Bojan Macan is the Head of the Centre for Scientific Information at the Ruđer Bošković Institute in Zagreb, Croatia. He holds a Ph.D. in Information and Communication Sciences from the University of Zagreb. He has extensive experience in scholarly communication and research information management, having participated in numerous international projects, including OS Trails, PATTERN, NI4OS-Europe, OpenAIREplus, FOSTER, OpenAIRE2020, OpenAIRE Advance, and CA COST Action ENRESSH. Additionally, he contributes to national endeavors aimed at establishing open access and open science infrastructure, notably including Digital Academic Archives and Repositories (DABAR) and the Croatian Current Research Information System – CroRIS.

His engagement extends beyond project work, encompassing participation in numerous international and national working groups and conferences, as well as involvement in educational activities. He also serves as the National Point of Reference on Scientific Information and Open Science/Open Access at the European Commission.

Laura Valeria Bonora is an economist with a Master’s degree in Applied Statistics. She currently serves as Spain’s National Contact Point (NCP) for the Research Infrastructures and Widening (Open Access) programme under Horizon Europe at the European Commission.

In parallel, she works at the Open Science Unit of the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT), where she is the technical lead for RECOLECTA, the National Open Access Repositories Aggregator in Spain. She is also actively involved in several leading international open science initiatives, such as the Confederation of Open Access Repositories COAR, OpenAIRE AMKE and  the Federated Network of Institutional Repositories of Scientific Publications (LA Referencia).

In addition, she serves as Technical Secretariat of the international multi-thematic EU-LAC Joint Call in Science, Technology and Innovation (STI), which aims to promote research and innovation projects between the European Union and Latin America and the Caribbean.

Pilar Rico-Castro, PhD, serves as the Coordinator of the Open Science Unit at the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) and is an associate lecturer at the National Distance Education University (UNED). She earned her PhD in Government and Public Administration from the Complutense University of Madrid in 2006.

Pilar supports the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities in the design, implementation, and evaluation of both national and European R&D&I public policies. At the national level, she is an integral member of the National Open Science Committee (COS), where she contributed to the design and drafting of the National Open Science Strategy (ENCA). Additionally, she coordinates key initiatives for the ENCA deployment such as the  Open Science Public Funding Call (María de Guzman L2), the National Scientific Journals Assessment Process, the National Digital Platform for Academic Publishing RECYT, and the National Open Access Repositories Aggregator RECOLECTA.

Internationally, Pilar is the Spanish Delegate at the European Commission’s National Points of Reference (NPR) for Scientific Information Expert Group, at the EOSC Steering Board Expert Group, and at the Council for National Open Science Coordination (CoNOSC). She is also a national expert on the Horizon Europe Programme Committee for Research Infrastructures.

Furthermore, she represents FECYT in various organizations such as OPERAS, the European Diamond Capacity Hun (EDCH), OpenAIRE AMKE, the Federated Network of Institutional Repositories of Scientific Publications LA Referencia, and the Confederation of Open Access Repositories COAR.

She has participated in several FP7 and H2020 projects, such as OpenAIRE (2009-2012), OpenAIREplus (2011-2014), OpenAIRE2020 (2015-2018), OpenAIRE Advance (2018-2020), the MedOANet project (2011-2013), PASTEUR4OA (2014-2016) EOSC-Future (2021-2024), DIAMAS (2022-2025), and OSTrails (2024-2027). Currently, she plays a significant role ALMASI (2025-2027) Horizon Europe project.

Her areas of expertise are R&D public policies, open science, open access to scientific information, diamond OA publishing, OA repositorioes, open infrastructures. 

Sylvia Koukounidou is a University officer and holds the position of the coordinator of the Digitization and Archives office of the University of Cyprus Library.

Since 2004, Sylvia has been actively involved in European and locally funded projects. Her professional interests primarily encompass Open Science, digitization, and archival management. She is a member of European and local networks and groups related to Open Science representing the University of Cyprus. Additionally, she collaborates closely with national policymakers to establish and promote Open Science within the local research ecosystem.

She played a key role in shaping Cyprus’s National Policy of the Republic of Cyprus for Open Science Practices  (adopted in 2016 and revised in 2022).

She has served in professional roles such as President of the Board of the Cyprus Association of Librarians – Information Scientists (CALIS) and is a founding member and Treasurer of the Cypriot Copyright Association (Cypriot affiliate of ALAI). 

She has contributed to the creation of the Cyprus Archive of Doctoral Dissertations (CADD) and the repositories LEKYTHOS and GNOSIS of the University of Cyprus Library. 

In 2024 and 2025 she was appointed as a National DigiEduHack Ambassador (Digital education initiative of the European Commission).   

Her work and publications typically focus on archival science, digital libraries, metadata, institutional repositories, open science, and intellectual property within the broader context of information science.