The University of Latvia has started to promote and support the OA movement in Latvia after taking part in the OpenAIRE project.
From 2009 to 2014 the OA team from the Library of the University of Latvia participated in the European Commission Seventh Framework Programme; OpenAIRE project (OA Infrastructure for Research in Europe) and OpenAIREplus (2nd Generation of OA Infrastructure for Research in Europe: 2012-2014). In 2015 it was continued with the OpenAIRE2020 (OA Infrastructure for Research in Europe 2020)), PASTEUR4OA (OA Policy Alignment Strategies for European Union Research), and FOSTER (Facilitate Open Science Training for European Research).
The participation of the University of Latvia in these projects has resulted in the establishment of the National Open Access Desk – Latvia which serves as the main information point for support on OA and broader Open Science in Latvia. During the participation in the projects, several important steps were taken for the development of the OA movement in Latvia. Three institutional repositories have been set up and researchers in Latvia were kept regularly informed about OA benefits, possibilities and activities. The University of Latvia annually celebrates international OA Week by organizing discussions, meetings, presentations, workshops on various OA initiatives and by spreading promotional materials to other academic institutions. The NOAD-Latvia regularly provides consultations and seminars on the OA and Open Science for the higher education and research institutions in all regions of Latvia.
In 2019 the successful collaboration has been started with the Horizon2020 – Latvia National Contact Point which functions under the State Education Development Agency of the Republic of Latvia. The collaboration has resulted in different joint seminars for the Latvia research community members with building awareness of the open initiatives in Europe, as well as the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).
On September 1, 2019, the EOSC Nordic project was launched to promote the implementation of the EOSC in the Nordic and Baltic countries. Latvia is represented in the project by Riga Technical University (more here).
In late 2019 the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Latvia initiated the Open Science Latvia landscape research, which is done by the National Library of Latvia and Riga Technical University in collaboration with Riga Stradins University. The outcome of the research published in spring 2020 is available here, and the main recommendations here.