Research in Greece is carried out primarily by Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and Research Centers (RC). HEIs and public RCs are independent public-law bodies meaning they are self-administered but supervised and financed by the state. Currently, there are 25 HEIs with several departments and 40 public RCs including institutes and units that they are comprised of. As of 2019, HEIs activities fall under the supervision of the Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs and RCs are supervised by the General Secretariat of Research and Technology (GSRT) of the Ministry of Development and Investments. A number of specialized research centres are nonetheless supervised by other ministries. In addition to the above, research is carried out within other organisations like public and private hospitals, museums, private companies, etc. albeit to a smaller extent when compared to universities and research centres. The GSRT, the main public funder, supports the activities of research organisations and productive sectors of the economy through competitive funding.
In 2017, the General Secretariat of Research and Technology (GSRT) established a Working Group (WG) of consultative nature to support GSRT with the development of a national strategy on Open Science. Members of the WG include key national stakeholders in the OS/OA ecosystem. The WG’s mission is:
- To map the current situation at national and European level and the necessary measure for formulating a national OS strategy aligned with the ERA roadmap and other related documents
- To present to the GSRT proposals regarding the potential involvement of other stakeholders at a later stage
In addition, since 2019 Athena Research and Innovation Center has set up and leads a bottom-up Open Science Task Force comprised from representatives of 25 national academic and research institutions, research infrastructures, national nodes and Open Science initiatives. The task force has worked to draft a proposal for a National Open Science Plan which is going to be released for public consultation in 2020.
Public funders have not yet adopted Open Access policies. Nonetheless, researchers funded under the “Diversity, inequalities and social inclusion” programme of the EEA financial mechanism (the GSRT being the programme operator) are expected to provide open access to their research outputs. Similarly, OA to research outputs may be provisioned through other regional funding streams like EPAnEk. The GSRT is planning to include in its future calls open access requirements similar to those of Horizon 2020.
Additionally, Kallipos is an initiative aimed at introducing e-textbooks in higher education. The “Kallipos Action” was developed by the Hellenic Academic Libraries Link (HEAL-Link), the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) and the National Research Network (EDET). It was funded by the European Social Fund and the Ministry of Education Operational Programme “Education and Lifelong learning”.
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There are two national publishing iniatives:
Since 2007 EKT operates a nation-wide institutional ePublishing infrastructure for open access publications, aimed at supporting open access publishing for Greek scholarly institutions, such as universities, scholarly societies, research centers. It collaborates with 30 Greek publishers and operates three platforms, one each for journals, proceedings and open access monographs with an emphasis –but not limited- to SSH.
Similarly, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki offers a publishing platform that hosts Open Access scientific journals published by departments, faculty members and research centers of the University. It supports all stages of the publishing process in an online environment and its content is indexed by well-known search engines.
HEAL-Link has secured access to a number of scientific publishers for years 2019-2021 through Open Access Agreements. All agreements that they made under the provision for open access publications support the publication of articles only in scientific electronic journals. Researchers are advised to read carefully the terms and conditions of publishers prior to selection of the publishing venue.
There are a number of stakeholders offering research support through informative or training events based on their expertise and area of influence.
Athena RC has initiated and leads a series of webinars on Open Science in greek language in collaboration with the Cypriot NOAD. These events are organised in a monthly basis and have proven to be successful in uniting the academic and research community under the Open Science and the EOSC umbrella. In the context of Athena RC's participation in the NI4OS-Europe project with significant involvement in the trainers network, more training events around Open Research Data Management and EOSC are expected to be delivered at the national level.
More information:
Open Access and Open Science
Open Research Software
Open Data