Focused Issue on Digital Library Challenges to Support the Open Science Process

Open Science is the broad term that involves several aspects aiming to remove the barriers for sharing any kind of output, resources, methods or tools, at any stage of the research process (https://book.fosteropenscience.eu/en/). The Open Science process is a set of transparent research practices that help to improve the quality of scientific knowledge and are crucial to the most basic aspects of the scientific process by means of the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) principles. Thanks to research transparency and accessibility, we can evaluate the credibility of scientific claims and make the research process reproducible and the obtained results replicable. In this context, digital libraries play a pivotal role in supporting the Open Science process by facilitating the storage, organization, and dissemination of research outputs, including open access publications and open data. In this focused issue, we invited researchers to discuss innovative solutions, also related to technical challenges, about the identifiability of digital objects as well as the use of metadata and ontologies in order to support replicable and reusable research, the adoption of standards and semantic technologies to link information, and the evaluation of the application of the FAIR principles.