Conference “Open Science - the 21th century benefits for researchers” - Riga, Latvia

The conference “Open Science - the 21th century benefits for researchers” took place during the annual International Open Access week. This conference, which had financial support provided by the European Union`s FP7 program`s project FOSTER, was organized by three institutions – the National Library of Latvia, the University of Latvia and Technical Riga University.

The conference was attended by more than hundred scientists and research managers, creaters of research policies and librarians.

The conference was opened by Andris Vilks, Director of the National Library of Latvia, and he stated that every one of us is part of the knowledge society, which can be developed only if the knowledge is available in open access. One of the speeches at the conference was given by vice-rector of humanities and educational sciences Ina Druviete. She highlighted that the university's role is like the bridge between society and the knowledge. She emphasized, that at the moment the work takes place to provide a positive climate for scientific information exchange and that this conference especially has been appreciable contribution to provide open access to the science and the foundations of academic education.

After  these inspirational and convincing speeches the plenary session was held during which useful  information and insights were given by Lauma Sika, the advisor in Latvia`s Permanent Representation of EU, Iryna Kuchma, Open Access program manager at EIFL  and Martin Donnelly, Senior Institutional Support officer at DCC. Iveta Gudakovska (OpenAIRE2020) gave a presentation of National Open Access Desk.

During the second part of the conference participants were able to take part in three workshops to  discuss various actual questions and to share previous experiences and good practices in their respective institutions.

Iryna Kuchma provided many examples which contradicted stereotypes of Open Access publishing, for example, in many cases Open Access publishing isn`t expensive at all, it is not at all a research done in a poor quality, also quite often publishing in open access promotes published materials citation and impact. Iryna Kuchma also shared policy documents from different countries, which are accepted in large number of countries across the globe -not only in Europe, but also in Africa and Latin America.

Martin Donnelly provided an introduction to the constituent parts of Open Science: Open Access publication and data sharing, and gave background for the development of open research, provide quantitative evidence for its benefits, and outline details of the EC's recent mandate on Open Access publication and the data management pilot.He also led the discussions during the workshop „The Role of Open Access and It's Implementation Practice in Research Institutions”.


Dace Rozenberga, Research Impact Partner at the Research Excellence Unit of the Coventry University and Ross Mounce, Postdoctoral researcher at the Natural History Museum, presented the latest openly available tools for research data management and sharing. Both gave useful practical advices and good ideas from their experience.

Whilst talking about the role of library a special attention was paid to the University`s of Latvia E-resource repository, which has initiated the development of repositories in other institutions. There were also presentations of the National Open Access Desk new website and of the open e-course „Open Science”, which is prepared in the University`s Moodle setting.

The presentations and video record of the conference plenary session are available on the www.napd.lu.lv and on the FOSTER portal.