Cyprus
Last updated on 
Mar 22, 2022

National Open Access Desk

University of Cyprus
University of Cyprus
University of Cyprus
  • Overview

    In the past few years, research in Cyprus has increased considerably due to the integration of the country into the EU. The establishment of six more universities, both public and private, in addition to the University of Cyprus that already existed, has also contributed to this increase. The main funder of research in Cyprus is the EU, which has supported research by providing the majority of the funding. Since the EU has given a significant boost to research activity nationally by being the primary funder of research, its role is considered particularly important for further support of research both for researchers and the organizations that employ them.

    In March 2020, Research and Innovation related issues were approached in an integrated and comprehensive manner under the competencies of the Deputy Minister for Research, Innovation and Digital Policy, and the operation of the Research and Innovation Foundation as the executive arm of the system  

    stratigikiETAKen 1030x580

    Image Source: https://chiefscientist.gov.cy/strategy-and-policy/governance/

    According to the official page of the Chief scientist for research and innovation of the Republic of Cyprus, the levels of the governance are described as follows:

    Strategy Level

    Deputy Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy

    The Deputy Ministry for Research, Innovation and Digital Policy is the competent authority for the design and implementation of the Government ‘s policy for Research and Innovation (R&I).

    By supporting scientific research, investing in innovative entrepreneurship and implementing an ambitious digital transformation reform, the Deputy Ministry aspires to develop a modern and efficient state, competitive at European and international level, and a dynamic digital economy, where every citizen and every business will be able to grow and prosper.

    National Board for Research and Innovation

    The National Board for Research and Innovation (NBRI) is an advisory body to the President of the Republic for defining R&I strategy. NBRI is responsible for promoting and implementing the National Strategic Framework for R&I, for submitting proposals and suggestions on strategy issues and for monitoring the implementation of actions adopted at policy level. NBRI meets on a regular basis and its work is supported by the competent Directorate of the Deputy Ministry for Research, Innovation and Digital Policy, acting as NBRI secretariat. The Chief Scientist is an ex officio member of NBRI and facilitates its work by formulating recommendations on the national R&I strategy, policy and the structure and operation of the national R&I governance system.

    Policy Level

    Chief Scientist

    The Chief Scientist coordinates and supervises the formulation of the national R&I policy and the overall operation of the National R&I Governance System, including the departments and bodies involved in both the policy and operational levels. In addition, the Chief Scientist participates as ex-officio member and supports the work of NBRI to formulate proposals for the national R&I Strategy and its implementation and proposals regarding the structure and operation of the national R&I governance system.

    Committee of Ministry Research and Innovation (R&I) Coordinators
    The Committee of Ministry Research and Innovation (R&I) Coordinators operates under the Chairmanship of the Chief Scientist. Each Ministry appoints a R&I Coordinator as a focal point of communication for Research and Innovation matters.

    Operational Level

    Research and Innovation Foundation (RIF)

    RIF is the executive arm of the National R&I Governance System.

    Open Science, Open Access to research outputs will play a key role to the achievement of the vision of the Republic. In March 2020 the Minister of Finance stated that "Opening our data is providing an unlimited perspective on research, innovation, political accountability, development, democracy and progress. The richness of data that the government produces and holds is not the property of the Government and should not be locked in Ministry drawer, instead, it belongs to the citizens." The Deputy Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digital policy announced at the same event that the issue of Openness is a crucial point to the fulfilment of the tasks of his deputy ministry.

    national overview

    Support and Landscape

    Local Open Access support initiatives are mainly through Cyprus academic institutions. Almost all institutions participates and organise events and awareness activities especially on Open Access week.

    Furthermore, the Cyprus NOAD participates in “on-demand” events to inform any stakeholder needed about Open Access issues and is in close collaboration with the Cyprus Association of Librarians-Information Scientists for providing feedback about Open Access developments, policies etc. Material from recent events can be found in the following links:

    Open Data Day: Transparency, Innovation, Development, 2020 Event organized by OpenAIRE and the Ministry of Finance, Department of Public Administration and Personnel 

    Open Science: From theory to practice, 2019 National OpenAIRE event

    Open Science and the Role of Repositories, 2018 National OpenAIRE event with the collaboration of RPF & DG EPCD

    Open Access: the direct dissemination of the produced scientific knowledge, 2017 Workshop for Open Access with the collaboration of OpenAIRE, RPF, OUC & DG EPCD

    Open Access in Cyprus, 2016 Event by Open University of Cyprus 2016

    National Workshop For Open Access, 2015 OpenAIRE/FOSTER event 2015

     

    National Initiatives

    Through the University of Cyprus Library, Cyprus has been participating in OpenAIRE projects since the beginning of the project in 2009, as a National Open Access Desk (NOAD). The main objectives of a NOAD are among others to support, promote and disseminate all relevant information regarding the policies of Open Access to all possible stakeholders.

    Cyprus achieved this by establishing a collaboration mechanism among researchers, institutions, funding organizations, EC National Reference Points, repository managers, librarians and the librarians association – a real human network. Three parallel approaches are in continuous process for this achievement.

    1. Central approach: Cooperation with the Research Promotion Foundation and the Directorate General for European Programmes, Coordination and Development (the local NPRs for OA) in order to establish a National policy and promote any Open Science issue to the local community. This approach has been extremely efficient since through a great collaboration we resulted excellent and important outcomes.

    2. Cluster approach: a) Co-organize/Participate in conferences of librarians/information scientists who acted as multipliers because they were able to disseminate the obligation derived by H2020 projects to their institutional researchers. b) Identification and participation with posters or papers in conferences / information days that took place in our region through which researchers were reached.

    3. Individual approach: Emails to the Cypriot coordinators/partners of SC39 FP7 and H2020 projects and phone calls were answered for questions & help requests.

    In addition and in order to provide useful and essential information to the local community, in 2019 the website OpenScienceCy has been created and curated by the Cyprus OpenAIRE NOAD.

    national landscape

  • Open Science Policy

    National Policy

    Since 2009 Cyprus via the Library of the University of Cyprus is participating in European funded projects that aim to promote the Open Science policies of the European Commission, as National Open Access Desk (NOAD).

    Many awareness activities (presentations, meetings, workshops etc)  took place since 2009 focusing in several stakeholders.

    In addition, as part of the NOADs obligations for Open Access and Open Science awareness activities, the form of a National Open Access Working Group was considered as an essential task for putting Open Science in action. So, in 2015, with the coordination of the OpenAIRE Cyprus NOAD the different stakeholders involved in the Working Group for Open Access (consisting of the National Point of Reference for Open Access, namely the Directorate General for European Programmes, Coordination and Development, the Research promotion foundation, local academic institutions and research funders), and highly supported by the coordinators of the project PASTEUR4OA (Open Access Policy Alignment Strategies for European Union Research), the form of the document for the National policy for Open Access begun. On the 25th of February 2016, the Council of ministers of the Republic of Cyprus, had finally approved the adoption of the National policy for Open Access in Cyprus. The Cyprus OA policy document is available on the National Strategy for Research and Innovation page of the Directorate General for European Programmes, Coordination and Development. The National policy provides guidelines and support for the implementation of Open Access for research outputs that are funded locally, aligned with the European policies and based on the already established infrastructure at European level (e.g. OpenAIRE). Several activities are taking place in Cyprus in order to support the adoption of the national policy and ensure the success of its implementation.

    The choice of long-term data repository is left to the researchers. The policy encourages the use of either disciplinary data archives, institutional repositories, or Zenodo. A Zenodo community named CYPRUS has been created and is curated by OPENAIRE Cyprus NOAD. The DG EPCD has encouraged all universities, researchers and research institutions to make use of this. The creation of a national data archive was discussed at a May 2018 meeting of the National Working Group.

    In 2019, a revision of the policy (draft document) was created by the Cyprus OpenAIRE NOAD (based on the OpenAIRE RPO template), and forwarded to the relevant stakeholders. The document is under study and is to be further discussed in 2020.

    Regarding the fulfilment of EOSC vision, Cyprus is participating with two partners (the University of Cyprus and the Cyprus Institute) in the InfraEOSC 5b project, National Initiatives for Open Science in Europe – NI4OS Europe that aims to be a core contributor to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) service portfolio, commit to EOSC governance and ensure inclusiveness on the European level for enabling global Open Science. 

    national policy

    Funder policy

    The new funding schema of the National research funder “Restart 2016-2020”, announced late 2016, included the requirement for Open Access to Research outputs of the projects funded by the National Research Promotion Foundation. Compliance of the researchers with the national open access policy, cannot yet be reported. Institutional policies will be the next step in order to be aligned to the European and National policy.

    Open Access Author Funds

    APCs have been in the agenda of the meetings/discussions for a long time in different levels and stakeholders.

    By late 2017 the Cyprus University of Technology presented the «CUT Open Access Author Fund». The academic community of CUT is now able to apply for a maximum amount of €5000 to publish their research publications in Open Access journals or books.

    Furthermore, there has been a great initiative from a pharmaceutical company which decided that within the framework of its Corporate Social Responsibility will finance the publications of authors with a maximum funding amount of €3000 if they provide their research in Open Access. The Senate of CUT approved the creation of the “Remedica Open Access Author Fund” and it’s been in act since 2013.

    funder policy

    Institutional Policy

    In November 2008 the Senate of the University of Cyprus, supported and accepted the Library Committee’s proposal to sign the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. Berlin declaration was also signed in 2011 by the Governing board of the Cyprus University of Technology and in 2017 by the Open University of Cyprus.

    In addition, the forming of Institutional Policies are now in progress in Cyprus in the biggest universities of the country. In particular, Open Access committee has been formed by the University of Cyprus to handle the issue and propose any necessary actions and tasks needed to adopt and implement the institutional policy. Other Universities are also discussing in different levels and bodies the introduction of an institutional OA policy.

     

    institutional policy

  • Infrastructure & EOSC

    Key networks & Aggregators

    Currently, there are 4 Open Access Institutional Repositories in which researchers can submit their research output in Cyprus:
    • The repositories GNOSISLEKYTHOS, provided by the University of Cyprus: The University of Cyprus Library as the regional NOAD of Cyprus offers GNOSIS as the institutional repository for the research outputs of the UCy researchers. Lekythos now mainly hosts digitised or digital born material of mainly archival and/or cultural heritage material. 
    • The repository KTISIS, Cyprus University of Technology: Ktisis is the Institutional Repository of the Cyprus University of Technology-Library. Ktisis is an open source institutional repository gathering any digital material relating to the various activities of the Cyprus University of Technology especially original research material produced by the members of the University.
    • The repository KYPSELI, Open University Cyprus: Kypseli, is the institutional repository of the Open University of Cyprus which host publications, thesis and digital cultural material.
    National harvesters

    There are two harvesters in Cyprus. Cyprus Open Archives harvests all repositories based in Cyprus, providing one point access to digitized or digital born material, including research publications, thesis or cultural heritage items. Another harvester hosted by the Ministry of Education and Culture was created mainly for providing digital items to Europeana and mainly harvests cultural heritage items.

    national infra

    Data repositories

    National publishing initiatives

    In October 2009 the Cyprus Academic Library Consortium (CALC) has signed a nationwide subscription contract with BMC (Biomed Central) for an open access model to the BMC journals. According to the author-pay-model-contract the contribution fee for all authors from Cyprus institutes (public and private Universities, research centres, hospitals etc.) will be discounted by 50% for their future publications to BMC journals. 

    National agreements with publishers

    OA books

  • Training & Support

    Local Open Access support initiatives are mainly through Cyprus academic institutions. Almost all institutions participates and organise events and awareness activities especially on Open Access week.

    Furthermore, the Cyprus NOAD participates in “on-demand” events to inform any stakeholder needed about Open Access issues and is in close collaboration with the Cyprus Association of Librarians-Information Scientists for providing feedback about Open Access developments, policies etc. Material from recent events can be found in the following links:

    Open Data Day: Transparency, Innovation, Development, 2020 Event organized by OpenAIRE and the Ministry of Finance, Department of Public Administration and Personnel 

    Open Science: From theory to practice, 2019 National OpenAIRE event

    Open Science and the Role of Repositories, 2018 National OpenAIRE event with the collaboration of RPF & DG EPCD

    Open Access: the direct dissemination of the produced scientific knowledge, 2017 Workshop for Open Access with the collaboration of OpenAIRE, RPF, OUC & DG EPCD

    Open Access in Cyprus, 2016 Event by Open University of Cyprus 2016

    National Workshop For Open Access, 2015 OpenAIRE/FOSTER event 2015

     

  • Statistics

    View Statistics in the country page of Open Science Observatory

  • News

    OpenAIRE NOADs in Greece and Cyprus join forces with their national associations of librarians and information scientists
    17 Jul 2022

    OpenAIRE NOADs in Greece and Cyprus join forces with their national associations of librarians and information scientists

    OpenAIRE and libraries in Greece and Cyprus: For many years now, OpenAIRE NOADs in Greece (ATHENA RC and HEAL-Link) and Cyprus (University of Cyprus Library) have run joint webinars and workshops to raise awareness and train their national academic and research communities on Open Science practices. Most importantly, they have been supporting researchers in complying with Open Science re...

    Cyprus: National Policy for Open Science practices
    21 Jun 2022

    Cyprus: National Policy for Open Science practices

    Announcing the new "National Policy of the Republic of Cyprus for Open Science Practices"   Reported by Sylvia Koukounidou After the first National Policy for Open Access in Cyprus, approved by the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Cyprus on the 25th of February 2016, the time has come for a revision in order to follow the rapidly changing research ecosystem and fulfil all the requ...

    University of Cyprus: supporting, establishing and implementing EC’s vision for Open Science
    15 Feb 2022

    University of Cyprus: supporting, establishing and implementing EC’s vision for Open Science

    Being an OpenAIRE NOAD was and still is an added value  The most important asset that OpenAIRE has and provides to all of us is the great human network that is always there for support. by Sylvia  The OpenAIRE team has the pleasure of speaking to Sylvia Koukounidou, Coordinator of Digitisation and Archives Office, Library-University of Cyprus. Read her reflections on Open Science. &...

    Embedding Amnesia, OpenAIRE’s free and open-source software, in COVID-19 research workflows to enable secure processing and sharing of sensitive data
    16 Jul 2021

    Embedding Amnesia, OpenAIRE’s free and open-source software, in COVID-19 research workflows to enable secure processing and sharing of sensitive data

    Background: Since the beginning of the pandemic, 'ΑΤΗΕΝΑ' Research Center has been active in communicating best practices and achievements from the national and European R&I ecosystems to the Greek academic and research communities. To maximize the impact of this effort for the benefit of researchers and health practitioners, the OpenAIRE Greek NOAD has been collaborating with national stakeho...

    Cypriot NI4OS-Europe event and OpenAIRE contribution
    29 Apr 2021

    Cypriot NI4OS-Europe event and OpenAIRE contribution

    About: On April 23, 2021 the University of Cyprus Library organized an Open Science event to update on the latest developments of European Research and Innovation actions, mainly focusing around the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) developments. The event welcomed 65 participants spanning from academics, researchers to policy makers, funders, librarians and Open Science enthusiasts. Agenda: The ...

    European Commission introduces the Open Research Europe platform to the Greek and Cypriot scientific communities
    27 Apr 2021

    European Commission introduces the Open Research Europe platform to the Greek and Cypriot scientific communities

    Focus: In April, the Greek and Cypriot OpenAIRE NOADs, in collaboration also with the Scholarly Communication Unit of HEAL-Link, organized an event to inform their scientific communities and individual researchers about the newly launched European platform for open access publications, namely the Open Research Europe (ORE). The event welcomed Victoria Tsoukala, Policy Officer-Seconded National Exp...

Follow Us

Keep in touch

Subscribe to our Newsletter

OpenAIRE has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme under Grant Agreements No. 777541 and 101017452 (see all).

cc bycc byUnless otherwise indicated, all materials created by OpenAIRE are licenced under CC ATTRIBUTION 4.0 INTERNATIONAL LICENSE.