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The National Research Environment


Within the EU, Belgium has a strong reputation for R&D and innovation, primarily due to the high quality of its education and research facilities. There are two separate university systems in Belgium, six French-speaking universities (including two in Brussels) and 21 university colleges (‘hautes écoles’), and six universities and 22 university colleges (“hogescholen”) in Flanders (see full list of universities). Additionally there are several subject-based research institutions. The larger strategic research centres in Flanders are often participating in EU and other international projects and are significant actors in the ERA (e.g. IMEC, VITO, VIB), as is the Walloon Space research pole (Liège) or the bio-medical pole (Brussels-Charleroi).


Overview

This is a summary of the concise overview of the Belgian research landscape that can be found on the Erawatch-site National profile for Belgium.
The governance of the Belgian research system reflects the federal structure of the country.

  • The Federal Science Policy office (BelSPO) coordinates science policy at the federal level as well as on an international level. The federal government also coordinates some research of national interest such as defence, space and polar research.
  • The Flemish R&D system is governed by the Department of Economy, Science and Innovation (EWI). The main role of EWI is policy-making, execution and policy studies.
  • Below the level of EWI, two key agencies for STI policy are the innovation agency IWT and the main funding channel for research at universities being the FWO-Vlaanderen. These agencies govern the various policy instruments and measures within the Flemish region aiming at science and innovation. PMV governs several funds and measures that facilitate start and risk capital. The Entrepreneurship Agency in Flanders plays a very modest role in S&T policy.
  • On the French Community side, the regions (Wallonia and app. 80% of the budget of the Brussels-Capital Region) and the community are separate entities whereby the Ministry of the French Community governs the fundamental research aspects (mainly through the F.R.S-FNRS National Scientific Research Fund) and the education system, including all French-speaking universities (six French-speaking universities, including two in Brussels). The regional governments oversee applied and industrial research with economic development purposes, and support technology guidance and funding for interfaces between research organisations, industry and universities.
  • The key agency within the Walloon administration is the DGO6 (Directorate General operational for Economy, Employment and Research).
  • Brussels-Capital's R&D policy is governed by the Ministry of the Brussels-Capital Region and the implementing agency is INNOVIRIS (Brussels Institute for Research and Innovation).

Approximately two-thirds of Belgian research is performed in the business sector (67.1% in 2011). The role of research centers is very limited. Universities have a strong role in R&D policy making.


Major research funders

  • www.frs-fnrs.be : FNRS Fonds (National) de la Recherche Scientifique
  • www.fwo.be : FWO, the Research Foundation Flanders
  • www.iwt.be : IWT the government agency for Innovation by Science and Technology
  • www.iminds.be : IMinds is Flanders’ digital research & entrepreneurship hub.
  • www.belspo.be : BELSPO Belgian Science Policy
  • www.herculesstichting.be : investments in research infrastructure
  • www.kbs-frb.be: Koning Boudewijnstichting
  • BOF “Special Research Funds” are allocated annually by the Flanders Government to the universities, supporting fundamental research activities.


Funder mandates with regards to open access

ROARMAP lists 17 open access mandates in Belgium, either on funder or on institutional level. 2 funders' Open Access mandates can be found on SHERPA/JULIET.(FNRS and FWO). All Belgian Universities have recommendations or  mandates in place  requiring or requesting to make their research publications Open Access when archived, although with different levels of achievement/coercion. FWO, Belspo, Hercules and FNRS oblige their  researchers to self-archive all articles coming from research funded by the FWO and FRS- FNRS,  in OA repositories. In 2013, FWO announced plans to oblige funded projects to deposit relevant raw datasets in repositories as well, although there is a recommendation to do so there is no official policy yet.
Obviously, the policy of international funders on OA is applicable to Belgian researchers working with these funds.

Open Access in Belgium

 
Open Access projects and initiatives

DRIVER
The DRIVER projects have been instrumental in developing OA awareness across the Belgian scientific community. Ghent University Library was the Belgian partner in those projects and created a Belgian repository community, DRIVER Belgium. Several technical and legal meetings were organised, the DRIVER Guidelines were distributed to repository managers and a national search interface for the driver compliant OA-repositories was set up.
 
Brussels Declaration on Open Access
Crucial was the national conference in Feb. 2007, that brought together major stakeholders in Belgium regarding research and where fourteen university rectors, the Ministers of Science of Flanders and Wallonia and the president of the Flemish Council of Schools for HE signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. By signing the Berlin Declaration on Open Access in 2007,18 Belgian research institutions and research funders agreed to support the dissemination of publicly funded scientific research through Open Access.
In October 2012, at the National Open Access Day in Brussels, the three ministers of Science and Research signed the Brussels Declaration on Open Access, in which they agreed to make Open Access the default for all Belgian research output. All Parties also agreed to take the lead to see this realized in an Europe and worldwide context.

Universities
The University of Liège adopted an institutional ID/OA mandate (immediate deposit – optional access) in May 2007. The assessment of research performance and the evaluation of researchers within this university are linked to the depositing of scientific output in the institutional repository (ORBI). This model is often referred to as the “Liège model” internationally. In December 2009, Ghent University adopted an institutional ID/OA mandate too. L’Université Catholique de Louvain has adopted this model as well from January 1st 2013.

The University of Liège organized an Open Access meeting in 2007 resulting in the creation of Enabling Open Scholarship (EOS), whose goal is to unite universities and research institutions worldwide, particularly with regard to the creation, dissemination and preservation of research findings.

FNRS
The Fund for Scientific Research (F.R.S.-FNRS) has recently adopted a policy regarding the mandatory deposit in institutional repositories of publications by funded researchers. It also chairs the Belgian Interuniversity Working Group on HORIZON 2020 for the monitoring of EU research policies. FNRS is a founding member of Science Europe (SE) and the European Science Foundation (ESF) and participates in several relevant working groups initiated by these organisations such as the working groups on: ‘Open Access to Data’ (SE);‘Open Access to Publications’(SE) and the ‘EMRC Expert Group on Open Access in Biomedical Research’(ESF). F.R.S.-FNRS was also responsible for the organisation of a European-wide conference entitled ‘Open Access Management and Policy’ in 2011. It is involved in several international and European initiatives such as ERA-Nets, Joint Programming Initiatives, etc and a parter of PASTEUR4OA. Within these networks of funders, common principles of data sharing and open access are often adopted, in particular regarding the grant holders funded through common calls for proposals.

Open Access repositories

Many universities and research institutions in Belgium run an institutional or subject-based repository. At present almost all universities and major university colleges have Open Access repositories. At present OpenDOAR list 23 Belgian repositories, 15 of which are OpenAIRE compatible (Jan. 2016). Available full-text contents include doctoral and licentiate theses, journal articles, conference papers, reports, books and book chapters.

In the World ranking of Repositories the Belgian repositories are doing well, with 3 repositories listed in the top 100 of repositories worldwide, namely those of the Catholic university of Leuven, The university of Liege and the university of Ghent. There is no overarching open access mandate but awareness of Open Access issues has been rising steadily and 17 institutions set open access mandates.


Open Access publishing

The Directory of Open Access Journals lists 36 Belgian titles (Februari 2016), the majority of which do not charge APC’s and are funded by or established in collaboration with a research institution. The Belgian open access journal Geologica Belgica ranks third of all Belgian journals by the The SCImago Journal & Country Rank, ranked by journal impact.

The University of Ghent offers services to some Open Access Journals, providing an infrastructure and technical support: ojs.ugent.be


(Open) research data 

There are currently 3 Belgian open research data repositories, 2 of which are supported by VLIZ. The Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) is a maritime institute that supports the free exchange of data. Data should be made available as much as possible for scientific research at both national and international levels. Other than the maritime archives, the Université Libre de Bruxelles has a dataproject concerning astronomy and astrophysics. Belgian data repositories:

The Registry of Research Data Repositories, lists 23 more data repositories where Belgian institutions are involved. The complete list can be found on re3data.org.

Local governments as well as the federal goverment are in favor of Open Data and have put mandates in place to secure Open Access to government data. On the Open Data knowledge platform of the Flemish government a large number of data sets are available to consult and reuse. Apart from the governement and the repositories there are various other projects and initiatives supporting, implementing and researching Open Data and its possibilities.

  • IMinds has a Big Data in Health project and a Linked Open Data Project supporting automatic linking and publishing of data.
  • Belgian Biodiversity Platform provides free access to biodiversity data pertaining to Belgium
  • INBO: manages or supports multiple databases and interactive applications concerning nature and ecosystems
  • Vliz: provides assistance, technologies and tools to scientists and policy makers to support marine data management.

In addition to policy and bottom-up initiatives there are also initiatives that provide technical support for Open Data.

  • Thedatatank is data management system providing technical support
  • WILOD is the sucessor of RILOD and aims to link Flemish publications with data
  • R&Wbase enables the distributed version control for linked data
  • Linkedfragments explores interfaces to solve queries at the client side with server data.

Useful links and resources


There is a dedicated national portal. It provides information and news that relate to developments in OA in English and is targeted at the Belgian audience.

Contributors Contact Details

Inge Van Nieuwerburgh
Emilie Hermans
Ghent University
info@openaccess.be
@openaccess_be

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The National Research Environment

The scientific institutions in Latvia have complex structure. The Ministry of Education and Science (hereinafter “Ministry”) is the leading state administration institution in the field of education and science, and 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). The ministry is responsible also for the research funding and managing of national and international research programmes.
 
 
In Latvia there are 6 state universities and many different state and private higher education institutions.
 
 
There are different types of scientific institutions that are engaged in research in Latvia - state scientific institutes, state and private higher education institutions, independent scientific institutes that are formally integrated into structures of the universities and research structural units of business enterprises. In Latvia there are about 90 research institutions.
 
 
Some scientific institutes in Latvia are recognized internationally and their research results have a high impact on international research - The Institute of Solid State Physics of the University of Latvia, The Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science of the University of Latvia, The Institute of Physics of the University of Latvia, The Institute of Materials and Structures of the Riga Technical University etc., 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, Latvian State Institute of Wood Chemistry etc.
 
 

Major research funders

 
Funding for scientific work in Latvia is mainly granted on competitive results and bases. This kind of system was formed by Latvian Council of Science in 1990.
 
 
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.
 
 
Since 2007 comprehensive system of research funding has been in place in Latvia. It encompasses state and higher education institutions’ financing 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, funds and enterprises.
 
 
However in 2008 and 2009, state funding for science was substantially reduced, and funding of private sector decreased as well. The funding was reduced because of the impact of economic crisis. Regardless reduced funding, in November 2010 Latvia has set a quantitative target to increase investment in research and development funding for 1,5% of Latvian gross domestic product (GDP) by 2020.   
 
 
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

Latvian scientists are successfully participating in EC funded research framework programmes and receiving funding support from the structural funds.

Latvian scientists have participated and received funding already in FP5 (1999-2002), submitting 640 different research projects. During the FP5 233 projects (30%) was approved and received funding from EC. However during FP6 (2002-2006) there were 1027 different projects submitted and 245 (21%) were supported. In the period of FP7 (2007-2011) up to November 2011 there were 813 projects submitted from which 181 projects (22%) received funding from EC. 15 of supported projects in the period of FP7 had coordinators from scientific institution in Latvia.

 

Open Access and Repositories

Open Access projects and initiatives

 
Even before participation in different OA projects, University of Latvia (LU), the State agency "Culture information systems" (KIS), and eIFL.net understood the importance of OA resources and organised seminar The Open Access: Maximising Research Quality and Impact, which took place at the University of Latvia on October 22, 2009.
 
 
In the last five years there were taken several important steps for the development of Open Access movement in Latvia. There are established two institutional repositories; researchers in Latvia were kept regularly informed about Open Access benefits, possibilities and activities in Latvia.
 
 
From 2009 to 2014 the UL Library participated in the European Commission Seventh Framework Programme project „OpenAIRE” (Open Access Infrastructure for Research in Europe) and OpenAIREplus (2nd Generation of Open Access Infrastructure for Research in Europe: 2012-2014), and 2015 continued in the OpenAIRE2020 (Open Access Infrastructure for Research in Europe 2020)) and PASTEUR4OA (Open Access Policy Alignment Strategies for European Union Research).

The Library of the University of Latvia celebrates annually international Open Access Week by organizing discussions, meetings, presentations, workshops on various Open Access initiatives and by spreading promotional materials to other academic institutions. The Library participated also in eifl-OA project “Information about Open Access movement and resources in the University of Latvia” in 2011.

 
In 2012 the Library of the University of Latvia organized special week that promoted the repository of e-resources of the University to academic staff of the university and all higher education institutions in Latvia.
In 2013 the Scientific council of the UL held a session and a discussion "Copyright issues in Open Access: a burden or an opportunity?" which also took place in the Scientific café. A video devoted to the 5-year anniversary of Open Access in Latvia, and electronic booklets where the main questions about copyright issues in Open Access where answered was produced.


In 2015 the main event was a conference "Open Science - the 21th century benefits for researchers" which was held during the international Open Access week. The aim of the conference was to raise awareness about Open Science, its challenges and benefits and the recommendations of European Commission in relation to research data management and digitalization, and sharing of experience. Event was co-funded by European Commission’s research and innovation programme (FP7) project FOSTER (Facilitate Open Science Training for European Research).


An important step to contribute Open Access and Open Science movement in Latvian society was the creation of National Open Access Desk web page and open e-course “Open Science”.

 
Many researchers in Latvia publish their papers in Open Access journals and deposit their papers in subject repositories because they recognize that their studies will be accessible to a larger audience than by publishing in conventional journals. 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.
 
 
Researchers from University of Latvia and Riga Technical University can deposit their publications in institutional repositories and also the publications of the University, such as Scientific papers and periodical editions, can be accessible in the repository of the University of Latvia.
 
 
 
 

Open Access repositories

 
In the last year through active Open Access promotion, there were established two institutional repositories in Latvia - e-resource repository of the University of Latvia and Riga Technical University Repository. The University of Latvia manages also SciRePrints (Science and Religion Dialogue Prints) repository and since 2013 SciRePrints is integrated in the - e-resource repository of the University of Latvia. All repositories are registered in ROAR and OpenDOAR. Since 2014 in the e-resource repository of the University of Latvia available are dissertations, which were presented in UL since 2007. In 2015 from the University of Latvia information system were bachelor, masters and other students works imported in the repository (the access is restricted according to copyright).

However Riga Technical University repository is not fully open access, except of The Scientific Journal of Riga Technical University, other scientific articles published by the university staff can be accessed only with passwords given by the university. Full texts on the e-resources repository of the University of Latvia are freely accessible for everyone.
 
As the University of Latvia is one of the first higher education institutions and scientific research institution in Latvia that has made its repository, university provides all interest with consultations and information.

 

Open Access publishing

There are 6 open access journals listed in DOAJ:

Baltic Journal of Modern Computing
ISSN: 2255-8950
Subject: Computer science --- Software engineering --- Information technology --- Information
Publisher: University of Latvia; Vilnius University; Latvia University of Agriculture; Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, University of Latvia
Language: English
Start year: 2013

Environmental and experimental Biology
ISSN: 2255-9582
Subject: Biology (General)
Publisher: University of Latvia
Language: English
Start year: 2010

Latvian Journal of Physics and Technical Sciences
ISSN: 0868-8257
Subject: General and Civil Engineering
Publisher: De Gruyter
Language: English
Start year: 2008

Proceedings of the Latvian Academy of Sciences. Section B: Natural, Exact and Applied Sciences
ISSN: 1407-009X
Subject: Biology --- Mathematics
Publisher: De Gruyter
Language: English
Start year: 2008

Rural Sustainability Research
ISSN: 2256-0939
Subject: Life Sciences --- Biotechnology Life Sciences --- Plant Science --- Life Sciences --- Ecology
Publisher: De Gruyter Open
Language: English
Start year: 2015

Transport and Telecommunication Journal
ISSN: 1407-6179
Subject: Engineering --- Introductions and Overviews
Publisher: De Gruyter Open
Language: English
Start year: 2000

 

Open Access organisations and groups

 
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 and became the main information centre and leader in promoting and support of Open Access initiatives in Latvia, encouraging other academic institutions to participate in Open Access activities. The Library and Riga Technical University started to discuss together the main questions about the development of their institutional repositories, depositing and copyright policy and further dissemination of Open Access initiatives.

 

Contact details of the National Open Access Desk

Iveta Gudakovska
Manager of project OpenAIRE2020 - Latvia
National Open Access Desk
The University of Latvia
E-mail: iveta.gudakovska[@]lu.lv

 
Gita Rozenberga
National Open Access Desk
The University of Latvia
e-mail: gita.rozenberga[@]lu.lv
phone: +37167551286

 

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The National Research Environment

Turkey is about to be one of the biggest higher education landscape with the 185 universities in Europe.  The 113 of these universities are financed publicly, and the 74 left are the private universities who are also performing the higher education activities in the national and international level. Yüksek Öğretim Kurulu (The Council of Higher Education- YÖK) has been administrating the activities of the universities in Turkey.

Major research funders

TThe Major Research Funder in Turkey is “Türkiye Bilimsel ve Teknolojik Araştırma Kurumu (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey-TÜBİTAK). The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey is the leading agency for management, funding and conduct of research in Turkey. It was established in 1963 with a mission to advance science and technology, conduct research and support Turkish researchers. The Council is an autonomous institution and is governed by a Scientific Board whose members are selected from prominent scholars from universities, industry and research institutions. TÜBİTAK is responsible for promoting, developing, organizing, conducting and coordinating research and development in line with national targets and priorities. From now, Bilim, Sanayi ve Teknoloji Bakanlığı (Ministry of Science, Industry and Technology) has been aiming the national research environement with a view to enhance the competitiveness of the country in the international level by supporting the activities on developping and implementing policies, strategies, plans and programs on science, industry and technology, promoting the adoption of a scientific approach and understanding in the society as the society is transformed into an information society, and  providing the necessary conditions for a safe, sustainable, efficient, environmental-friendly production which is based on high technology. Anadolu Üniversite Kütüphaneleri Konsorsiyumu Derneği (Anatolian University Libraries Consortium Association-ANKOS) is also supporting the Open Access Initiatives and studies via the ANKOS Open Access and Institutional Repositories Working Group (ANKOS OAIR). The Turkish Higher Education Council (YÖK) established the YÖK Open Access Working Group on the January, 2014. This working group will be direct reporting of the Higher Education Council.  This working group aims to provide that each single institution would create its own institutional repository according to a National Open Access Policy which would be prepared and also to unite and harvest these repositories under a National Open Access Initiative.

Open Access and Repositories

Starting from 2006 the Open Access term is started to be known at the Turkish academic community and the libraries and Information Centers has performed some activities. With the aim of creating awareness on open access, these initiatives have led to the setting up of institutional archives, especially in universities. These archives were analyzed by consulting the Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) and the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR). Izmir Institute of Technology, the Turkish Partner of the OpenAIREplus Project, has become the first institution in Turkey which agreed to adopt a “mandate policy” in Turkey on Open Access; and the other institutions that are supporting the Open Access activities have been working on to create their repositories and make the authors and researchers share their studies in these repositories by developing this issue.

Open Access Repositories

Even the Open Access studies have been still developing in Turkey these are some repositories which were registered to OpenDOAR and ROAR, too. There are 45 repositories which are registered to the OpenDOAR, and 27 repositories which are registered to ROAR. Starting from the First National Open Access Workshop, ANKOS OAIR announced that it would support the DSpace Institutional Repositories Open Source Software by helping the institutions both by presenting and setting up the system in to the institutional archive system.

Open Access Publishing

According to the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) December 2014 data there are 290 Turkish OA journals which were registered to DOAJ. Some of these journals are hosted by OA journal platforms, but most are run individually by research institutions and learned societies. ANKOS OAIR is the Turkish partner of DOAJ for the first evaluation of the journals that applied to register into DOAJ from Turkey. The registered journal number to the TÜBİTAK-ULAKBİM DergiPark Project has been 400 since it has been started with 150 Journals.

Open Access projects and initiatives

Useful links and resources

Contributors Contact Details
Mr. Gultekin GURDAL
Library Director of Izmir Institute of Technology
Email:  gultekingurdal@iyte.edu.tr
Tel: +902327506331

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The National Research Environment

The research environment in Luxembourg is comprised mainly of the following institutions:

Full information about research in Luxembourg can be found on the Euraxess website: www.euraxess.lu/eng/R-D-in-Luxembourg.

Major Research Funders

  • Fonds National de la Recherche (FNR) - www.fnr.lu.

Funder Mandates

At the moment, there are no funder mandates in Luxembourg.

Open Access Projects and Initiatives

On the 10th of May 2012, the University of Luxembourg launched their Open Access initiative by signing a collaboration agreement with the University of Liège.  This launch announced the establishment of both a digital repository, ORBilu, as well as a campaign designed to inform researchers about Open Access and their rights as authors.

Open Access Repositories

The University of Luxembourg’s repository, ORBilu, was launched on 22 April 2013.  Following the example set by the University of Liège, the University of Luxembourg adopted an institutional ID/OA mandate (immediate deposit – optional access).  As of March 2015, the repository contains close to 17 000 references with half of them containing a full-text document.

Open Access Publishing

The Directory of Open Access Journals lists 1 title for Luxembourg as of March 2015 - Articulo : Journal of Urban Research.

Contributor's Contact Details

Beth Park
orbilu@uni.lu
University of Luxembourg

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The National Research Environment
As of 30 March 2014, 34 educational institutions offer higher education in Estonia and can be divided as follows according to the type of ownership:
  • 6 universities in public law
  • 4 privately owned universities
  • 10 public professional higher education institutions
  • 11 private professional higher education institutions
  • 2 public vocational educational institutions
  • 1 private vocational educational institution

(Information of the Communication Office of the Ministry of Education and Research)

Major research funders

The structure and basis of operation of Estonia’s research and development (R&D) system are established in the Research and Development Organisation Act (RDOA). The Government of the Republic prepares national R&D development plans and submits them to the Riigikogu (parliament); approves national R&D programmes; ensures the cooperation between the ministries and enacts legislation. The Research and Development Council advises the Government of the Republic on matters related to R&D. The Ministry of Education and Research (MER) implements national research policy, organizes the financing and evaluation of the activities of R&D institutions and coordinates international research cooperation at the national level. The MER is also responsible for the planning, coordination, execution and monitoring of research policy related to the activities of universities and research institutes.

The Minister of Education and Research is advised by the Research Policy Committee and the Council of Scientific Competence. The Research Policy Committee submits proposals for shaping Estonian research policy as well as the strategy for financing R&D institutions. The Council of Scientific Competence is responsible for submitting proposals to the Minister concerning the budget of research institutions, the targeted financing of research goals, and assessing the conformity of research results with international standards.

The Estonian Science Foundation (ETF) is responsible for supporting scientific research through the allocation of grants and by finding resources outside the state budget. ETF also represents Estonia’s scientific community at the international level.

The main goal of the Archimedes Foundation is to broaden the opportunities for Estonia in the area of European education and research through various cooperation programmes and projects as well as to oversee the accreditation of higher education and the evaluation of research. The Archimedes Foundation is also the national contact organization for EU research and development framework programmes. Archimedes Foundation’s Implementing Agency of Structural Support is the agency responsible for implementing EU structural support during the period 2007–2013. The Archimedes Foundation mediates support for the strengthening of Estonian competitiveness in the field of research and development, including the development of human resources, the implementation of research programmes, and the modernization of institutions of higher education and scientific research establishments.

Membership of the Estonian Academy of Sciences includes approximately 60 top Estonian scientists. Ten research associations and societies and six research institutions have also joined the Academy - working together to achieve common goals.

The Estonian Research Information System (ETIS) is a national register which aggregates information on R&D institutions, researchers, projects and research results. In addition, ETIS also serves as an intermediary for the submission of applications and reports as well as the revision and approval thereof.

(Information of the Communication Office of the Ministry of Education and Research)

In Estonia, R&D activities are funded by the state budget, budgets of rural municipalities or cities, targeted donations, income earned from the economic activities of R&D institutions, and from other sources. The total volume of R&D funding in Estonia has been growing constantly and amounted to 1.14% of the GDP in 2007. Estonia is aiming to increase the total volume of R&D spending to 1.9% of the GDP by 2010. In 2007, the public sector still remained the largest investor in research and development with a share of 45.6% of the total investments. 

The implementation of EU Structural Funds for supporting research and development activities is governed by the MER and managed by the Archimedes Foundation’s Implementing Agency of Structural Support. The tasks of the Implementing Agency include the processing of applications for EU Structural Funds in the field of research and development, the counselling of support recipients, and the verification of support payment applications and the eligibility of costs. Support has been planned for the 2007–2013 programme period in the amount of 8.6 billion EEK.
(Information of the Communication Office of the Ministry of Education and Research)

Estonia has neither a uniform open access policy nor a national-level official position concerning the
publication of scientific research. Interest in the issue and a positive attitude towards it have been
expressed, but any substantive decisions have so far been left up to the discretion of each research
institutions.
(from the article Open Access and a University Library by Heiki Epner, Sciecom Info 1 (2009))

 

 

 

Open Access and Repositories

Open Access repositories

Digital repository of Tartu University Library is a repository for e-theses and e-publications, digitized theses and books, manuscripts and images etc.

Open Access journals

There are 14 open access journals listed in the DOAJ.

 

Open Access organisations and groups

Martin Hallik, Tartu University Library, EIFL-OA country coordinator: martin.hallik[@]ut.ee

 

Contact Details of the National Open Access Desk

Anneli Sepp, University of Tartu Library, anneli.sepp[@]ut.ee

Open Access and a university
library<http://nile.lub.lu.se/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/viewFile/1509/1244>director
Heiki Epner discusses the current situation for Open Access in
Estonia and describes the work they are doing at the university of Tartu
Library.

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