Introducing OpenREL: Rights Expression Languages for Open Science and International Data Spaces – A Practitioners’ Approach

90-minute hands-on workshop with short presentations, collaborative group work, and interactive exercises using OpenREL templates.
 
Target Audience:
Researchers, data stewards, legal and policy experts, research infrastructure providers, and software developers are involved in Open Science, FAIR data management, and international data sharing. The workshop is particularly relevant for those designing or implementing rights and access policies in research data platforms, services, and AI pipelines.
 
Purpose and Objective:
The workshop aims to introduce OpenREL as a practical solution for expressing complex rights in Open Science environments. It will demonstrate how to model permissions, obligations, and constraints in a machine-readable format, enabling compliance, transparency, and reuse across disciplines and infrastructures. Participants will gain hands-on experience with OpenREL templates and discuss real-world licensing scenarios. The objective is to foster a shared understanding of rights governance and gather feedback to refine OpenREL as a community-driven vocabulary and toolkit supporting FAIR and trusted data reuse.
 
Material and Resources:
Participants will receive a short handbook (“OpenREL Quick Start”), example policy templates in JSON and CSV formats, and access to collaborative tools (Google Sheets or Forms) for hands-on exercises. All materials will be openly shared after the session to support further use and adaptation.
 
Feedback and Evaluation:
At the end of the session, participants will be invited to complete a brief feedback form regarding the clarity and usefulness of the workshop, as well as to engage in a fruitful discussion. The input collected will help us improve the OpenREL materials and further adapt them to community needs.
This 90-minute hands-on workshop will begin with an introduction to OpenREL’s structure and logic, followed by collaborative group work. Participants will engage with real-world scenarios involving datasets, services, and research software. In small teams, they will use simplified OpenREL templates to address key questions: What are the conditions for reuse? How can ownership be traced? Who holds which rights and responsibilities? How can these be represented in a machine-readable way?
The session aims to open community dialogue on rights governance in Open Science and collect feedback to shape this vocabulary and toolkit.