ARGOS

Frequently Asked Questions

ARGOS is an open and extensible service based on OpenDMP software that simplifies the management, validation, monitoring and maintenance of Output Management Plans (OMPs), such as Data Management Plans (DMPs) or Software Management Plans (SMPs). It is the first service connected to a knowledge graph (see OpenAIRE Graph) and applied the FAIR principles to the OMPs/ Management Plans. Here, researchers find curated templates by data stewards, research support staff, research funders and institutions to create and follow their plans together with their peers.

ARGOS is a flexible tool, designed to accommodate all research performing and research funding organisations’ policies and Research Data Management (RDM) needs. It already supports templates for different authorities. These templates are created by Admin users in ARGOS. In addition, we currently work to provide non-administrative users with the capability to modify templates according to their own needs.

ARGOS facilitate communication and information exchange for improved support on the Plans across the different actors, provide validation mechanism to ensure that all the required fields are filled and information on the Plan addresses research standards, and connection with external services for pre-filling information to the Plans.

Also, in ARGOS the users and admins can work in customisable portal, create FAIR Plans, use qualified refereneces, connect with OpenAIRE Graph to exchange information, collaborate with peers via comments in the Description editor and archive their Plans in a secure place.

ARGOS is designed as a tool for inclusive use by researchers, students, data stewards, research support staff, funders, research communities and institutions. It can be used in the context of research projects’ conduct to comply with funders’ RDM requirements, as a tool in support of literacy programmes in academia or can be independently deployed to meet given stakeholder demands. Also, it is available in native languages, thanks to the help of OpenAIRE NOADs, which strengthens common understanding of all researchers involved in the DMP or other research plan writing process. By using ARGOS, researchers and students are able to create their DMPs and other research plans in collaboration with other colleagues, learn basic RDM concepts throughout the process and publish DMPs and other research plans as outputs in an open and FAIR manner, among other things by assigning DOIs and licenses and by maintaining DMPs and other research plans as living documents through versioning. At the same time, ARGOS can be configured and deployed by funders, institutions, research communities including their data stewards and research support staff. They can plug in their own services and/ or make use of OpenAIRE underlying services that ARGOS is built with ad-hoc.

DMPs, other research plans and Descriptions. ARGOS can be used for:

A. Viewing/ consulting publicly released DMPs, other research plans and Descriptions or Projects corresponding to DMPs and other research plans.

ARGOS offers options for publishing DMPs and other research plans in two modes, private or public. To view public DMPs, other research plans and Descriptions, there is no need for login to the platform.

B. Writing and publishing a DMP or other research plans

ARGOS helps researchers comply with mandates that may be attached to their grant proposal/ project funding. They can therefore choose from the most suitable to their needs template from the Descriptions collection and proceed with answering the corresponding questions. Once finalized, researchers can assign a DOI to their DMP or other research plan, publish and eventually cite it.

C. Practicing on writing DMPs, other research plans and Descriptions

ARGOS may be used for educational purposes. The process of Data Management Planning reflects the management lifecycle, hence the tool can be used in response to global RDM training demands. Examples may refer to embedding DMPs and other research plans and DMP tools in specific curricula or be embedded in library instructions’ sessions to familiarize researchers and students the processes of RDM, DMPs and other research plans.

Of course. If you want to compare DMPs and other research plans or analyse DMP data, then we advise you to export the records in .xml. This schema is the most complete as it includes all information held in a DMP or other research plan: information provided by the Admin when structuring the template and input provided by researchers when completing their DMPs and other research plans.

Yes, it is. The Data Stewards of the University of Bologna used ARGOS to create a template according the requirements of their Institution which they presented it in one of our Community calls. If you are interested, have a look here.

Yes, you can request individual space in argos.openaire.eu to apply own branding guidelines (e.g. colour palette, logos), connect workflows and configure local services (e.g. repositories, CRIS systems, discovery portals) to tailor automations according to given needs.

ARGOS is based on Keycloack. You can login through OpenAIRE AAI choosing your institution and using your institution credentials or your gmail. If you are an admin, you can login using your username or email and your password.

If you are interested in becoming an administrator in ARGOS and benefit from extra features relevant to creating tailored templates, please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

There is no need to switch from your administrator account to use ARGOS. The only difference between regular users and administrators profiles in ARGOS is an extra set of tools at the bottom of the main tool bar that is positioned on the left handside.

If you are interested in having your own tenant in ARGOS and benefit from extra features relevant to customising the interface and configuring your own workflows and services, please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

You can switch from the "Default" to a Tenant by clicking on the network icon at the top right of the page, next to the language selection. 

ARGOS does not have Sign Up. To change email, please see “Switch between accounts”. Alternatevily, you can add more email addresses to your user account by selecting the “Link ARGOS accounts” from your profile.

You can switch between email accounts by loging in with different providers from the Login page. The change depends on whether you have used different email addresses to sign up with those providers. On the occassion that only one email address is used for all providers offered by ARGOS, then no change is expected. You can always add new email accounts in your profile from the “Link ARGOS accounts” in your profile page.

In case you have two profiles with different emails, you can merge these two in one profile. In this way all your activity will be transfered in one profile and regardless the email you will login every time you will be transferred in the same profile. The process can be done in "My Profile Settings". The main account will be defined based on from which email you made the request. 

In case that you don't need the second email anymore, you can unlink it in "My Profile Settings". When, the second email is unlinked, then all its content will be transferred in the main account and the second one will be reset.

If you want to delete your ARGOS profile, please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

You can access your profile page and make desired edits from clicking on the avatar at the very top of the toolbar located on the right handside.

If you don't want to receive notifications by email, you can choose to be notified by in-app mechanism. Go to your profile and customise to your preferences.

Please try using a different provider from the Login page and contact us at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

If you are reading this right now, you probably know the answer already! One way to access ARGOS is through the OpenAIRE Service catalogue. Another way is through the EOSC Catalogue. But, you can always find ARGOS at argos.openaire.eu . To access ARGOS software, please visit https://code-repo.d4science.org/MaDgiK-CITE/argos/src/branch/master .

Author of the DMP and other research plans is everyone contributing to writing it. Both ARGOS owners and ARGOS members are authors. Researchers, however, might not be directly authors.

Argos DMP / other research plan owner is the person initiating the DMP. People who are invited to join the wirting process are members. Owners have extra editing rights and they are the ones to finalize the DMP / other research plan. Viewers can only preview the DMP and other research plans. Description contributors can only edit the description(s) and reviewers can only comment in the different parts of the Plans.

Researchers in ARGOS are project contributors and usually those who own or have managed output described in respective DMPs and other research plans.

Of course! This depends on whether the researcher has also been involved in the writing process.

Not everyone can become an Admin user in ARGOS. This happens upon request at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Admin users are able to develop their own tailored templates from a specialised editor, configure their own APIs and integrate services with ARGOS in collaboration with and support of the ARGOS development team. Also, they can create their Blueprint, selecting the structure that they want for their Plans, adding the Template(s) which will be use, as well as specifying the source from which the Descriptions will be prefilled. Fees may apply according to the type of requests.

The Tenant Admin is Admin only in the specific tenant. The role of the Admin is divided in Tenant Plan Manager and Tenant Configuration Manager.

Yes, if a user is added as an editor of a template, then the editor's rights apply only to the specific version of the template.

After you contact us, we can set the APIs that you need in your tenant.

DMPs and other research plans that are created as part of the project proposal are not included in ARGOS. Only accepted project proposals are listed in the platform. If you can’t find your project in the list (drop-down menu), please use the “Insert manually” functionality.

If you can’t find your grant in the list (drop-down menu), please use the “Insert manually” functionality.

You have to be an Admin user to design your own template in ARGOS. To learn more about Admin users, check “What does an Admin user do?”.

Yes, you can if you are an Admin user. To learn more about Admin users, check “What does an Admin user do?”.

Yes, you can, provided that you are an Admin user. To learn more about Admin users, check “What does an Admin user do?”.

They all perform the same action, but the difference lies in where you are directed after you have saved your DMP and other research plans or Description.

• When choosing Save, information that you have added in the editor is kept and you can continue adding more from the same page you were working on.
• When choosing Save & Close, information that you have added is kept, but the editor’s window closes and you are redirected to your dashboard.

Yes, you can, as long as you haven’t assigned a DOI to your DMP and other research plans. You just select “Undo Finalization”.

You may use the “Invite” button to share DMPs and other research plans with your colleagues and start working on them together.

Of course. ARGOS supports collaborations across diverse teams. There are two most frequent ways that can address this question:

A. Everyone works on the same DMPs and other research plans, but on different descriptions

In this case, each organisation makes its own description(s) in a single DMP or other research plan. That means that the manager (i.e. person responsible for the DMP or other research plan activity) creates a DMP or other research plan in ARGOS and shares it with everyone. If the DMP or other research plan are shared with co-ownership rights, then the people will be able to edit it and add their descriptions at any time during the project. If there is the need to control editing rights of people writing the DMPs or other research plans, then the manager can create the description(s) and share these each time with the team members that are responsible for adding input for the specified descriptions.

B. Everyone works on their own DMP or other research plan and content is later merged into one single DMP or other research plan

In this case, each organisation might work on their own DMP or other research plan for the same project. At one point, you need to decide which DMP or other research plan is going to be the core for the work you perform, share co-ownership between managers of all DMPs or other research plans so they can copy all descriptions of their DMPs or other research plans in this single plan document.

DMPs and other research plans and Descriptions can be cloned and used in different research contexts. Existing DMPs and other research plans presenting similarities with new ones, can be cloned, changed name and then edited according to the new project requirements. Existing Descriptions can be cloned and used in new DMPs and other research plans that are reusing data described in their context.

Versioning in Argos is both an internal and an external process. That means that versioning happens both in the Argos environment when editing the DMP and other research plans, and outside of ARGOS when a DMP or other research plan output is published in Zenodo. At every stage of the DMP and other research plans lifecycle, users have the option of keeping versions of the DMPs and other research plans they are editing. In ARGOS, users can create new versions of their DMPs by selecting the “Start New Version” option to keep track of the evolution of their DMP or other research plans throughout the writing process. When published, versioning is associated with a DOI. Published DMPs and other research plans are automatically versioned every time a newer version of the same output is uploaded in Zenodo.

A DMP and other research plans in ARGOS consists of vital information about the research project on behalf of which the DMP and other research plans are created and of more in depth information about the management, handling and curation of datasets collected, produced or reused during the research lifetime. A DMP and other research plans in ARGOS accommodate documentation of more than one descriptions. That way descriptions are provided with the flexibility to be described separately, following different templates per type of description or research community concerned each time, also possible to be copied and used in multiple DMPs and other research plans. Descriptions are then bundled up in a DMP or other research plans and can be shared more broadly. Special attention is given to the handling of data that are being re-used via OpenAIRE APIs.

This depends on the reason why you are creating a DMP or other research plans in the first place. If it is for compliance matters with funders, institutions or research communities RDM policies, then you may select the description template of that particular stakeholder. If you are creating a DMP or other research plans for training purposes, you may select and work on any template from the ARGOS collection.

In the Blueprint editor, the Admin is able to create their Blueprint deciding how many sections there will be, which fields will be used, their requirement and their order. Also, the Admin can select the template which will be used during the creation of the Plan.

Currently, it is not possible for all ARGOS users to create description templates of their own, so they have to work on predefined templates. Additional rights for editing Description templates according to tailored needs have Admin users. This is expected to change in the near future. To learn more about Admin users, check “What does an Admin user do?”.

Yes, it is possible in ARGOS to create short versions of templates that can be used for grant proposals, such as for Horizon Europe. If you are interested in working with us to create this short version of any ARGOS template, please contact us: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Yes, you can. In the current version, this is possible for Admin users who have their own deployment on-premises or cloud. Please note that this subject to change in the near future as we are working on a feature that will allow all users to customise (remove/add/extend) specific questions on the template they are working on.

A Description in Argos is an editor with set up questions that support the creation of descriptions of the research activities throughout the research lifecycle. The editor holds a collection of Description templates each one with different sets of predefined questions as per funders, institutions, research communities RDM policy requirements. Researchers and students can choose the template that corresponds to their RDM needs in order to get funding or get their degree, respectively. A DMP and other research plans in ARGOS may consist of one or more descriptions.

You don’t necessarily need to have many Descriptions in a DMP or other research plans. However, you might be producing a plethora of outputs during your research that are diverse in type and/ or scope of collection/ re-use, thus presenting diverse management needs. ARGOS gives you the flexibility to describe all data produced and/ or re-used in your research separately. That way it is easy to perform the mapping of information provided in a DMP and other research plans to the respective types or collections they correspond to. Equally, reuse of particular descriptions in different DMPs and other research plans is easier. For the latter, please check “How do I create an identical DMP, other research plans or Description as a copy?”.

This is something that has to be tackled conceptually, from the author of the DMP and other research plans. If those outputs have their own lifetime and rules (IPR, Access rights, etc), they should be described as different descriptions. Alternative formats should not be treated as different descriptions, unless they have other differences due to the format, too. But, for instance, if you have descriptons in CSV and JSON formats and under the same terms, they could be seen as one description in the DMP or other research plans.

ARGOS offers a search to Zenodo for prefilling the DMP and other research plans you are working with dataset metadata. This search has been developed according to the rules set by Zenodo and therefore has the same behaviour as when you are using the search bar on the Zenodo interface. However, we understand the need to be able to find records with their PID, hence we introduced some changes and now support searching DOIs from the ARGOS interface.

Of course! You can choose to manually describe your description, e.g. for a dataset you are planning to produce, instead of pre-filling the template with available metadata from a dataset that has already been shared and preserved in a repository.

Public DMPs and other research plans and Public Descriptions are collections of openly available ARGOS outputs. That means that DMP and other research plans owners and members are making their DMP and other research plans and/or Descriptions outputs available to all ARGOS and non-ARGOS users who might want to consult or re-use them under the framework provided by the assigned DMP license. Please also check “Is all the information I create visible by default?”.

No, it is not. You can choose how your DMP and other research plans is displayed in ARGOS from the “Access Rights” option. Choosing Public will immediately locate your DMP and other research plans in the “Public Plans” collection and make it available to all ARGOS and non-ARGOS users. Choosing Private will keep the DMP and other research plans visible only to you and to the people invited to edit the DMP and other research plans in collaboration with you. Private DMPs and other research plans are not publicly displayed to other users.

DMP and other research plans export contains all vital information for a DMP and other research plans, including funding and description details, while description export is a subset of the DMP and other research plans export containing information only about a description described in the DMP and other research plans. DMP and other research plans and Description exports are available in .pdf, .docx, .xml. In addition, DMP and other research plans export is available in the RDA .json format to increase interoperability of ARGOS exchanged DMPs and other research plans.

No, there is no storage limit or fee for either files stored in ARGOS.

Yes, it is possible. But, to have different repositories attached to the system, you will need your own on-premises or cloud deployment. You can use DSpace, Dataverse, CCAT and InvenioRDM repositories.

Yes, we are aware of that. ARGOS has no control over the DMPs and other research plans that you generate and publish and thus can not be held accountable for empty DMPs and other research plans. Please remember that, as on all other occasions where you publish content, you should do so responsinbly. If you have any questions regarding publishing DMPs and other research plans, don’t hesitate to contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Both options are possible according to how you have deposited the DMP or other research plan in the first place. If you have deposited your DMP or other research plans with a token (i.e. from the ARGOS account on Zenodo), then you won’t have editing rights on the Zenodo record, but you will still be able to make changes on ARGOS by starting and depositing a new version of the published DMP or other research plans. However, if you have deposited your DMP or other research plans using your own account on Zenodo (i.e. login to Zenodo with your own credentials), then you are able to also make minor changes, e.g. on the title of the DMPs or other research plans, directly from the Zenodo interface.

You might be experiencing this problem because there are incomplete mandatory fields in your DMP or other research plans. Please check for those fields, fill in with appropriate information and try again. Should the problem persists, please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

DMPs and other research plans can be shared with many colleagues in support of collaborative writing, but DMPs and other research plans should be worked by one person at a time. ARGOS will inform you if another colleague has the DMP or other research plan you are trying to edit open, so that your team avoids information loss.

You need to have a Zenodo login to perform a deposit. Please sign up in Zenodo or use the token option to publish your DMPs and other research plans and get a DOI.

Yes, it is. The OpenDMP software that ARGOS has deployed upon is open source code available under Apache 2.0 license. You may find more information about the software here.

Of course! Please feel free to suggest new features and to actively contribute to ARGOS development via pull requests in Gitea.

ARGOS takes all necessary steps in handling and protecting personal and sensitive information. Please check the ARGOS Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

Please find all information about ARGOS Terms of Service and Privacy, here. Additionally, you may find ARGOS Cookies policy, here.

Unless there are any contractual or institutional agreements stating ownership of outputs produced in the context of a project/ collaboration, owners of ARGOS outputs are DMP contributors, i.e. DMP owners and DMP members, who have been involved with writing the DMP or other research plans.

Please find all information about ARGOS Terms of Service and Privacy, here. Additionally, you may find ARGOS Cookies policy, here.