National Open Access Desk

Updated in August 2022.

As an EU Member State, Slovenia is part of the European Research Area (ERA) and is implementing open science according to the Conclusions of the Council of the European Union and the European Commission's recommendations.

The national open access strategy 2015-2020 (prolongued to 2021) was fully aligned with provisions on open access in Horizon 2020. From 2022 onwards, Slovenian legislative provisions on open science are fully aligned with Horizon Europe (see Open Science Policy tab). Researchers therefore comply with open science provisions in the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation and in national open science legislation in the same way.

The national open science infrastructure consists of:

• Repositories with full-text peer-reviewed publications, final works of studies at universities and research data, and the national portal Open Science Slovenia with harvested metadata records;
• Research infrastructures;
• Computing and storage facilities, among them supercomputer Vega.

The University of Maribor Library and Academic and Research Network of Slovenia (ARNES) are partners in the NI4OS-Europe project (National Initiatives for Open Science in Europe) that facilitates collaboration of national open science stakeholders and onboarding of national open science infrastructures into the EOSC.

Mr Peter Sterle from the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport acts as the National Point of Reference according to the Commission Recommendation of 25 April 2018 on access to and preservation of scientific information,  and participates in the EOSC Steering Board.

Updated in August 2022.

SUPPORT

Research libraries offer support to researchers regarding open access to publications and managing research data. 

Regarding open access to publications, researchers comply with Horizon 2020, Horizon Europe and national provisions by depositing peer-reviewed publications into the Slovenian OpenAIRE compatible repositories. 

A network of research infrastructure centers is funded by the Slovenian Research Agency, also offering relevant support.

LANDSCAPE

Organization of the Slovenian research and innovation system is determined in the Scientific Research and Innovation Activities Act, which also contains provisions on open science. Development of open science ecosystem is planned in the Slovenian Scientific Research and Innovation Strategy 2030. Development of research infrastructures is steered by the Research Infrastructure Roadmap 2030 (it also covers participation of Slovenia in ESFRI infrastructures).

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

Public universities and  research institutes  are the major research performing organisations.

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 largest research institutes in Slovenia are Jožef Stefan Institute, Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, National Institute of Chemistry, Institute of Oncology, Agricultural Institute of Slovenia, and National Institute of Biology.

Data on Slovenian research performing organisations, researchers, research groups and projects are publicly available via the Slovenian Current Research Information System SICRIS (resulting personal bibliographies of researchers are also used for research evaluation by funders and for promotion and tenure at universities and research institutes). 

Updated in August 2022.

The Open Science Slovenia portal harvests metadata records from Slovenian repositories for publications and research data which enables federated search at the portal.

Slovenian Community of Open Science supports collaboration of open science stakeholders and onboarding of research infrastructures into the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). 

SLING is a Slovenian national supercomputing network that provides access to cluster-based Slovenian and international computing and storage capacities.

Data on Slovenian research performing organisations, researchers, research groups and projects are publicly available via the Slovenian Current Research Information System SICRIS (resulting personal bibliographies of researchers are also used for research evaluation by funders and for promotion and tenure at universities and research institutes). 

Updated in August 2022.

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 (later prolongued to 2021) and the action plan in May 2017.

A new Scientific Research and Innovation Activities Act came into force in Slovenia with the beginning of 2022 and also contains provisions regarding open science (see blogpost). A subordinate Decree on performing scientific research according to the principles of open science underwent the public consultation and will be approved by the Government of the Republic of Slovenia.

In the Resolution on the Slovenian Scientific Research and Innovation Strategy 2030 (adopted by the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia), a chapter is dedicated to open science (see blogpost). Action plan for the implementation of the Resolution regarding open science is in preparation (August 2022) and will coincide with the national Recovery and Resilience Plan activities on digitisation for open science. 

Updated in August 2022.

Regarding open science in publicly funded research, national research funders have to implement national policies (like the National Strategy of Open Access to Scientific Publications and Research Data in Slovenia 2015-2020 or the Resolution on the Slovenian Scientific Research and Innovation Strategy 2030) as well as relevant legislative provisions (from the Scientific Research and Innovation Activities Act).

Slovenian Research Agency signed Plan S in September 2018 and the DORA Declaration in July 2019.

Updated in August 2022.

Slovenian research performing organizations have not yet adopted the open science policies.

The University of Ljubljana included a provision on designing and implementing the education and research according to the principles of open science in the Statutes of the University (Article 6 in Chapter II. on the autonomy of the university; came into force in February 2017). Strategy of the University of Ljubljana 2022-2027 requires that researchers deposit publications into the Repository of the University of Ljubljana and make them publicly available via this Repository.

The University of Maribor has signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities in March 2014 and DORA - the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment - in June 2019.