The National Open Research Forum (NORF), the Irish Research eLibrary (IReL), and OpenAIRE proudly announce the launch of the National Open Access Monitor, a cornerstone in Ireland's shift towards a fully open access research ecosystem.

In late 2020 there were discussions started on the National Open Science Strategy, the National policy document is in progress. Please find more information about the political context of promoting the Open Science here.

National Platform Open Science

In February 2017 the National Plan Open Science in the Netherlands was published. This Plan shows the ambition of the involved institutes towards Open Science. The implementation of this plan has been followed up by the National Platform Open Science. Together with the publishing of the plan a new website was launched: National Platform Open Science. In May 2019 NPOS changed to a programme, with a number of projects in the field of the above-mentioned topics

In April 2022 the Netherlands National Programme Open Science (NPOS)published a new NPOS2030 Ambition Document: Open Science 2030 in the Netherlands.

Goal for 2030: By 2030, scientific knowledge is freely available, accessible, and reusable for everyone. The
scientific process and its outputs are transparent, to the benefit of both science and society.
Through careful and responsible scrutiny (e.g., open peer review), the integrity and quality
of scientific work can be verified and, if necessary, corrected. Academics are well-supported
and well-trained in making their scientific outputs FAIR and machine-readable, so they can
be reproduced, replicated, and reused by themselves and others. This leads to increased
trust in scientific knowledge, both within and outside academia, and speeds up scientific
progress and global collaboration and participation.

The NPOS Programme will focus on three Programme Lines and a set of requirements:

• Making all scholarly output Open Access;
• Ensuring that society can reuse all scholarly output;
• Cost control: full Open Access without additional costs;
• Maintaining high quality and research integrity;
• Novel ways of Recognition & Rewards, away from quantitative measures;
• Control over ownership, public values, and academic and digital sovereignty;
• Open services, growing towards less dependency on publishers.

• Build a professional community of skilled data stewards that have a wide range of expertise;
• Support, guide and incentivise the generation of sufficiently rich, standardized, open and machineactionable FAIR digital research outputs and associated FAIR metadata to enable optimal (re)use;
• Enable sustainable interoperable networks of FAIR Data services and research infrastructures at the institutional and domain level and national level;
• Foster the development of a national trust framework for access to FAIR Data including sensitive and confidential data, in synergy among societal stakeholders.

• Raise awareness;
• Consolidate and further develop best practice;
• Build capacity;
• Enhance cooperation, synergies, and transdisciplinary collaboration;
• Develop and invest in supporting infrastructures

EOSC-related activities

In the Netherlands there are a number of institutes involved in the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) project aims to make it easier for researchers to share and combine data, also across disciplinary boundaries.

• DANS (Data Archiving and Networked Services) is regular member and NOAD of OpenAIRE AMKE.
• EOSC-synergyextends the EOSC coordination to nine participating countries by harmonizing policies and federating relevant national research e-Infrastructures, scientific data and thematic services, bridging the gap between national initiatives and EOSC. Partners are EGI Foundation and DANS.
• Goal of EOSC Future(April 2021 - September 2023) is to integrate, consolidate, and connect e-infrastructures, research communities, and initiatives in Open Science to further develop the EOSC Portal, EOSC-Core and EOSC-Exchange of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). In the Netherlands DANS (as Linked Third Party to OpenAIRE), EGI and the University of Amsterdam are partners in the project.
• Since January 2021 DANS is member of the EOSC Association, and member of the EOSC Working Group Skills and Training. In the Netherlands there are more members of the different EOSC Working Groups.
• DICE (Data Infrastructure Capacity for EOSC)(2021-2023). With a duration of 30 months, DICE aims to create a European storage and data management infrastructure for the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). In the Netherlands DANS and SURF are partners in DICE.
• DANS is projectleader of FAIR IMPACT (2021-2025). FAIR-IMPACT project contributes to an EOSC of FAIR data and services  by supporting the implementation of FAIR-enabling practices, tools and services across scientific communities at European, national and institutional level. Another Dutch partner in this project is SURF.

Former EOSC-related projects in the Netherlands:

• The Library of TU/Delft and DANS were the National Open Access Desks NL in two OpenAIRE projects (OpenAIRE 2020 and OpenAIRE Advance). OpenAIRE supports the Open Science of the European Commission. DANS was also leader of the RDM (Research Data Management) Task Force of OpenAIRE Advance.
• FREYAwas a 3-year project (December 2017 - December 2020) in which twelve partners are involved. The project aimed to build the infrastructure for persistent identifiers (PIDs) as a core component of open science, in the EU and globally. Goal of FREYA was to improve discovery, navigation, retrieval, and access of research resources. In the DANS was involved in this project.
• The EOSC-hubproject (January 2018 - March 2021) existed of a consortium of 100+ partners from more than 50 countries. The consortium developed the vision of the Hub as the integration and management system of the future European Open Science Cloud. Besides DANS (Linked Third Party to SURF), other involved institutes in the Netherlands were SURF, University Utrecht, Astron, KNMI, and Meertens Institute. Project leaderof EOSC-hub is EGI Foundation in Amsterdam.
• DANS was projectleader of FAIRsFAIR (March 2019-March 2022.) The ambition of FAIRsFAIR is to assist the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) governance bodies to deliver FAIR-aligned Rules of Participation in the EOSC. These rules will be designed to establish FAIR compliance of components and practices. Moreover, FAIRsFAIR will open up and share all knowledge, expertise, guidelines, implementations, new trajectories, courses and education needed to turn FAIR Principles into reality.
• The aim of SSHOC - Social Sciences & Humanities Open Cloud - (January 2019 to April 2022) is to ensure that initiatives from the current European research infrastructures in the field of Social and Human Sciences (SSH) are better aligned with each other and with the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). In the Netherlands DANS, CentERdata, University of Amsterdam, and Tilburg University were involved in SSHOC.
• EOSC Synergy (September 2019-October 2022) extends EOSC coordination to nine participating countries by harmonizing policies and federally relevant national e-research infrastructures, scientific data and thematic services and bridging the gap between national initiatives and EOSC. DANS has been partner in this project.

The Malta Council for Science & Technology (MCST) has secured the support of the Commission's Policy Support Facility (funded through Horizon 2020) to draft a National Open Science Policy. 

Following the kick off meeting that was held in Brussels in July 2019, two (2) country visits (in Malta) of the panel of experts were held in October 2019 and December 2019. 

The implementation of the policy is planned to take place in the last quarter of 2020.

The Czech Republic National Strategy of Open Access to Scientific Information for 2017-2020 was approved by the Government on June 14, 2017. The action plan should be prepared as the next step.

The Technology Centre of the CAS (TC) supports the participation of the Czech Republic in the European Research Area and has been also appointed as the National Point of Reference according to the Commission Recommendation of 17. 7. 2012 on access to and preservation of scientific information. TC also coordinated the activities of the working group on open access which prepared the initial wording of the national strategy on open access to scientific information.

In October 2013 a new law was approved by the Parliament on cultural assets. The Decree -Law “Urgent provisions for the protection, enhancement and promotion of cultural assets, activities and tourism (13G00135) (G.U No. 186 of 09.08.2013) released on August 9 2013 and converted in law on October 7 2013 (L. 112 /2013) states that results of research, funded at least 50 % with public funds and published in scholarly journals (whose frequency is at least biannual) should be open access.

According to this law, all public research funders and administrators of public research funds are required to take provisions to implement and promote OA according to the principles stated in the law.

The law is currently under rediscussion at the parliament, thanks to a new proposal made by Deputy Andrea Gallo, president of the Chamber of Deputies Commission of Culture. The Chamber of Deputies approved the new law text in march 2019, including the change in the Italian copyright law that allows authors to keep the rights enabling open access for scientific publications. The new text also provides 1 million euros to fund an infrastructure for open access in the country and 200.000 euros each year for its operation. The law is currently under discussion at the Commission of Culture of the Senate.

Right after participating to the launch of EOSC in late 2018, the Italian ministry of research and university delegate formed a Commission of Experts, also including OpenAIRE Italian NOAD, to draft a National Roadmap for Open Science in 2019. The Roadmap was drafted in may 2019, but it is still to be officially launched by the Ministry of University and Research. A Working Group on Open Access was nominated by the Ministry of University and Research in 2019.

Ireland’s National Principles on Open Access were published in October 2012. The principles reiterate the right of the freedom of researchers to publish wherever they feel is the most appropriate. Additionally the policy states:

• Peer-reviewed journal articles and other research outputs resulting in whole or in part from publicly-funded research should be deposited in an Open Access repository and made publicly discoverable, accessible and re-usable as soon as possible and on an ongoing basis.
• Every publicly-funded researcher in Ireland shall have deposit rights in an Open Access repository
• Authors shall deposit post-prints (or the publisher’s version if permitted) plus metadata of articles accepted for publication in peer-reviewed journals and international conference proceedings.
• All peer-reviewed journal articles and conference publications should be deposited. Other research outputs including books, book chapters, and reports should be deposited where possible.
• The deposit should be made as soon as possible, ideally at the time of acceptance for publication, and no later than the date of formal publication.
• Metadata shall comprise the full bibliographic and/or descriptive data and should comply with national and international standards and agreements for harvesting, reporting and interoperability.

Ireland’s national principles also encourage researchers to publish in Open Access Journals but clearly states that these papers must also be deposited in a repository. In addition, most Irish funding agencies and some Higher Education Institutions have Open Access policies.

In 2019, Ireland's National Open Research Forum published the National Framework on the Transition to an Open Research Environment. This framework is the first step in the process to create a National Action Plan for the transition to an open research environment in Ireland. This framework details a number of goals in the areas of enabling open access to research publications, enabling FAIR research data, developing infrastructures for access to and preservation of research, building skills and competencies, and creating incentives and rewards. A public consultation process will follow the publication of the framework and will ultimately inform a future National Action Plan.

The National Strategy covers the following topics:

1. Open access to publicly funded publications
2. Open access to scientific data
3. The technical infrastructure for Open Science
4. Open Science financing
5. Protection of intellectual property rights
6. Usage of existing open IT tools and open data
7. Open Science education
8. Evaluation of R&D with principles of Open Science
9. Citizen Science support

Updated in August 2022.

Government of the Republic of Slovenia adopted the National Strategy of Open Access to Scientific Publications and Research Data in Slovenia 2015-2020 in September 2015 (later prolongued to 2021) and the action plan in May 2017.

A new Scientific Research and Innovation Activities Act came into force in Slovenia with the beginning of 2022 and also contains provisions regarding open science (see blogpost). A subordinate Decree on performing scientific research according to the principles of open science underwent the public consultation and will be approved by the Government of the Republic of Slovenia.

In the Resolution on the Slovenian Scientific Research and Innovation Strategy 2030 (adopted by the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia), a chapter is dedicated to open science (see blogpost). Action plan for the implementation of the Resolution regarding open science is in preparation (August 2022) and will coincide with the national Recovery and Resilience Plan activities on digitisation for open science. 

Estonia has not implemented a national Open Access/Open Science policy yet. However, in 2015, Open Science Expert Group was initiated by the Estonian Research Council to support drafting a national Open Science policy by complying principles and recommendations for the development of national open science policy. These recommendations were published in June 2016. This document is recommendations of the expert committee and should not be considered national policy on Open Science but rather a set of recommendations for developing future national OS policy.

From the end of 2019, the Ministry of Education and Research in Estonia has started to develop a Roadmap for an Open Science Policy Framework which is expected to result in official policy in a couple of years. It is expected that in a few years, this policy can result in the establishment of Estonian Open Science Competence Center which is a central support system for open science implementation in Estonia.

Estonian Research Council has started to require research data management plans from all personal grant applications and has officially started to evaluate these DMPs.

The Estonian Research Information System (ETIS) is developing into the Estonian research information database, including the central repository of research publications. Starting from 2013, the competition-based funding instruments (institutional and personal research funding) include a requirement for open access: “The publications that result from the implementation of the research theme shall be freely available to the public in ETIS, unless set forth otherwise in the conditions for publication, and for the protection of copyright or intellectual property rights.”

1. Dissemination of research results through publication is an integral part of the research activity.
2. Publicly-funded research outputs must be dessiminated via high-quality, peer-reviewed publications, and opportunities to make results available in Open Access must be maximised.
3. Nationally funded research outputs should be published with a CC-BY attribution licence6, allowing the information to be copied and reused.
4. Peer reviewed journal articles and other research outputs resulting in whole or in part from publicly-funded research shall be deposited in an Open Access repository and made publicly discoverable, accessible and re-usable as soon as possible and on an on-going basis. The chosen repository must enable authors and institutions to easily comply with legal deposit laws and provide comprehensive publication metadata to digital libraries.
5. Researchers may choose any of the valid approaches to Open Access. They are encouraged to exclusively select routes where quality is ensured and double-dipping is avoided.
6. Repositories shall release the metadata immediately upon deposit. Open access to the full text paper should be made immediately upon deposit or upon the publication date at the latest. Access restrictions to the full text article may be applied as required by certain publishers, however these embargoes should not normally exceed six months for scientific, technical and health science research publications and 12 months for arts, humanities and social sciences research outputs.
7. Long-term digital preservation of publications as well as long-term access to them will be guaranteed by the National Library of Luxembourg, due to its legal obligation of preservation of the country’s published materials.

The key purposes of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) include:

• to inform the selective allocation of funding for research
• to provide accountability for public investment in research and produce evidence of the benefits of this investment
• to provide benchmarking information and establish reputational yardsticks, for use in the higher education sector and for public information.

This major exercise is undertaken by the four UK higher education funding bodies (UK Research and Innovation, the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales, the Scottish Funding Council and the Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland).

The REF was first conducted in 2014, replacing the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE).

The development of the next exercise is now well underway and scheduled to take place in 2021.

In a letter dated 4 December 2015, the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (hereinafter SERI) commissioned swissuniversities (the association of Swiss Higher Education Institutions) to elaborate, with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), a national strategy for Open Access to publications (hereinafter OA). This national OA strategy was formulated by a representative working group led by swissuniversities and was adopted by the plenary assembly of swissuniversities on 31 January 2017.

The Open Access Strategy contains the vision that all publicly funded publications must be freely accessible until 2024. In general, it is desirable that all scientific publications in Switzerland should be available for Open Access by 2024. This vision is based on the current European models. In order to implement this vision, various fields of action have been defined with the aim of reconciling Open Access practices in Switzerland, strengthening negotiations with publishers and the incentives for researchers, as well as examining new types of publications and platforms.
In February 2018, the Plenary Assembly of swissuniversities approved this action plan and the University Council of the Swiss University Conference approved it.
Implementation will now begin under the coordination of swissuniversities, taking into account the autonomy of the universities. The national Open Access Strategy serves as a fundamental instrument for managing the transformation process and optimising the use of resources.

Responsible institutions:
• Ministry of Education and Science
• National Council for Science and Innovations
• National Centre for Information and Documentation

Strategic framework:
• National Open Science Plan, since January 2020 – the main strategic document with regards to open science that outlines the open science vision of Bulgaria, gives an overview of reached milestones and takes them into account and outlines detailed objectives, commitments and action points with regard to the development and sustainability of the open science initiative in Bulgaria for the next five years.
https://naukamon.eu/en/national-plan-for-the-development-of-the-open-science-initiative-in-bulgaria/
• National strategy for the development of the scientific research 2017 – 2030 + Implementation plan – “open access to scientific information” is a strategic action point and also there is an objective “active participation in the European research area and strengthening international cooperation and partnerships in the field of science, including the EOSC and similar initiatives.”
• National concept for open access to scientific information - outlines the essence and framework of open science.
• Guidelines on sharing scientific publications with open access and using the national repository and the portal for open science are published in BPOS and are distributed within the research community.
• Instructions for publishing in the national repository are available on BPOS.

Government documents regarding open access and open science:

• Republic of Bulgaria, National Strategy for Development of Scientific Research in the Republic of Bulgaria 2017 – 2030. Better Science for Better Bulgaria
• Ministry of Education and Science, Republic of Bulgaria, Bulgaria National Roadmap for Research Infrastructure, 2017-2023.
• Ministry of Education and Science Republic of Bulgaria, Diagnostic Review Mapping of Research Infrastructures and Equipment In Bulgaria, 

National Strategy for Development of the Scientific Research
Recommendation 1. The Ministry of Education and Science shall establish a policy of open access. The national policy of open access should be formulated on the basis of the green model, within which quality is ensured by scientific publications. This should embrace all research institutions which perform and/or disseminate fully or partially state-funded research. Access to the results of state-funded research should be provided to the greatest possible extent.

Recommendation 2. Scientific institutions and foundations shall also establish policies on open access. All research institutions and public foundations should implement open access policies consistent with the national policy of open access.

Recommendation 3. Universities and other research institutions shall implement and promote the open access policy. All universities and research institutions should encourage open access policies which are consistent with the national policy of open access.

Recommendation 4. Exploring the opportunities for coordination between the bibliometric indicator and the open access policies.An investigation should be carried out on to find out whether it is possible to achieve coordination between the bibliometric indicator and open access.

Recommendation 5. A single joint national database for research has to be established. All state-funded research should be entered in the databases of all research institutions and/or be connected in a joint portal for research.

Recommendation 6. Exploring the need for a repository for the scientific publications of small research institutions.An investigation of small research institutions’ need of a joint repository should be carried out.

Recommendation 7. Scientific publishers, research institutions and publishers shall prepare a joint document on the transition to open access.Bulgarian scientific institutions should be encouraged to make suggestions on how to perform the transition of Bulgarian scientific journals to open access.

Recommendation 8. Informing the scientific community. An information campaign on open access directed to the scientific community should be carried out, in the form of a conference and information materials.

Recommendation 9. Coordinating the open access initiative with similar international initiatives.Representatives of research councils in international research fora can provide coordination with international policies for open access.

Recommendation 10. Licenses shall receive consideration. The negotiation of the remuneration of authors within gold open access should be given consideration. Free use of green access and transparency in payment of services should be ensured.

Recommendation 11. Participation in national fora for cooperation in the field of interoperability and repositories.Bulgaria's participation in central fora for cooperation such as Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) should be guaranteed.

Recommendation 12. Creating a service for long-term storage of scientific publications. A service for long-term storage should be created, which will ensure that the digital publications can be read and used for a long time.

Recommendation 13. Planning open access and long-term conservation of the original data. The archiving of data should be planned, so as to ensure present and future access to them.