A Scientific Lake to Democratise Knowledge: The OpenAIRE Graph and SciLake's Ecosystem

Scientific Knowledge Graphs (SKGs) are innovative tools for contextualising and linking information and offering a holistic view of the research landscape.The OpenAIRE Graph is a global SKG that aggregates research metadata and links from over 130k data sources, including repositories, academic journals, and registries. Using advanced AI tools, it extracts and classifies information through a complex aggregation-enrichment-deduplication workflow. The result is a SKG of over 250M research products including publications, research data, and software, which are linked to their funding and producing entities while their usage and impact are monitored.The OpenAIRE Graph serves multiple crucial functions in the research ecosystem. It enhances scientific discovery by enabling efficient navigation of research outputs, facilitates bibliometric analysis through citation metrics and indicators, and helps monitor the adoption of Open Science policies.Building on this foundation, the SciLake project is developing a dynamic and robust ecosystem to enhance the efficiency of daily research routines, transforming fragmented and disorganised domain knowledge into standardised and interoperable SKGs. This initiative brings together technical experts in knowledge management and domain specialists from four scientific disciplines: neuroscience, cancer, transportation, and energy. SciLake introduces the innovative concept of open “Scientific Lake”: a comprehensive set of customizable components enabling researchers to efficiently create, interlink, and maintain domain-specific SKGs. This ecosystem facilitates seamless access and querying of extensive scientific data, significantly enhancing research capabilities. Furthermore, SciLake leverages this Scientific Lake to offer tailored, discipline-specific services that empower researchers and domain experts to conduct more thorough scientific exploration and improve research reproducibility. This presentation showcases the SciLake ecosystem of components, demonstrating how our innovative approach combines the power of the OpenAIRE Graph with domain-specific knowledge to create a versatile and user-friendly platform that is used by researchers across diverse fields. Presentation at INORMS Congress Madrid 2025.