ARGOS is OpenAIRE’s platform for creating and managing Data Management Plans (DMPs), designed to support the practical needs of researchers, institutions, and funders. It helps organise how data, software, and other research activities are handled throughout a project, and allows teams to work together, stay aligned, and follow common practices that support Open Science.

This latest release delivers powerful new features and enhancements shaped by early results from the OSTrails project and its pilots feedback. The updates focus on improving accessibility and plan quality, expanding customisation options, strengthening interoperability, and streamlining everyday work for researchers and administrators.

As always, the ARGOS team is open to any and all feedback. Remember, ARGOS is designed, built and updated with the users’ needs and requirements in mind, so your input is always welcome.

Below, you can explore the key features and enhancements introduced in this release.

Major Updates

1. Plan Evaluation – Validate Your Work with Confidence
2. Custom Export Templates - Structure Documents to Your Style
3. RAiD Support - Export all PIDs of a Plan
4. FEDORA Repository Integration - Align Your Work with Institutional Standards

Plan Evaluation – Validate Your Work with Confidence

The new Evaluator feature helps users confirm that their Data Management Plans meet the highest standards of quality and compliance. It integrates multiple validation frameworks, including the RDA maDMP Common Standard, FAIR principles, and OSTrails-developed benchmarks into a single, easy-to-use tool.

The OSTrails benchmarks are a set of evaluation criteria designed to assess the completeness, FAIRness, and policy alignment of research data management plans. They are being co-created with Athena Research Center and TU Wien as part of OSTrails, combining technical expertise and community input to ensure the benchmarks are practical, relevant, and applicable across disciplines.

By bringing these checks together in one place, the Evaluator enables researchers, administrators, and institutions to identify gaps early on, address them efficiently, and track improvements over time. It supports both internal quality reviews and external compliance reporting, helping ensure that research data management practices stay aligned with evolving policies and best practices.

Key Features

• Multi-Standard Validation: Check a Plan against the RDA maDMP Common Standard to know if it’s machine actionable, the FAIR principles to know if datasets described are FAIR, and OSTrails benchmarks in one step. Alternatively, select only the criteria that matter for your case.
• Instant Feedback: View results immediately in a pop-up for quick review and action.
• Evaluation History & Tracking: Archive each assessment with a timestamp to monitor progress over time.
• Quality and Compliance Assurance: Confirm compliance with funder, institutional, and community requirements and best practices

Custom Export Templates - Structure Documents to Your Style

The new Custom Export Templates feature gives tenant administrators complete control over how plans and descriptions are exported from ARGOS. Designed to meet diverse institutional and project requirements, it allows you to apply your own .docx and .pdf templates that define layout, structure and formatting, ensuring every exported document looks exactly as you need it.

This flexibility means that whether you are aligning with an institutional style guide, a project’s reporting requirements, or a funder’s formatting rules, your exports will always be consistent and professional. Templates can be applied across an entire tenant or customised for individual plans or descriptions, giving administrators the freedom to balance standardisation with flexibility.

Key features:

• Tenant Configurations: Set a single export format for all plans and descriptions in your tenant or customise individual ones.
• Export Templates: Define layout and styling in a standard Word file, ready to populate with live data.
• Dynamic Placeholders: Consult our documentation to learn how by using fields like {OPENCDMP.PLAN.TITLE}, you can automatically pull in plan and description content.
• Tenant Defaults: Allow plan-specific or description-specific templates to take priority over global settings.

Available on OpenCDMP software.

RAiD Support - Export all PIDs of a Plan

The new RAiD Support feature brings the Research Activity Identifier (RAiD) standard into ARGOS, allowing you to uniquely and persistently identify research activities across systems. By enriching your plans with RAiD-compliant metadata, you ensure that every project, dataset, and related output can be linked and traced reliably throughout its lifecycle.

This enhancement is particularly valuable for large, collaborative projects where multiple outputs, contributors, and systems are involved. With RAiD, your research activities gain a persistent identity that connects them to all relevant resources, improving discoverability, interoperability, and reporting.

Key Features

• Metadata Enrichment: Add RAiD-compliant metadata to Plans for accurate and standardised representation of research activities.
• Persistent Identification: Ensure long-term traceability and interoperability across systems using RAiD semantics.
• Standards-Aligned Export: Export Plans in RAiD-compliant JSON format directly from ARGOS.

Available on OpenCDMP software.

FEDORA Repository Integration - Align Your Work with Institutional Standards

The new FEDORA Repository Integration connects ARGOS directly to trusted institutional preservation systems, enabling you to deposit your data management outputs seamlessly into FEDORA repositories. This ensures your plans and related documents are preserved in secure, standards-compliant environments that meet institutional and long-term access policies.

By integrating repository deposit into your workflow, you can eliminate manual upload steps, maintain a single source of truth for your outputs, and align your research data management activities with your organisation’s preservation strategy.

Key Features

• Direct Deposit from ARGOS: Send plans and outputs straight into FEDORA repositories without leaving the platform.
• Preservation in Trusted Environments: Store your DMPs in systems built for long-term, standards-based preservation and mint DOIs for their persistent identification.
• Compliance with Institutional Policies: Meet local requirements for data archiving and access.
• Workflow Integration: Connect repository deposits directly to your ARGOS planning process.

Additional Improvements

Enhanced Plan Overview – View All Sections, Fields, and Linked Descriptions in One Place

A redesigned overview brings all plan sections, completed fields, and linked descriptions into a single view. This layout makes it easier to review progress, spot missing elements, and maintain consistency without navigating through multiple pages.

New Public Roles - Assign Data Steward, Policy Officer, and Ethics Reviewer Permissions

ARGOS introduces three new user roles with set permissions, further empowering institutions to tailor access and responsibilities based on their organisational needs. These additions support structured research workflows, data policy compliance and ethical review processes within collaborative teams.

• Data Steward: Contribute to specific descriptions without editing the rest of the Plan.
• Data Policy Officer (DPO): Add and manage descriptive content for data security.
• Ethics Reviewer: Review and comment without editing rights to ensure ethical compliance, without direct editing rights.

Personal Access Tokens – Manage Your Own API Credentials for Repository Deposits

The deposit process in ARGOS is now more adaptable, allowing users to provide their own API Keys when using Deposit plugins as an alternative to the standard OAuth flow. This gives users more control over repository authentication and enables customised credentials for different repository environments.

Key Features:

• Profile-Based Configuration: Manage API keys from the External Plugins Settings section in My Profile Settings, with a clear overview of all repositories available in the installation.
• Repository-Specific Setup: ARGOS adapts credential fields to each repository’s requirements, ensuring correct configuration.
• Secure Storage: All stored credentials are encrypted for maximum security.
• Flexible Deposit Options: Choose from three authentication methods when performing a deposit.

Other Enhancements

Smaller but useful updates make ARGOS smoother to use and reduce steps in common workflows:

• Automatic Plan Creation: New Plans are created and saved automatically when you start your Plan and select the Blueprint, removing an extra step and enabling a faster start to the planning process.
• Controlled Template Editing: Admins can lock description template selections within Blueprint sections, ensuring consistent Plan structures and preventing unauthorised changes.
• Streamlined Description Editing: When a section has only one available template, the form opens directly, and pre-filled templates are automatically selected.
• “My Descriptions” Page Restored: Quick access to all your created descriptions is now back in the main ARGOS interface. Re-use away!