Open Repositories Ireland: OpenAIRE v4 Adoption and Metadata Alignment Guide

Abstract

OpenAIRE is the authoritative source for research literature to the European Commission for H2020, Horizon Europe projects, and EOSC. By aligning an Open Repository with OpenAIRE metadata standards, the repository gets connected to a network of services that consume metadata in that format. The Irish Open Access Monitor (OA Monitor) is one of those services, consuming and displaying data directly from the OpenAIRE Graph. The OA Monitor tracks the proportion of Open Access research publications generated in Ireland, with the goal to measure national progress towards 100% Open Access by 2030. This guide was designed for repository managers who wish to align their repository with the OpenAIRE Guidelines for Literature Repository Managers v4.0.0, which enables repository records to be collected by OpenAIRE, integrated into the OpenAIRE Graph, and made available within Horizon Europe and EOSC workflows, as well as within the Irish Open Access Monitor. The step-by-step methodology described in this guide was developed and applied in the Open Repositories Ireland (ORI) OpenAIRE Adopter Assistance Programme, which helped 12 Irish Open Repositories to adopt OpenAIRE v4 between January and August 2026. The methodology explained here was tested with repositories using DSpace, Eprints, and Digital Commons, but it can be easily adapted to work with different repository platforms as the steps are not platform-specific. This guide extends the ORI OpenAIRE v4 Metadata Guidance for DSpace Repositories by providing the methodology that allows implementing the mappings in the previous guide. However, this guide does not work for CRIS repositories, as OpenAIRE has a specific guideline for CRIS systems which is not the one we are focusing on in this guide. If you are using Figshare, you should verify whether your implementation follows the OpenAIRE CRIS Guidelines rather than the Literature Repository Guidelines.