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 The Core members of the OPERAS Research Infrastructure have jointly founded an international association at a joint meeting in Brussels on 20 November 2019. This enables OPERAS to act as a legal entity. OPERAS’ members work together from many European countries as the Research Infrastructure is a distributed undertaking. As a legal entity, the partners will be able to act more united. A joint OPERAS office in Brussels is also planned. This office will enable the infrastructure to be even more responsive to the needs of its members in Europe.The association’s organisational structure gives all members the opportunity to actively participate. It also includes a scientific control committee and involves the scientific ministries of the members’ countries. The association’s various assemblies meet at least once a year and are coordinated by an organisational team.For OPERAS this is an important step on its way to the ESFRI Roadmap. OPERAS plans to apply in 2020.Suzanne Dumouchel, who has organized the formation of OPERAS as legal entity, declares:I am really glad to guide OPERAS through this important step. We have generated the transformation of OPERAS for over a year now and are very happy to have eight founding members with us. We hope to include more countries soon and will start by inviting EKT for Greece to be part of the Executive Assembly.The following eight organisations from eight countries are involved in the foundation of OPERAS. They also act as Executive Assembly in the new AISBL:IBL PAN (PL)Jisc (UK)MWS (DE)OAPEN (NL)CNRS (FR)University of Coimbra (PT)University of Turin (IT)University of Zadar (HR)The founding members have already invited the National Documentation Center of Greece (EKT), considering their role within the OPERAS network, to participate in the Executive Assembly in order to foster a further and close collaboration.