Romania

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National Open Access Desk

UEFISCDI

Contacts

Mihaela Cucu |

Ioana Spanache |

• Overview
• Statistics
• Open Science Policy
• Infrastructure
• Training & Support
• Funders
• News

•      The following categories of units and institutions of public law are included in the national R&D system:

  1. national research and development institutes;
  2. accredited higher education institutions or their research and development structures, without legal personality, established according to the University Charter;
  3. institutes, centers or research-development centers subordinated to the Romanian Academy or branch academies;
  4. other research-development institutes, centers or stations organized as public or public institutions;
  5. international research and development centers set up under international agreements;
  6. institutes or research and development centers organized within national societies, national companies and autonomous regies;
  7. other public or public law institutions which have as their object of activity the research-development or their legally constituted structures.

       Moreover, in the national R&D system, the following categories of private units and institutions are also included: accredited private higher education institutions or their research and development structures, without legal personality, established according to the University Charter; institutes or research-development centers without patrimonial purpose, recognized for public utility; other institutes, centers or R&D centers organized as private legal entities without patrimonial purpose; other non-governmental organizations, without a patrimonial purpose, which have as object of activity and the research-development or their legally constituted structures; companies whose main activity is research and development; companies having as an additional field of activity, research and development. (ORDINANCE No. 57 of 16 August 2002 on scientific research and technological development)

       The public body responsible for organizing and coordinating the Romanian system of RDI is the Ministry of Research and Innovation. And its activities are directed through the National RDI Strategy 2014-2020, implemented according to the RDI National Plan 2015-2020. The main funders in this process are UEFISCDI, the Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding, which is in charge of managing 4 funding lines under the RDI National Plan and other programs, and the Management Authority responsible with implementing the Operational Program on Competitiveness, as part of structural funds. One of the platforms used for managing applications is: https://uefiscdi-direct.ro/.

       Romania finances the participation of different research organizations in Research Infrastructures which are both part and not part of ESFRI. A part of its funds for the RDI funds goes to projects such as ELI NP (Extreme Light Infrastructure - Nuclear Physics) and DANUBIUS –RI (The International Centre for Advanced Studies on River-Sea Systems). Both RIs play an important role at European and global level in their fields.

  Support and landscape

  • Currently, Open Access and Open Science receive limited support through the Romanian National Strategy (SNCDI 2014-2020) and National Plan for RDI (PNCDI III – 2015-2020). The National Strategy mentions ensuring and supporting open access to research results as one of its priorities, which can be obtained through the following two types of activities:

    • Ensuring access to scientific research from mains streams, for all research organizations;
    • Encouraging the publication of Romanian research results, financed by public funds, according to gold "open access" standards.

  National initiatives

  • Currently, in Romania, there are 2 platforms which serve as an example for collaboration in science: BrainMap and ERRIS (Engage in Romanian Research Infrastructures System). Both were produced by UEFISCDI and offer information about the research landscape in Romania. BrainMap serves to a certain degree as a social platform for Romanian and foreign researchers (who, for example, have been involved in implementing projects in Romania), as same as a platform from which UEFISCDI recruits evaluators for its calls for applications. Moreover, it offers an overview of the researchers active in different fields of activity and with certain competencies, on the basis of a wordcloud.

    ERRIS is complementary to the previous platform, in the sense that it offers an overview of existing research facilities, equipment, services and technological services at national level. The search can be done both on the basis of key words regarding research fields and trough an interactive map. The platform facilitates open access to Romanian research infrastructures by serving as an intermediary between service/ equipment providers and those who request access to it.

    In this category, the Romanian National Roadmap with Research Infrastructures should also be mentioned, as one of the criteria for evaluating the applicant RIs referred to offering open access to its equipment and services (Note: Open Access in the context of RIs does not necessarily mean free access. This can also include access on the basis of a fee.). The English version of Romanian National Roadmap with Research Infrastructures can be accessed through the following link : https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326208531_Romanian_National_Roadmap_of_Research_Infrastructures

    Starting from 2013, the Association of Universities, Research and Development Institutes and University Central Libraries in Romania ANELIS PLUS, has been ensuring access to electronic information resources through the acquisition of full text databases / platforms and bibliographic and bibliometric databases. This way, the Association aims at providing mobile access to both international publications and online databases, as well as the national repository with research publications. Among its objectives, the following can be also found: promoting at national level the initiative to develop an open access system for scientific publications; creating links with the Romanian editorial platform SCIPIO and open access institutional deposits hosted by universities and libraries in Romania.

• OpenAIRE statistics

  61740 OA publications in 257 repositories

  • Timeline
  • Graph
  • Repositories
  • Document Types
  • FP7

• National policy

  On the 15th of November 2018, the Romanian Government approved the 2018-2020 National Action Plan as part of the Open Government Partnership. Compared to its previous versions, the new Plan includes a section dedicated to Open access to research results. As stated in the document, the Romanian Government commits to adopt a national Open Access strategy for research results, by implementing pilot programs and substantiating research and public consultation.

  More specifically, the following actions will be taken into consideration:

  1. Identify and support a pilot public institution (ministry, agency, university, research institute) which will adopt a policy of publishing, communicating and valorisation on all scientific results financed by public funds with Open Access.
  2. Identifying a domain with lower potential for commercial re-use controversy; the development of rules on the publication of open research results under an open license; implementation of these rules for acquisitions of central public institutions or projects funded by them. Create a repository for the data resulted from these projects.

  The institution in charge with the development and adoption of the OA national strategy, for transposing the developed rules on OA in future funding programs for research, mapping of institutional OA practices and policies in Romania, as same as for implementing the pilot program, is the Romanian Ministry of Research and Innovation.

  In its efforts to doing so, the Ministry will benefit from the support of UEFISCDI, as the Romanian OpenAIRE NOAD, and of two other non-governmental organisations: the Centre for Public Innovation and Kosson.

  During a Workshop organized in March 2019, the General Secretariat of the Government has convened to establish a working group to discuss the new OA/OS strategy. It will include representatives of the Ministry of Research and Innovation, UEFISCDI, the research community and civil society.

   

  Currently, Open Access and Open Science receive limited support through the Romanian National Strategy (SNCDI 2014-2020) and National Plan for RDI (PNCDI III – 2015-2020). The National Strategy mentions ensuring and supporting open access to research results as one of its priorities, which can be obtained through the following two types of activities:

  • Ensuring access to scientific research from mains streams, for all research organizations;
  • Encouraging the publication of Romanian research results, financed by public funds, according to gold "open access" standards.

  However, it is expected for this to change, through the new upcoming RDI Romanian National Strategy. 

  Institutional policy

  Funder policy

• Key networks and aggregators

  •  

    ASPEKT: It is the institutional repository of the Transilvania University of Brasov, that at the moment works as a repository for scientific articles, doctoral and postgraduate theses that have been elaborated at the Transilvania University of Brașov, in Research Departments.

    ARTHRA Digital Repository: ARTHRA Digital Repository is the institutional repository of „Dunarea de Jos“ University of Galati and makes the university scientific output freely available. ARTHRA ensures preservation and management of documents and provides access to: articles of the academic community published in the annals of the university, doctoral theses and abstracts submitted in the university, conference and workshop papers, educational materials (tutorials, library guides), references, papers of library staff. The information retrieval in ARTHRA returns the results of the full content of all documents. The digital documents submitted in ARTHRA are also indexed in Google Scholar. For the time being, ARTHRA is included in OpenDOAR and Duraspace.

    AnelisPlus National Deposit: Starting from 2013, the Association of Universities, Research and Development Institutes and University Central Libraries in Romania ANELIS PLUS, has been ensuring access to electronic information resources through the acquisition of full text databases / platforms and bibliographic and bibliometric databases. This way, the Association aims at providing mobile access to both international publications and online databases, as well as to the national repository with research publications. Among its objectives, the following can be also found: promoting at national level the initiative to develop an open access system for scientific publications; creating links with the Romanian editorial platform SCIPIO and open access institutional deposits hosted by universities and libraries in Romania.

  Data repositories

  National publishing initiatives

  Open Access is the condition for a scientific journal to receive state aid, being a precise requirement under strict terms, which can be found here.

  There is also a bill in the Romanian Parliament to establish a National Electronic Registry for Scientific Works initiated in 2015, than can be found here.

  National agreements with publishers

  No information available

  OA books

• Since January 2018, UEFISCDI (The Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding) is part of the OpenAIRE Advance Consortium as the Romanian NOAD. As a result, the Agency is currently implementing different activities of training and support on topics related to Open Science and Open Access. For more information, please access the webpage indicated below or contact us at one of the available e-mail addresses:

  https://uefiscdi.ro/openaire-advance

  Contact persons:

  • Mihaela Cucu -  
  • Ioana Spanache -  
• The Ministry of Research offers a state aid for publishing scientific literature organizing a contest each year. For more, please click here.