The National Research Environment

The scientific institutions in Latvia are organised into 11 state scientific institutes and 15 independent scientific institutes that are formally integrated into the structures of the universities. There are also 5 state universities and 15 schools of higher education along with their scientific structural units.

The Institute of Solid State Physics of the University of Latvia and the Institute of Organic Synthesis of Latvia are recognized internationally and their research results have a high impact on international research. The number of their scientific publications is comparable with the average number of scientific publications of research institutions of USA.

The Institute of Organic Synthesis of Latvia and Latvian BioMedical Research and Study Centre are significant research institutions that are well known by the number of their inventions, which are patented abroad.

Other important research centres include the Institute of Atomic Physics and Spectroscopy of the University of Latvia and the Institute of Materials and Structures of the Riga Technical University.

Major research funders

The Ministry of Education and Science (hereinafter “Ministry”) is the leading state administration institution in the field of education and science, as well as in the fields of sports and official language policy, and it is responsible for the development of draft legislative acts regulating the relevant fields and draft policy planning documents. The Ministry also supervises the implementation of the policy in state administration institutions, in agencies that the Ministry oversees and capital companies, where the Ministry is a shareholder (institutions subordinated to the Ministry).

In 1990 the Latvian Council of Science was formed and the transition to a new grant system of funding projects on a competitive basis was initiated.

At the end of 1991 the first governmental department responsible for science and research was established. The Latvian Academy of Sciences was re-organized into an association of prominent scientists in 1992. The majority of the Academic Institutes administrated by the Ministry of Education and several of these associated themselves with the University of Latvia.

Since 2007 comprehensive system of research funding has been in place in Latvia. It encompasses funding for state research programs, institutional funding, funding from EU and other foreign countries (EU structural funds, framework programs), and grants and financing from various foundations and funds. The major funders of research in 2008 were state, institutions of higher education, EU and other foreign countries and enterprises.

The research funders in Latvia have no definite policy on Open Access, but in order to gain more visibility of their work and to have more impact on international research some scientific institutions and researchers publish in open access journals and repositories.

EC research funding

Institutions and researchers from Latvia participated in EC Framework programs. Latvia submitted 667 project to FP5, and 178 were supported and received EU funding. In the FP6 21% of all submissions from Latvia’s research institutions were supported. At the end of 2009 84 projects from Latvia were supported in FP7. In 2008 EU funded research was approximately 21% of the total research funding in Latvia.

 

Open Access and Repositories

Open Access projects and initiatives

The Open Access: Maximising Research Quality and Impact seminar which took place at the University of Latvia on 22 October 2009, organised by the University of Latvia (LU), the State agency "Culture information systems" (KIS), and eIFL.net, brought together researchers, research managers and policy-makers, journal editors and publishers, librarians, and ICT specialists to discuss the latest developments of the open access movement and to debate how to raise the visibility of research outputs from Latvian universities and research organisations, and how to build their capacities in global knowledge sharing. In his welcoming speech, Prof. Indrikis Muiznieks, LU vice rector, confirmed,
that LU is looking forward to exploring the benefits of open access as a viable solution to existing problems in scholarly communication. Indra Dedze, project manager at the LU Academic Department, presented challenges and opportunities for research publications at LU with its 90-year long history. LU academic staff annually publishes on average 3, 000 research papers, but these are not widely available, so it is important to help the library setting up an institutional repository to collect the research papers and provide access to them.

Many researchers in Latvia publish their papers in Open Access journals and deposit their papers in subject repositories because they recognize that it results in access to a larger audience than by publishing in conventional journals.

There are some initial steps that have been taken to support OA policy in Latvia. The University of Latvia made Scientific papers of the University published by the University of Latvia Press freely accessible in the University portal.

Currently theses (full texts and their summaries) defended at the University of Latvia since 2006 are made available in the database Theses of the University of Latvia. This database is accessible through the Electronic Union Catalogue, an aggregation of materials from  eight nationally significant Latvian libraries, and through the University portal, which  was created using ILS Aleph made by ExLibris. The data in this database is organized in 21 MARC format.

The University of Latvia is now considering creating an institutional repository.

Scientists from Latvia are publishing individually in subject repositories such as PubMed Central, ArXiv, Cogprints etc. and in Open Access journals. The publications can be accessed through DOAJ, Open J-Gate, PLoS etc.

Open Access repositories

At present there is one subject repository registered in ROAR and OpenDOAR - SciRePrints, Science and Religion Dialogue Prints - that is managed by the University of Latvia.

Open Access publishing

There are 2 open access journals listed in DOAJ:

Latvian Journal of Physics and Technical Sciences
ISSN: 08688257
Subject: General and Civil Engineering
Publisher: Versita
 Language: English
 Start year: 2008

Proceedings of the Latvian Academy of Sciences. Section B: Natural, Exact and Applied Sciences
ISSN: 1407009X
Subject: Biology --- Mathematics
Publisher: Versita
 Language: English
 Start year: 2008

Open Access organisations and groups

Open Access ideas are currently in the early stage of implementation in Latvia. Currently, the Library of the University of Latvia after taking part in the OpenAIRE project, has started to promote and support the Open Access movement in Latvia. The Library has also started to distribute information about Open Access to the academic and research community of the University of Latvia.

Agrita Sagalajeva, State agency "Culture information systems", is an eIFL-OA country coordinator, agrita.sagalajeva[@]kis.gov.lv

 

Contact details of the National Open Access Desk

Sandra Ranka
Department of the Information and Bibliography
The Library of the University of Latvia
e-mail: sandra.ranka[@]lu.lv
phone: +37167034432

Ruta Garklava
The head of Information and bibliography department
The Library of the University of Latvia
Phone: +37167034432
E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Iveta Gudakovska
Director
The Library of the University of Latvia
E-mail: iveta.gudakovska[@]lu.lv

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