The Slovenian researchers are obliged to deposit and ensure open access to publications through repositories according to the aligned policies in the European Research Area, i.e. on open access in Horizon 2020 ) and according to the national open access strategy. The latter was adopted in September 2015 and the action plan is being prepared for its implementation.
The four Slovenian universities have jointly established a national portal Open Science Slovenia and institutional repositories for written final works of studies and publications of researchers (RUL, DKUM, RUP, RUNG). For researchers from research institutes, an additional literature repository was set up (DIRROS). These five repositories use the same nationally made repository software. The universities’ repositories are connected with the organizations’ information systems (for students, for digital identity) and with national systems (the bibliographic system and services COBISS, the national SICRIS). Plagiarism detection is carried out for each publication deposited into the one of the five repositories. The national open access infrastructure also includes literature repositories using EPrints software (DRUGG, PeFprints, Sci Vie, ePrints.FRI) and the Digital Library of Slovenia. All the literature repositories in the national open access infrastructure comply with OpenAIRE guidelines for literature repositories.
OpenAIRE compatibility of repositories is advised to simplify the funder’s use of OpenAIRE services for funders. There are three levels of OpenAIRE compatibility (basic, 2.0+, 3.0). The desired level of OpenAIRE compatibility for Slovenian repositories is 3.0, because it will enable monitoring of open access mandate compliance by the European Commission and by the national funders (e.g., monitoring of Portuguese funder Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, its statistics at OpenAIREportal).
Research data remain a challenge in Slovenia. With Work Programme 2017 of Horizon 2020, open research data are made the default setting. The national open access strategy envisages that national pilot programme on open research data will be carried out till 2020. There is only one data archive in the country, i.e. the Social Science Data Archives that is member of CESSDA. The archive was encouraged to comply with OpenAIRE guidelines for data archives.
Information for Slovenian open access stakeholders is available at Open Access Slovenia portal. In line with the latest European developments on open science, advocacy and training of stakeholders will also have to focus on other topics besides open access to publications and research data. The future will also show the need for additional infrastructures for open science. Regarding these, it would be beneficial to have common guidelines for the European Research Area that would encompass the needs of researchers and funders.
