The TRIPLE project officially kicked off in Paris on Wednesday, 4 December 2019!
Public Event
The kick-off event, hosted by OPERAS and Huma-Num in the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (Paris-Nord), lasted for three days and was a huge success: More than 60 people – project partners and representatives of French and European research infrastructures, small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) as well as of government authorities – attended the public project presentation, despite the general strike that made transportation difficult in Paris at the time.
In the early afternoon, government representative David Fiala from the French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation (MESRI), gave the opening speech, followed by some introductory words by Lionel Maurel, from the French National Institute of Human and Social Sciences (INSHS) of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS).
Adeline Joffres (Huma-Num), then talked about the Huma-Num infrastructure and their work for Open Science and Digital Humanities in Europe.
Next, Suzanne Dumouchel, coordinator of TRIPLE and co-coordinator of OPERAS, presented the TRIPLE project, highlighting its goals and envisaged outputs, benefits and challenges. She also gave an update on the current developments of EOSC, the European Open Science Cloud, and how TRIPLE can be integrated into this large cross-national and cross-disciplinary virtual network of organisations and infrastructures, whose aim is “to build a competitive data and knowledge economy in Europe” (https://www.eosc-portal.eu/about/eosc).
After the coffee break, Lionel Maurel provided a brief overview of Open Science in France, and how the National Open Science Plan, issued in July 2018, has been implemented to date.
Pierre Mounier (OpenEdition), co-coordinator of OPERAS, then presented TRIPLE as a core service of the European research infrastructure OPERAS and explained what TRIPLE can offer as an innovator in research in comparison to existing discovery platforms. Pierre vividly demonstrated TRIPLE’s advantages by using research on the concept of “femicide” as an example: Currently, a researcher would need to conduct independent searches on multiple platforms in different languages. The discovery platform TRIPLE, by contrast, provides a single access point for discovering information and resources related to a specific SSH topic, including data, publications, projects and researchers, which will be enriched, annotated and indexed.
The last two talks focused on how TRIPLE is embedded in the broader European research ecosystem. Ivana Ilijasic Versic (CESSDA), talked about the Social Sciences and Humanities Open Cloud (SSHOC) project as part of the European research landscape and EOSC.
Elena Giglia (University of Turin), presented the CO-OPERAS implementation network for FAIR data in the social sciences and humanities and its connection with TRIPLE.
The first day of the kick-off event ended with a cocktail buffet in the evening.
TRIPLE-internal Meetings
The public part of the event was framed by project-internal presentations and workshops by the eight work packages (WP) of TRIPLE on Wednesday morning, on the whole day of Thursday and on Friday morning.
On 5 December, the focus of presentations and talks was on the project management of TRIPLE, its governance structures and on the project’s milestones. The event participants then spread out into work package-specific workshops. Later, they also met in mixed groups.
A charming dinner with Provençal flavours in the 18th authentic arrondissement of Paris marked the end of the second day.
TRIPLE project manager Emilie Blotière opened the last day of the TRIPLE Kick-off in Paris, which was dedicated to a wrap up of the meetings and discussions and a presentation on the communication of TRIPLE, given by Judith Schulte from Max Weber Foundation (MWS).
Next Steps
The 18 partners of the TRIPLE consortium are now busy following up on the outcomes of these face-to-face meetings, which are vital in such a complex innovative and long-term project.