OpenAIRE new NOAD in Armenia: Shushanik Sargsyan

The OpenAIRE team had the pleasure of speaking to Dr. Shushanik Sargsyan, Head of the Center for Scientific Information Analysis and Monitoring at the Institute forInformatics and Automation Problems (National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia). Read her reflections on Open Science.  

What is IIAP NAS RA (Institute of Informatics and Automation Problems of the National Academy of Science of the Republic of Armenia) and how does it support Open Science in Armenia?

The Institute for Informatics and Automation Problems (IIAP) is a leading research and technology development institute within the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia in applied mathematics, informatics and computing technologies in various fields of science and technology. Being a science and technology hub, IIAP has the relevant experience and necessary technologies to support Open Science in Armenia. With this aim, IIAP has joined several Open Science initiatives and is working towards the dissemination of the concept in Armenia.

When and why did you decide to join OpenAIRE and become a NOAD?

We have joined OpenAIRE in September 2020 and become a NOAD in January 2021. As a researcher in scientometrics, I understand and appreciate the role of Open Science for individual scientists, scientific organisations and the country. As part of my work, I have been working on creating datasets of Armenian scientific journals, which have the idea of Open Science as its basis, as well as promoting Armenian science. Open Science plays a key rolehere as it opens a road to the internationalisation of science especially for small and developing countries.

What do you think is missing in Armenia to fully embrace Open Science?  

The concept is new in Armenia and we need some time to fully understand, comprehend and disseminate it among the scholarly and user community. I am sure that there are all the necessary technological and other resources.We need time to disseminate the concept, it's benefits and advantages, while the user community needs time to fully embrace Open Science.

What are your top three priorities you will focus on in the next year?

The first is the dissemination, we will try to organise seminars, lectures and other dissemination and networking events to introduce the concept to the Armenian community. As a researcher, I am also interested in the study of the concept. Thus, I will concentrate on studying the advantages and disadvantages, limitations of the concept and try to offer the results of my research to the scholarly community and improve the concept of Open Science. The third direction will be the enriching of the Armenian NOAD by involving the datasets of research institutes and universities. We will work with different Armenian institutions and organisations to include their contents in the NOAD.

 How do you think OpenAIRE will help you succeed?

It will not only help me but a huge community of scholars, university teachers and students to succeed. It will help scholars to find scholarly content, necessary resources, and most importantly find ideas. I think this will relate to all those who will useOpenAIRE.