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Organisation of the french public research activities

 


The National Research Environment

Organisation of the french public research activities

The French environment of public research differs significantly from that which can be observed in other European countries. At the national level it is possible to distinguish three major types of institutions involved in the research process:

  • France has 106 universities (members of the Conference of Universities Presidents) which gather most researchers. Due to this aspect, French universities are often small or medium sized when compared to other countries. An important milestone in the French higher education system was the adoption in August 2007 of a law according more autonomy to universities in terms of budget and human resources (Loi sur les libertés et responsabilités des universités – LRU). Meanwhile, a process of consolidation was undertaken by many universities, either in the form of a PRES (Pole of Research and Higher Education) i.e. a federation of different institutions on a regional basis) or as a merger of several institutions (as it was the case in January 2009 for the University of Strasbourg for instance).
  • Grandes Écoles have historically been designed to train engineers in the government service. In 2015 France has around 226 grandes écoles that train students in the fields of engineering, commerce or humanities and have the particularity to recruit their students through competitive exams. Some grandes écoles don’t have any research structures but for others it is an important activity (Ecole Polytechnique, Ecole Normale Superieure for instance)
  • Unlike universities and grandes écoles, research institutions have no teaching departments and focus on research. With the exception of the CNRS  which works in many subject areas, most organizations have a chosen field like computer sciences (INRIA), life sciences (INSERM), marine sciences (IFREMER)... The size of these organisms is highly variable: the biggest one being the CNRS, structured in ten institutes, which employs some 14,000 scientists and brings together 48000 researchers in joint research units with universities and other research institutions.

Number of researchers according to institution type and subject (2005).

Research operator

Life sciences

Material sciences

Humanities

All domains

Universities and grandes écoles

16 010

(56 %)

20 628

(49,4 %)

21 252

(76,8 %)

57 890

(59,1 %)

Research institutions

12581

(44 %)

21 129

(50,6 %)

6 420

(23,2 %)

40 130

(40,9 %)

 

28 591

41 757

27 672

98 020

(Les compétences scientifiques et techniques de la France, OST, 2008, p. 73)

This distinction in three separate sets is somewhat blurred when one looks at the research structure level. It is indeed very common for a single laboratory to depend both on one (or more) university and on a research organism, and possibly also on a grande école. The human resources and financial income of the laboratory come from these different sources, but the work is conducted in joint teams. In this case the laboratory is called a “joint research unit” (Unité Mixte de Recherche – UMR).

One should finally mention the three public bodies that play a major role in the consolidation of the French academic research at the national level in terms of:

  • funding with the ANR (Agence Nationale de la Recherche - National Research Agency) see below
  • assessment with the AERES (Agence d’Evaluation de la Recherche et de l’Enseignement Supérieur - Research and Higher Education Evaluation Agency).
Research funding

The French main research funder is the Agence Nationale de la Recherche or ANR (National Research Agency) who has an annual budget dedicated to calls of 414 millions euros (2014 figures). Structured in 8 thematic departments, its aim is to increase the number of research projects issued from the entire scientific community, and to provide funding based on calls for proposals and peer review selection processes. The ANR addresses both public research institutions and industries with a double mission of producing new knowledge and promoting interaction between public laboratories and industrial laboratories through the development of partnerships. Through the call for proposals (CFP), projects are selected based on their scientific quality, as well as on their economic relevance for industries, when applicable.

The ANR has issued an open access policy in November 2007, strongly encouraging the deposit of funded publications in open archives systems and in HAL in particular. It is worth noting that the Humanities and Social Sciences department has adopted a stronger policy mandating systematic deposit of publications in HAL-SHS.

Importance of EU-funded research

In the 6th Framework Programme (2003-2006), French institutions and researchers took part to 3380 FP-funded projects which represents 37,3% of all FP6 projects. Among them, 1231 projects had a french coordination (13,6% of all FP6 projects). Figures taken from the OST report, 2008.

In the 7th Framework Programme (2007-2013), French institutions and researchers took part to 7265 FP-funded projects. Figures taken from CORDIS, 2016.

The French participation to the FP7 is coordinated nationally by the Ministry of Higher Education and Research and several National Contact Points. The website Eurosfaire offers a comprehensive overview on the French implication in european projects.

In the H2020 (2014-2020) Framework Programme, French institutions and researchers took part to 2559 FP-funded projects. Figures taken from CORDIS, 2016.

Regarding the European Research Council (ERC) funding, French researchers have been allowed 138 (starting et advanced) grants since 2007, which makes France the second country in terms of numbers of grants received after the United-Kingdom (226 grants).

Open Access and Repositories

Open Access awareness

France has played an important role in the European open access movement, particularly in the launch of the Berlin declaration that was co-worked by the Max Planck Society and people from the CNRS. Among French research structures, the research organisms (CNRS, INSERM in particular) played a major role in the beginning of the 2000’s, especially with the launch of the HAL open archive in 2001.

France also set forth an important initiative regarding open access journals with the Revues.org platform founded in 1999 and specialized in Humanities and Social Sciences. It is operated by a joint service unit bringing together the CNRS, two universities (Avignon and Provence) and a grande école (EHESS). Revues.org hosts at the beginning of 2010 more than 220 journals, around 90 of them being fully open access.

Universities and grandes écoles joined the open access movement with some delay but it is worth noting that some universities have been working on open access publishing (Nice with the database Revel) and Open Archives (in Toulouse for instance) since 2003. After the signature of a national agreement in 2006 aiming to foster the some universities and grandes écoles established an institutional open archive. At the beginning of 2010, 30 of them do have an institutional repository. Couperin was also an actor of this movement through a working group focused on open access. The movement is slowly growing and the Berlin 7 conference held in Paris in December 2009 was the opportunity for 10 more universities to sign the Berlin Declaration. It is also important to mention the fact that all French universities have been working since 2007 on the management of electronic theses and dissertations through a system called STAR, operated by the ABES, french higher education agency for bibliographic issues.

Open Access initiatives

There are currently 4 major projects regarding open access in France

  1. Publishers’ deposit policies : work has begun at the end of 2009 on the collection of publishers’ policies regarding deposit of scholarly materials in open repositories. This work is done in collaboration with actors representing the French publishing industry.
  2. Open access in southern Europe : the Couperin consortium is working with the CNRS (Inist) on a report describing the current situation of open access in France. This report  comes from a international will of the SELL (Southern European Libraries Link) consortium, to make an inventory of the European state of open access and to hold a seminar to establish policies to favour open access to scientific information in Southern European countries
  3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) : as previously mentioned, a nation-wide effort coordinated by the ABES has been made in order to mandate deposit of ETD. This initiative is going to be completed by the launch in 2011 of a dissemination portal for French thesis.
  4. France has been involved in several open access related international initiatives like Driver and continues to do so especially with the following projects:
Open Access LAW

In October 2016, the French Law for a Digital Republic Act (LOI n° 2016-1321 du 7 octobre 2016 pour une République numérique) came into force. One article is of specific concern for scholarly communication, as it relates directly to open access/open data. Article 30 is about Open Access and creates a new right for researchers which creates a legal right for authors to archive an OA copy, even if they have granted an exclusive right to a publisher.

See the details here: https://blogs.openaire.eu/?p=1602

Current status of Open Access repositories

There are currently 119 open archives (http://www.opendoar.org/index.html) running in the French academic environment (this figure does not take into account the numerous laboratories open archives) :

  1. 9 of them are thematic or central repositories (for french ETDs for instance)  
  2. 53 of them are institutional repositories
  • 22 from research institutions
  • 18 from universities (5 of them only with electronic thesis and dissertations)
  • 13 from Grandes écoles (5 of them containing only electronic thesis and dissertations)

A striking figure is the fact that 41 out of the 61 archives mentioned are hosted on the HAL platform.

Current status of Open Access journals

There are currently (may 2010), 167 French full open-acces journals (i.e. with no embargo). Most of them are in the field of humanities and social sciences.

Three major types of journals publishers can be identified: public research institutions (universities, laboratories, etc.), scholarly societies or associations (including the 15 I-Revues journals) and “traditional” commercial publishers. In order to point out the importance of the Revues.org platform (which hosts journals from both public research institutions and scholarly societies), this fourth category has been taken into account in the table below .

Type of Publisher

Number of journals

Percentage

Commercial publisher

11

6,5 %

Public research institution

33

19,5 %

Revues.org platform

86

51 %

Scholarly society

38

23 %

Total

167

100 %

(DOAJ)

Open Access organisations and groups
  • Couperin : the french academic consortium that brings together more than 256 members (teaching and research institutions), working group on Open Access (GTAO). In 2015, a new website dedicated to Open Access has been launched by this group: it is more simple and clear and has 3 different well identified target audiences: authors, readers and journal editors.
Useful links and resources

Contact details

Project officer : André Dazy : Couperin :

Project team members : Marlène Delhaye : Aix Marseille University

Christine Ollendorff : Arts et métiers Paristech

Claire Douady : University of Limoges

Camille Espiau-Bechetoille : University of Lyon 2

Julien Sicot : University of Haute Bretagne – Rennes 2

The National Research Environment

The Hungarian research institutions are organized into two groups:

  • There are 71 higher education institutions in the country: 19 state universities, 7 non state universities, 10 state colleges, and 35 non state colleges. For further details on Higher education in Hungary please see: http://www.okm.gov.hu/english
  • The Hungarian Academy of Sciences and its research institutes. According to Act XL of 1994, the Academy is a scholarly public body founded on the principle of self-government, whose main objectives are the study of science, the publicizing of scientific achievements, and the aid and promotion of research. Its members are the academicians. The Academy maintains 48 research institutes and other institutions (libraries, archives, information systems, etc.) assisting their work, and extends aid to university research centers. For further details please see: http://mta.hu/index.php?id=406&type=0

Major research funders

Funding Basic Research in Hungary: The Hungarian Scientific Research Fund

The Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (Hungarian abbreviation: OTKA) has been the major funding agency of basic science and scholarship since 1986 when the transition to competitive research funding started in Hungary. Its "founding fathers" modelled the principles of operation on the practice of German (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) and American research funds (National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health). Established by a government decree, OTKA has been operating as an independent non-profit organisation since 1991. Its legal status and rules of operation were established in an act in 1993 and reinforced in 1997 by the Hungarian parliament in order to provide independent support to scientific research activities and infrastructure, to promote scientific achievements of international standards, and to provide assistance to young researchers. As an independent institution, OTKA reports to the parliament and the government of Hungary. With regards to the funds provided within the annual budget of the Republic of Hungary, the appropriations of OTKA are administered via the budget of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The administrative and financial tasks related to its operation are carried out by the OTKA Office in Budapest. 

Funder mandates

OTKA signed the Berlin Declaration in 2008. "The scientific publication supported by an OTKA grant has to be made freely available according to the standards of Open Access, either through providing the right of free access during publication, or through depositing the publication to an open access repository. Depositing is possible in a repository of an institution or that of a scientific field, as well as in the Repository of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences - REAL." (http://www.otka.hu/index.php?akt_menu=3658)   

Open Access and Repositories

Certain groups of the Hungarian research community are aware of Open Access and its benefits, but they are still reluctant to provide Open Access to their publications. The main obstacles are a lack of knowledge about relevant copyright issues and the resistance by researchers to allocate time and effort to the depositing process. Advocacy programmes (attached to a network of institutional repositories) by higher education libraries could be an effective way of increasing national research visibility and impact.

Open Access repositories

Institutional repositories in Hungary:

Open Access publishing

A list of Hungarian OA journals.  

Open Access organisations and groups

The HUNOR (HUNgarian Open Repositories) consortium was established by the libraries of Hungarian higher education institutions and the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences to advance national open access practices. The members of HUNOR are dedicated to promoting Hungarian research both nationally and internationally and to achieving effective dissemination of scientific outputs through the implementation of a national infrastructure of open access repositories. Other proposed activities include the organization of a methodology center, adopting international know-how and standards, the establishment of complementary scientific communication channels, and international relations. 

Useful links and resources

http://www.open-access.hu

Contact details of the National Open Access Desk

Gyongyi Karacsony and Edit Gorogh
University of Debrecen

Email: openaire[@]lib.unideb.hu
Phone: +36 52 518602

Europe, and the EU member states, already have a strong tradition in Open Access, both in building infrastructures for Open Access repositories and stimulating the establishment Open Access journals and transition of traditional publishing to Open Access.

Open Access Repositories in Europe

The DRIVER project helped to establish and develop repositories in each of the European countries, and stimulated Open Access archiving by promoting policy development at the national level. Institutions wishing to set up a repository can find extensive directions and recommendations on the DRIVER support site. Summaries on Open Access and repositories in each of the member countries are available on the country pages.

Open access to scientific peer reviewed publications has been also anchored as an underlying principle in the Horizon 2020. The Fact Sheet: Open Access in Horizon 2020 describes in a concise manner how Open access is moving from a pilot to an EU policy in Horizon 2020. 

 

European Open Access Repositories Landscape

The numbers below come from the OpenAIRE aggregated space (updated weekly).
Country#repositories # OA publications
Austria {include_countrynumber DATASRC Austria}  {include_countrynumber PUB Austria}
Belgium {include_countrynumber DATASRC Belgium} {include_countrynumber PUB Belgium}
Bulgaria {include_countrynumber DATASRC Bulgaria} {include_countrynumber PUB Bulgaria}
Croatia {include_countrynumber DATASRC Croatia} {include_countrynumber PUB Croatia}
Cyprus {include_countrynumber DATASRC Cyprus} {include_countrynumber PUB Cyprus} 
Czech Republic {include_countrynumber DATASRC Czech Republic} {include_countrynumber PUB Czech Republic}
Denmark {include_countrynumber DATASRC Denmark} {include_countrynumber PUB Denmark}
Estonia {include_countrynumber DATASRC Estonia} {include_countrynumber PUB Estonia}
Finland {include_countrynumber DATASRC Finland} {include_countrynumber PUB Finland}
France {include_countrynumber DATASRC France} {include_countrynumber PUB France}
Germany {include_countrynumber DATASRC Germany} {include_countrynumber PUB Germany}
Greece {include_countrynumber DATASRC Greece} {include_countrynumber PUB Greece}
Hungary {include_countrynumber DATASRC Hungary} {include_countrynumber PUB Hungary}
Iceland {include_countrynumber DATASRC Iceland} {include_countrynumber PUB Iceland}
Ireland {include_countrynumber DATASRC Ireland} {include_countrynumber PUB Ireland}
Italy {include_countrynumber DATASRC Italy} {include_countrynumber PUB Italy}
Latvia {include_countrynumber DATASRC Latvia} {include_countrynumber PUB Latvia}
Lithuania {include_countrynumber DATASRC Lithuania} {include_countrynumber PUB Lithuania} 
Luxembourg {include_countrynumber DATASRC Luxembourg} {include_countrynumber PUB Luxembourg}
Malta {include_countrynumber DATASRC Malta} {include_countrynumber PUB Malta}
Netherlands {include_countrynumber DATASRC Netherlands} {include_countrynumber PUB Netherlands}
Norway {include_countrynumber DATASRC Norway} {include_countrynumber PUB Norway}
Poland {include_countrynumber DATASRC Poland} {include_countrynumber PUB Poland}
Portugal {include_countrynumber DATASRC Portugal} {include_countrynumber PUB Portugal}
Romania {include_countrynumber DATASRC Romania} {include_countrynumber PUB Romania}
Serbia {include_countrynumber DATASRC Serbia} {include_countrynumber PUB Serbia}
Slovakia {include_countrynumber DATASRC Slovakia} {include_countrynumber PUB Slovakia}
Slovenia {include_countrynumber DATASRC Slovenia} {include_countrynumber PUB Slovenia}
Spain {include_countrynumber DATASRC Spain} {include_countrynumber PUB Spain}
Sweden {include_countrynumber DATASRC Sweden} {include_countrynumber PUB Sweden} 
Switzerland {include_countrynumber DATASRC Switzerland} {include_countrynumber PUB Switzerland}
Turkey {include_countrynumber DATASRC Turkey} {include_countrynumber PUB Turkey}
United Kingdom {include_countrynumber DATASRC United Kingdom}
{include_countrynumber PUB United Kingdom}
(includes about 2.5 mi publications from PMC Europe)

Open Access publishing in Europe

There is a growing number of Open Access Journals; most disciplines are now represented. A comprehensive list of (European) journals currently available, is provided by the Directory of Open Access Journals. National initiatives on publishing in OA journals and specific journals can be found on the country pages.

OpenAIRE and the European initiatives

OpenAIRE builds on and provides access to the network of open access repositories already developed; and (in cooperation with other stakeholders, like COAR, SPARC Europe, and LIBER) it supports further expansion, so that authors have the possibility to comply with the EC Open Access Pilot and ERC Guidelines on Open Access within their own local context. OpenAIRE ties the publication to key research project data, so that it can be identified as an FP7 or ERC-funded project.

The NOADs of OpenAIRE

Most of the EU member states have built expertise on OA. OpenAIRE capitalises on this by establishing a network of National Open Access Desks (NOADs), who can provide support to researchers, institutions and repository managers in their own country seeking to comply with the EC Open Access Pilot and ERC Guidelines on Open Access.

The OpenAIRE network of Open Access desks is structured similarly to the Europe-wide information network on European Research Programmes. The focus of the Open Access Desks activities is on support for compliance with the EC Open Access Pilot. The Open Access desks can be contacted for all questions on Open Access, depositing, the EC Pilot, etc. on the national level.

Please click on one of the countries in the list (right) for further information on:
  • The National Research Environment (research institutions, funding)
  • Open Access and Repositories (awareness, repositories, journals, organizations)
  • Contact details of the Open Access Desk

 

The National Research Environment

Over fifty Universities and eight Public Research Centres are the main actors at the core of the Spanish public research system. Due to a decentralization of responsibilities, most of the Universities are organized under the regional governments of the Autonomous Communities. Nevertheless, two of them, as well as the Public Research Centres, fall under the Central Government responsibility. Additionally, research activities are also developed in the business sector, private higher education institutions, or technological centres, among others.
 
In this context, the National Research Council (CSIC) is the largest public institution dedicated to research in Spain. Organized in multidisciplinary centres and institutes, CSIC counts with the 6% of all the staff dedicated to R&D in Spain, and generates approximately 20% of all scientific production in the country.

Major Spanish research funders

The main funders of the research activities in Spain are the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of the Central Government and its counterparts in the Autonomous Communities. Public Administration funding is implemented through national and regional competitive calls out of their R&D funding programmes. The Spanish Science, Technology and Innovation Act has also foster the creation of the National Research Agency as the National Funding Agency.

Funders mandates

State-level, the Spanish Science, Technology and Innovation Act published in June 2011 includes an open access mandate for publicly funded research, and the Ministry of Education has established a mandate to deposit theses and to make them publicly available in the institutional repositories. To aid in the process of adaptation to the institutional mandate, a remarkable initiative of the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) was to create a working group whose output is a set of recommendations on open access dissemination.
 
At the regional level, two Autonomous Communities, (Madrid and Asturias established open access mandates. In addition, Catalonia has been also very active taking steps forward to achieve an institutional policy to promote open access within its universities.
 
A steering committee following up the compliance with OA mandate at the state-level is coordinated by FECYT. The group of experts has developed a methodology and the limitations of the study and the steps forward for upcoming studies were the main issues addressed. Some of the steps forward to overcome limitations highlighted were the need to establish a project code structure at the national level besides the improvement on the identification and normalization of the funding information in repositories. Full text of the report is available to download in Spanish.

EC research funding in Spain

Performing a preliminary assessment, FP7 funding activities (2007-2013) led Spanish entities to obtain over 2969 million euros, which means a return of 8.3% of the budget estimated over the UE-27, achieving the 5th position in the rank and making the FP one of the main sources of research funding in Spain.

Open Access and Repositories

An increasing number of research institutions are developing their own institutional policies to foster the adoption of open access practices, whether in the form of institutional declarations, recommendations or compulsory requirements. Currently, about 26 institutions have published any of those documents, and out of those, 17 universities published their own policies on open access.

Institutional efforts have been raising awareness, supported as well by the infrastructure needed in the form of institutional repositories. Nevertheless, support services focused on open access seem to be lacking in many institutions.

Additionally, a flagship project developed in collaboration by the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) and the Network of Spanish University Libraries (REBIUN) created the platform RECOLECTA, a nationwide infrastructure of open access scientific repositories, providing services to repository managers, researchers and decision makers. About 73 repositories, mainly institutional, are being harvested by RECOLECTA, besides other resources such as open access journals.

Open Access projects and initiatives

  • RECOLECTA. A joint program of REBIUN/FECYT to promote, support and coordinate the cohesive development of the Spanish digital repositories infrastructure for open access, dissemination and preservation of Spanish publicly funded research results, and to develop, or allow third parties to develop, services and functionalities over those scientific results for researchers and the wider community. Additionally, RECOLECTA organizes periodically working groups, fostering discussion on topics related to open access and providing recommendations to the community. A good example of that can be found on the Working Group on “The depositing and management of data in Open Access” and their conclusions can be found in a report on preservation and reuse of scientific data in Spain.
  • e-ciencia. (Consorcio Madroño, Madrid) harvester for public universities in the region, including UNED (National Distance Education University of Spain) and the CSIC (Spanish National Research Council) repositories.
  • Research Group “acceso abierto a la ciencia”. The Research Group's goal is to become a source of information about Open Access and a forum for discussion and sharing experiences. The portal offers valuable tools for authors:
    • Dulcinea, especially useful for authors, providing information about publishers’ copyright terms and self-archiving policies (),
    • BuscaRepositorios, Directory of Spanish Institutional Open Access Repositories.
    • Melibea, International Directory of institutional OA.
  • Maredata: Spanish network about research open data in which are taking part 7 institutions (CSIC-IATA, CSIC-INGENIO-UV, UA, UB, UC3M, UOC, UPV), with research lines related to research data management, such as: interoperability, publication, access, preservation or impact. Their aim is to coordinate those research activities and to contribute to a open science framework in Spain.

Open Access Repositories

Spain currently has over 70 repositories and a fully operable national repository network. Most Spanish repositories are institutional, mainly created by universities, but there are also research institutions or even private organizations involved in the development of different kinds of open access repositories.

For instance, a remarkable example is the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) repository Digital CSIC, which archives over 100.000 documents, including research data.

Additionally, library consortia play a key role in the creation of repositories, especially in Catalonia (CBUC) and Madrid (Consorcio Madroño) whose respective territories account for most of the existing institutional repositories in Spain.

The materials held in the repositories vary greatly, but full-text research articles and doctoral theses are the most frequently deposited. The vast majority of repositories contain both metadata of the text documents and the full-text documents. With regard to the type of availability, most of the materials (64%) are available in open access from the moment they are deposited and only 19%, such as articles with publisher restrictions, are subject to some type of embargo. Nevertheless, the materials deposited represent only a small portion of the entire scientific production of the institutions.

Some initiatives are taking steps forward related to research data both developing policies and infrastructure, but also designing new services to support researchers and fostering capacity building among librarians. Particularly, Madroño is gathering their main services through their website InvestigaM, starting from the DMP tool Pagoda till their new data repository e-Ciencia-datos. CSUC has also developed a tool to support the creation of DMPs Pla de Gestió de Dades de Recerca, besides a different set of guidelines to support researchers.


Open Access publishing

Unlike most important publishing markets in the world (like United States, UK and Netherlands), the majority of the Spanish research journals are published by not-for-profit organizations (75%): Public Research Centres, Universities, Professional Associations and Research and Scholarly Associations. This fact may be a favourable factor for the Open Access publishing model in Spain.

Taking a look into some numbers, the DOAJ indexes about 544 open access Spanish journals, therefore, about the 5.4% of the total journals in the database (2014). With regards to self-archiving policies, most of the Spanish journals contained in the Dulcinea database (76.31%) allow this kind of activity to authors.

An initiative promoted by FECYT to assess Spanish scientific journals, awarding them with a seal of quality in case of success, also fosters open access publishing, giving the journals extra punctuation in case of choosing this publishing model.

Useful links and resources

NOAD contact details: openairespain@fecyt.es

The National Research Environment

The organization of the Slovenian research environment is defined in the Research and Development Act, which also specifies how research and development policies are implemented and how research is funded from the government funds and other sources (European programmes and frameworks, local communities, and business enterprises). Research and development activities are carried out by the research performing institutions through programmes and projects, and by private researchers through projects. The Research and Development Act states that results of research and development activities, financed from the government funds, should be made publicly available with the only limitations being those set by the regulations on intellectual property, authors’ rights and personal data.

The Resolution on Research and Innovation Strategy of Slovenia 2011-2020 determines Open Access to raw research data from publicly financed research and preparation of an action plan till the year 2014 as a basis for a national Open Research Data policy.

The Research Infrastructures Roadmap 2011-2020 envisages the international cooperation of Slovenia in ESS, DARIAH and CESSDA projects. National repositories for scientific publications and for raw research data are planned and are to be connected to the national Current Research Information System (SICRIS). Deposit of research publications and raw data is to be made mandatory when the infrastructure is established. Building of an open social sciences and humanities research infrastructure is also anticipated.

Research and development activities are carried out at approximately 400 research institutions. There are three public universities in Slovenia: the University of Ljubljana, the University of Maribor, and the University of Primorska. The largest among the private academic institutions is the University of Nova Gorica. The four universities form the Rectors’ Conference of the Republic of Slovenia. The largest research institutes in Slovenia are the Jožef Stefan Institute, the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, the National Institute of Chemistry, the Institute of Oncology, the Agricultural Institute of Slovenia, and the National Institute of Biology. The umbrella interest association of research institutes is KOsRIS (Coordination of Independent Research Institutions of Slovenia).

Data on Slovenian researchers, organisations, research groups, projects, and programmes are available via the Slovenian Current Research Information System SICRIS (personal bibliographies of researchers are also used for research evaluation). 

More information on the national research environment is available at Research and Innovation Observatory (RIO) - Slovenia.

Major Research Funders

Major funders of research are the Slovenian Research Agency and the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport.

EC Research Funding

In 2014, Slovenia spent 2.39 % of its gross domestic product to finance research and development activities. In the same year the total funding for R &D expenditure from abroad amounted to 82.48 million EUR, out of this 38.19 million EUR from the European Commission.

Open Access Situation

The 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 (ROARMAP record). 

Slovenian research performing organizations have not yet adopted the Open Access policies.


Mrs Petra Tramte from the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport was nominated as the National Point of Reference in accordance with the Commission Recommendation of 17. 7. 2012 on access to and preservation of scientific information. She also coordinates the activities of the working group on open access, nominated by the Minister.

Information on Open Access in Slovenian language is available through the national portal Open Access Slovenia. 45 Slovenian scientific journals are indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals. The electronic versions of all publicly co-financed Slovenian journals (138 titles) and final reports of research projects, financed by the Slovenian Research Agency, must be deposited into the Digital Library of Slovenia. Many of the scientific journals use Open Journal Systems for managing the publication process. The country does not have a national portal for the Open Access journals or for the Open Access monographs.

The Open Science Slovenia portal was established that harvests metadata from Slovenian repositories and other archives for scientific publications and research data which enables joint display and federated search at the portal. Slovenian repositories for the research outcomes (Digital Library of the University of MariborRepository of the University of Ljubljana, Repository of the University of Primorska, Repository of the University of Nova Gorica, Digital Repository of the Research Organizations of Slovenia) enable collection, storage and making scientific publications available to the public. Repositories are compatible with the OpenAIRE Guidelines and are included into the OpenAIRE portal. Slovenia takes part in the OpenAIRE2020 project (the National Open Access Desk at the University of Ljubljana). Social Science Data Archives, a member of CESSDA, maintained by the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Ljubljana, is collecting raw research data from the social sciences research. CLARIN.SI is the Slovenian research infrastructure for language sources and technologies. SI-DIH DARIAH search engine enables search for research data in different repositories and archives of institutions and societies from the humanities and the arts.

The conference Open Science in the European Research Area was organized by the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport and the University of Ljubljana on 17 November 2016. A short report is published at the OpenAIRE blog.

Major Open Access Projects/Initiatives

Open Access Slovenia portal, Jožef Stefan Institute, Dr Luka Šušteršič

Open Science Slovenia portal, University of Maribor, Dr Milan Ojsteršek

OpenAIRE National Open Access Desk, University of Ljubljana, Dr Mojca Kotar

Open Data Project, University of Ljubljana, Dr Janez Štebe

COAR, EIFL-OA coordinator, National and University Library, Dr Alenka Kavčič-Ćolić

Publications on Open Access in Slovenia or on Open Access by Slovenian Authors

Contributor’s Contact Details and Contact Details of the National Open Access Desk

Dr Mojca Kotar
Assistant Secretary General
University of Ljubljana
University Office of Library Services
Kongresni trg 12
SI-1000 Ljubljana
Slovenia
Ph.: +386 1 2418 679