuss the main types, obstacles, and benefits of such collaborations, based on interviews held with both CH stakeholders and technology providers, done in the frame of the European project eCultValue.

This paper discusses issues related to digital storytelling and its use in Cultural Heritage institutions. It will demonstrate the usefulness and advantages of digital storytelling by providing concrete examples of adoption and suggest how digital storytelling may be used in different cultural heritage environments. We will identify issues and challenges and also focus on lessons learnt, all of them being important aspects for the further deployment of ICT in museums and collections.

The document is the report on the 1st Workshop on Digital Library Interoperability, Best Practices and Modelling Foundations was held in Corfu, Greece on October 1, 2009, in conjunction with the 13th European Conference on Digital Libraries (ECDL2009). The event was dedicated to discuss top-level challenges and priorities for investigating and achieving digital library (DL) interoperability, to analyse the current state of the art and to deliberate top priorities towards global DL infrastructures. Talks included first achievement reports and visions on the six thematic groups of the EU-funded DL.org project, and a brief overview of the DELOS Reference Model for Digital Libraries, the conceptual framework of DL.org. An interactive panel discussion completed the workshop.

This report reviews and maps European policies relating to Open Science in order to identify areas where OpenUP’s findings and recommendations could support policy-makers and other stakeholders promoting Open Science uptake. The review particularly focuses on policies and initiatives in areas of open peer review, innovative dissemination, altmetrics as well as issues related to gender equality in research and academia.

Digital transformation is a process encompassing significant changes in both social and economical domains because of the adoption of digital technologies. The EU H2020 DESIRA (Digitisation: Economic and Social Impacts in Rural Areas) project is working on defining a methodology and creating a knowledge base to characterize digital transformation. The goal is to support those in charge of responding to digitization-related challenges in rural areas, especially considering agriculture and forestry. This work presents preliminary activities in the project aiming to identify (i) Digital Game Changers, like Internet of Things (IoT), facilitating the digital transformation; and (ii) a robust set of exemplary Application Scenarios (ASs). This task will support forthcoming activities aiming to assess the socio-economic impact of digital transformation in rural areas.

The proactive sustainable management of scarce water across vulnerable agricultural areas of South Europe is a timely issue of major importance, especially under the recent challenges affecting complex water systems. The Basin District of Thessaly, Greece’s driest rural region, has a long history of multiple issues of an environmental, planning, economic or administrative nature, as well as a history of conflict. For the first time, the region’s key-stakeholders, including scientists and policymakers, participated in tactical meetings during the 19-month project “Water For Tomorrow”. The goal was to establish a common and holistic understanding of the problems, assess the lessons learned from the failures of the past and co-develop a list of policy recommendations, placing them in the broader context of sustainability. These refer to enhanced and transparent information, data, accountability, cooperation/communication among authorities and stakeholders, capacity building, new technologies and modernization of current practices, reasonable demand and supply management, flexible renewable energy portfolios and circular approaches, among others. This work has significant implications for the integrated water resources management of similar southEuropean cases, including the Third-Cycle of the River Basin Management Plans and the International Sustainability Agendas.