Overview

Ukraine was one of the first-ever countries where EIFL began promoting open access, with an awareness raising workshop in 2004. Since then there have been many training and awareness raising events in Ukraine, in collaboration with the Association ‘Informatio-Consortium’, Ukrainian Library Association, ELibUkr Consortium and the Mohyla School of Journalism (National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy). Thousands of  researchers, students, research administrators and managers, journal editors and librarians have taken part in training on open access and open science practices and strategies.  

In 2015 EIFL took on the role of Directory of Open Access Journals Associate Editor to help Ukrainian open access publishers to improve policies and workflows to meet best practices in publishing.  A National Repository Working Group was set up in 2018 to steer repository activities in the country. 

In 2021, EIFL joined a partnership to start a new, Erasmus+ funded project that will promote openness and transparency in research by fostering open science practices among early career researchers and others who are interested. The OPTIMA (Open Practices, Transparency and Integrity for Modern Academia) project will create an online open peer review platform for academic conferences and build an international virtual community of peer reviewers. The open peer review platform will provide hands-on learning opportunities for early career researchers, helping to build new skills under the collective mentorship of international experts. EIFL’s main contribution to the OPTIMA project will be to develop generic and discipline-specific open science courses for Masters students and PhD candidates. The courses will be offered in five Ukrainian universities. 

Timeline

2004 - 2023

Main activities

• Advocacy and awareness raising about open access and open science
• Developing promotional and advocacy material
• Training 
• Setting up a National Repository Working Group 
• Strengthening open access journals
• Developing open science courses for early career researchers 
• Open access and open science policy development

Achievements

• 373 open access journals indexed in the DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals). 
• 169 open access repositories set up.
• 17 institutional open access policies adopted.  
• The Open Access to Knowledge Statement has been endorsed by over 150 Ukrainian university librarians (on 21 May 2009) .
• An open Access to research output clause is included in the Olvia Declaration of the Universities in Ukraine: Academic Freedom, University Autonomy, Science and Education for Sustainable Development, which was endorsed by 26 rectors at the Olvia Forum in June 2009.
• Open access and open science have been integrated into  national laws, for example, the Law of Ukraine On the Principles of Developing Information Society in Ukraine in 2007-2015
• The Open Government Partnership Action Plan 2021-2022 includes an open science roadmap. 
• The National Initiative of the European Open Science Cloud Initiative was launched in November 2020.