Open Access publishing in Lithuania and Serbia: Case studies

Published:

14 Feb 2012

EIFL has provided small grants to support Open Access publishing initiatives in Lithuania and Serbia and now Eleonora Dagiene, Chair of the Council at The Association of Lithuanian Serials, and Pero Šipka, CEON/CEES, describe the results.

Promoting Open Access through Implementation of Open Journal Systems (OJS) in Lithuanian Research Journals: A Case Study from Lithuania:

Key achievements:

Over 130 participants involved in publishing attended training events and learnt about OJS and on-line publishing. Seminar materials are available from the website of the Association.
Lithuanian OJS version and guidelines for journal editors and publishers have been released and disseminated.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI), and Cited By (by crossref.org) have been added to the OJS installations in the Lithuanian and English languages. Promoting plagiarism detection tools (CrossCheck) (by crossref.org and iThenticate).
22 OJS installations (and counting) implemented at seven research institutions:
Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (VGTU): Coactivity: Philology, Educology ; Coactivity: Philosophy, Communication ; Business: Theory And Practice ; Science – Future of Lithuania ; Evolution of Science and Technology ; Business, Management and Education
The Lithuanian Statistical Society: Lithuanian Journal of Statistics
The International School of Law and Business: Current Issues of Business and Law
The Journal “Sveikatos mokslai” (Engl. Health Sciences) (non-for-profit organization): Health Sciences
The Association of Lithuanian Serials: Development of Public Law
Scientific methodical centre “Scientia Educologica”: Problems of Management in the 21st Century
11 journals owned and published by Kaunas University of Technology

More journals started to work on OJS installations in 2011, however, haven’t gone live yet.
All these journals are in the process of being registered in the Directory of Open Access Journals.
Improved online visibility and accessibility of the Lithuanian research journals.
The OJS system made it considerably easier for journal editors to manage manuscript submissions, reviewing and publishing. For example, after the OJS installation the journal “Sveikatos mokslai” (Eng. Health Sciences) changed its frequency from four to six issues a year.
Libraries assisted the journals with OJS installations and expanded their services to new areas and new communities. For example, Kaunas University of Technology, that owns 11 journals, had one OJS installation before the project started and within the project all eleven journals started using OJS.

Read the case study here [PDF]

Supporting Serbian Journals Publishers to Switch to Article Processing Charges OA Model: A case study from Serbia:

Key achievements:

Serbian Open Access (OA) journal publishers were provided with software and organizational ‘know how’ to collect article processing charges (APCs) from the authors or their affiliated institutions.
A partnership with publishers was established based on a public call followed by an internet survey, and with an in-depth CEON/CEES analysis of the journals potentials of switching to the new model. More than 40 representatives of publishers and editorial boards have been trained to practice APCs .
An immediate result of this project is that five journals switched to the new business practice (Serbian Journal of Experimental and Clinical Research; PONS - Medicinski časopis; Acta Chirurgica Iugoslavica; Vojnosanitetski Pregled; and Vojnotehnički Glasnik), and enrolled additional 21 journals into preparatory programme.
The project provides a new model for Serbian journals publishers, which will lead to their long-term economic independence.
A proposal was submitted to the Ministry of Education and Science to support journals in transition to new business models (pending decision).

Read the case study here [ PDF ].

This week we have started releasing 13 case studies describing the results of 13 EIFL-funded projects that implemented national and institutional Open Access advocacy campaigns to reach out to research communities and Open Access publishing initiatives. Through small grants and support from their own institutions, the projects engaged in a wide variety of campaigns and activities, including: holding workshops, creating websites, building institutional repositories, creating an e-learning course, and implementing an open access publishing platforms. All of which resulted in increased awareness about and understanding of Open Access.

The EIFL-OA programme is supported by the Information programme, Open Society Foundations.

See Open Access – Open Science project: A case study from Poland released yesterday and ten more case studies are coming this week.

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