Serbia has  adopted a national science policy on July 14th, 2018, called the 'Open Science Platform'. The Serbian version of the policy is available on the official webpage of the Serbian Ministry (MESTD) and t he version in English is available on OpenAIRE. The discussion about OS in Serbia started in 2014. At the time, in Serbia, OA was mandated only for PhD theses. Therefore, a working group was established by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development (MESTD) with ...

*** Thank you to Mikael Laakso for the excellent feedback ** A couple weeks ago, the European Commission (EC) announced that starting with their new funding programme, Horizon Europe, they will no longer reimburse publication fees for hybrid Open Access . Previously, the EC had excluded hybrid APCs when they first introduced Open Access funds during the FP7 (Post-Grant) Open Access Pilot, but later covered hybrid Open Access in the following funding programme, Horizon 2020 (2014-2020). Hybr...

The following statement is a translation of the Greek document originally published on the HEAL-Link website . "Building on the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities and on the progress that has been achieved so far, we are pursuing the large-scale implementation of free online access to, and largely unrestricted use and re-use of scholarly research articles. Open Access is a key tool for promoting scientific research, improving the quality of research and...

The Swiss Research Data Day on 12 June 2018 at ETH Zurich was organised by the Swiss research data management project DLCM and supported by the OpenAIRE2020 NOAD in Switzerland. There has been a data deluge in the research sector in recent years, accompanied by an increasing tendency to allow the scientific community access to original research data and the procedures used in order to enable study results to be fully reproduced. The management of research data is far from a straightforward issue...

On 25 May, 2018 the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), EU regulation 2016/679, took effect and now governs the processing of personal data. The purpose of the GDPR is to harmonize data privacy laws across Europe, to protect and empower all EU citizens’ data privacy and to encourage the lawful free flow of data across Europe . In the same vein, the GDPR also impacts scientific research activities. The GDPR lays down general principles as well as provisions relating to specific data pr...

Based on a decision by the National Research Council, all publications produced in SNSF-funded projects are to be freely available in digital format as of 2020. "Research findings funded by public money are a public good," says Matthias Egger, the President of the National Research Council. Open Access is quickly becoming the accepted standard in science. Until now, less than 50% of the publications produced in SNSF-funded research have met this requirement. But as of 2020, the SNSF will expect ...

The European University Association (EUA) has recently published a statement welcoming the efforts of National Governments and the European Commission in promoting Open Science values in their national research funding schemes and in the EU Research and Innovation Framework Programme. This statement follows the previous recommendations EUA provided to its members Towards Full Open Access in 2020 and Towards Open Access to Research Data and highlights the role of the OpenAire platform in the adop...

OpenAIRE welcomes and endorses the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) Declaration and the vision of European Open Science. As stated in the EOSC summit on 12.6.17 OpenAIRE has often emphasised that while EOSC develops a European research data commons, the scope should be broader. In our view and experience, EOSC must take a holistic approach and address all stages of scientific knowledge production, sharing and dissemination as integral parts of the Open Science agenda. More specifically, and to...

Supporting Open Access journal editors and publishers in Serbia and participating in the Western Balkan Working Group on Open Science SCIndeks is the central hub of the integrated system of quality-controlled scientific publishing in Serbia. The SCIndeks team developed guides and templates to help editorial boards of Serbian Open Access journals to comply with the "new" DOAJ inclusion criteria on publication policy and licensing. New functionalities in editor services were implemented and SCInde...

The Czech Republic National Strategy of Open Access to Scientific Information for 2017-2020 was approved by the Government on June 14, 2017. Decree of the Government (in Czech only, no. 444) is available here . The strategy includes open access to publications and data (Data Management Plans) requirements for publicly funded research projects. Interoperable and OpenAIRE compatible open access e-Infrastructure will be built. And awareness raising and educational activities will be conducted. Acco...

Yesterday, 12th June 2017, the high-level European Open Science Cloud Summit took place in Brussels, Belgium. The Summit was designed to be  Europe’s moment of commitment to the EOSC and to generate a number of concrete EOSC Statements for implementation. By reviewing key areas of EOSC implementation and endorsing the EOSC statements,  participants would commit to making the EOSC a reality by 2020 . As  a clear marker of willingness to build the EOSC as an inclusive and sustainable open commons ...

Researchers who are applying for Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) project funding will have to supply a data management plan (DMP) as of October 2017. DMPs will encourage good data management practices througout the data lifecycle in order to better document, store and validate research findings. Moreover, the SNSF expects that data generated by funded projects will be publicly accessible in non-commercial, digital databases provided there are no legal, ethical, copyright or other issues...

At its plenary assembly on Tuesday, 31 January 2017, the Rectors’ Conference of Swiss Higher Education Institutions, adopted a national Open Access Stategy . The strategy aims to provide public access to research publications via the Internet or via open databases as soon as possible. Currently, access to most research outputs is restricted by the terms and conditions of commercial publishers. Commissioned by the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI), the strategy will ...

On October 7 th 2016, the French Law for a Digital Republic Act (LOI n° 2016-1321 du 7 octobre 2016 pour une République numérique) came into force, following a one year open review process during which the draft law could be improved by citizens. This law introduces new provisions to regulate the digital economy, online cooperative economy, data protection and access to the internet. Two articles are of specific concern for scholarly communication, as they relate directly to open access/open dat...

A guest post by Dawn Hibbert Open Access Advocacy Librarian, University of Strathclyde Embargo periods set by publishers continue to undermine, or at best, delay open access (access to scholarly research without having paid a subscription or cost to access).  Whist publishers have been quick to argue that without embargo periods libraries would no longer purchase subscriptions to their journals, and that it could potentially eat into profits due to the journals perceived “shelf life” this does n...

The Research Data Alliance (RDA) and the International Council for Science World Data System (ICSU-WDS) today announced a new global framework for linking publications and datasets. The  Scholix framework  (Scholarly Link Exchange) represents a set of aspirational principles and practical guidelines to support a global information ecosystem around links between scholarly literature and research data. The framework aims for a seamless exchange of information about literature and related data, the...

Alberto Cabezas Bullemore , Executive Secretary, LA Referencia  & RedCLARA . Email:  OpenAIRE’s mission is to foster the social and technological links that enable Open Science in Europe and beyond . Recognizing that research is increasingly global and that OpenAIRE’s solutions must work within the wider world ecosystem, one of the main goals in this phase of OpenAIRE is to increase interoperability by promoting technological alignment between regions and facilit...

Alberto Cabezas Bullemore , Executive Secretary, LA Referencia  & RedCLARA . Email:  OpenAIRE’s mission is to foster the social and technological links that enable Open Science in Europe and beyond . Recognizing that research is increasingly global and that OpenAIRE’s solutions must work within the wider world ecosystem, one of the main goals in this phase of OpenAIRE is to increase interoperability by promoting technological alignment between regions and facilit...

On the 25 th of February 2016, the Council of ministers of the Republic of Cyprus, approved the adoption of the National policy for Open Access in Cyprus. The document's approval was the outcome of a tremendous collaboration between the different stakeholders involved in the Working Group for Open Access (consisting of the NPR for OA, local Academic institutions and national funders), coordinated by the OPENAIRE2020 Cyprus NOAD (University of Cyprus Library) and highly supported by the coordinat...

Open Access was in the spotlight during the PASTEUR4OA (Open Access Policy Alignment Strategies for European Union Research) Final Conference “Green Light for Open Access” . The Conference was an event officially associated with the Dutch EU Presidency and attracted some 150 experts from research funding and research performing organisations, publishers, and national policy makers across Europe. It also attracted significant attention on Twitter (#greenlight4oa) with more than 1500 tweets. PASTE...