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

As Open Science infrastructures evolve, it is increasingly evident that traditional open license structures no longer meet the complex needs of Research Performing and Funding Organizations (RPOs/RFOs). Today’s research ecosystems require more nuanced and layered approaches to data access, sharing, and reuse—particularly within international data spaces, discipline-specific workflows, and AI-driven environments. Researchers and infrastructure providers now need clear, machine-actionable mechanisms to express complex rights, regulatory restrictions (such as GDPR), intellectual property allocations, terms of use, and licensing conditions.
To meet these challenges, the EOSC Beyond project has developed OpenREL, a new Rights Expression Language (REL) vocabulary and toolkit tailored for Open Science. Building on standards like ODRL and CCREL, OpenREL introduces advanced features for representing conditional access, role-based reuse, dual licensing, and the articulation of both legal and ethical rights and obligations. OpenREL supports EOSC’s mission to enable FAIR, secure, and trusted data reuse across diverse access models.
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.