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Open Access in Slovakia; There is a very active research community in Slovakia which takes place through the universities managed by Ministry of Education of the Slovak Republic and the network of the Slovak Academy of Sciences each with different approaches to publishing, disseminating and archiving scientific information. The most important scientific institution in the country is the Slovak Center of Scientific and Technical Information. (Source: OpenAIRE). There are no OA repositories in Slovakia.
DOAJ indexes 38 OA journals for Slovakia. However, “most of them are only available from the web pages of the institutions, which do not have any long-term preservation strategies so they often disappear from institutional websites” (Source: OpenAIRE).
There are currently no A policies registered in ROARMAP.
On February 11, 2015, the government of Slovak Republic approved the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Action Plan 2015. It includes OA, open data and open education policies in addition to traditional OGP open government and open justice initiatives. This approach is quite unique and worth being replicated in other countries. The Action Plan commits the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport to create an OA strategy and propose a mechanism for voluntary publication of data related to scientific publications as open data. Ján Gondoľ, Ministry of Interior of the Slovak republic, Office of the Plenipotentiary for the development of civil society and project COMSODE (Components Supporting the Open Data Exploitation), has been a driving force behind this Action Plan and his presentation “OA and Open Educational Resources in Slovakia’s Open Government Partnership Action Plan for year 2015” that provides an introduction to this action plan, its goals and individual commitments is available here (in Slovak language).
Creative Commons (CC) offers appropriate and applicable legal instruments to support individuals, universities and research institutions in managing copyright in OA projects. The full advantage of CC licenses was hindered in the past because of Slovak legal regulation, today the situation is different. CC licences are compatible with Slovak copyright law.
Enabling Environment edit
There is a developing OA environment in Slovakia with University of Kniznica in partnership with OpenAIRE and the development of centralised systems that may link to OA initiatives.
Tackling the infrastructure requirements: the potential role of SK-CRIS and national CRIS systems in supporting OA implementation: The level of infrastructure maturity required to effectively enable open access policies implementation has traditionally been based on an OA repository network, where scholars deposit their research outputs as required by the OA policy. Pablo suggested that in the countries, where the repository network is weak or simply not available (like in Slovakia’s case), National Current Research Information Systems (CRIS) may also play a key role in supporting OA policies if appropriately enhanced to do so. SK-CRIS in the Slovak Republic together with pioneering CRIS/repository have also initiated interoperability activities currently taking place in other countries.
Potential Barriers edit
The Slovak research community is aware of Open Access benefits but is still reluctant to provide Open Access to their publications. The major constraints are that Open Access depositing takes their time and effort. (Source: OpenAIRE)
Major Projects/Initiatives edit
ETD SK (Electronic Theses and Dissertations Slovakia)
This collecting system operates on two levels. The university or college will provide its own local repository and on the second level will forward metadata by one-off step to the global repository. With algorithm mentioned above, the set of information will be process in the system which will thereafter evaluate the input.
Presentation of dissertation works to the public depends on the parameters of the license agreement and may include metadata or full texts.
Slovak Centre of Scientific and Technical Information (SC STI)
Has established a search portal to serve research and development. It is planned to connect this to the portal of the Central Registry of Theses and Dissertations in Slovakia – CRTD Registry and creation of the Slovak citation index, including author index.
University of Kniznica, Bratislava
Is in partnership with OpenAIRE to promote OA and act as source of information on initiating OA strategies.
National and Institutional Level Policies/Mandates edit
There is no government funding mandate but EU funded research will be subject to OA mandating requirements.
Past and Future OA Related Activities edit
31 March-3 April 2014: 2014 Digital Library Conference (OA is among the topics); Jasna, Slovakia.
25 March 2015: Over 150 participants from Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Germany and Slovakia attended a conference “Open access policy of Slovakia in the European context 2015 – current state and perspectives” hosted in Bratislava by the Slovak Centre of Scientific and Technical Information (SCSTI), a National Point of Reference for open access (OA), OpenAIRE National OA Desk, and a Key Node organization in PASTEUR4OA project.
As a first step in future possible national collaboration, UL TUK cooperated in national project proposal “Creation a digital library of university staff publications at Slovak universities” submitted to Ministry of Education grant scheme for 2004. If this is approved, 12 Slovak universities represented by 15 academic libraries will cooperate in development of digital library system and hopefully fasten the process and increase the amount of open access research content (Maťašovská Tetřevová, M and Maťašovská, Z, 2004)
List of Publications edit
26 November 2014: OpenCon 2014- Interview with Jan Gondol of the Slovakian Ministry of the Interior about Open Access in Slovakia; by host of www.okcast.org, Alex Fink.
Králiková, E (2011) Creating the Central Database of the Slovak Electronic Information Resources to Support Research and Development, the Portal Solution of Access to Processed Electronic Resources Paper presented at 17th annual Conference on Professional Information Resources May 24–26, 2011, Prague.
Steinerova, J (2009) Users´ Behaviour and Institutional Repositories: Towards Information Ecology In CASLIN 2009: Institutional Online Repositories and Open Access 16th International Seminar, Tepla Monastery, Czech Republic, 7–11 June 2009.
Susol, J (2009) Higher education and the academic library EDUCAUSE Review, Vol. 44, 4 (July/August 2009): 66–67.
Maťašovská Tetřevová, M and Maťašovská, Z (2004) From Paper Archive to Digital Repository of Academic Staff Publications.
Sources edit
This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC-BY-SA IGO 3.0 (license statement/permission). Text taken from Global Open Access Portal, UNESCO. UNESCO.