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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