National Open Access Desk

Support and Landscape

National Initiatives

National Policy

Funder policy

Institutional Policy

Key networks & Aggregators

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Data repositories

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National publishing initiatives

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National agreements with publishers

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OA books

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NOAD-Latvia

NOAD-Latvia is a support point in Latvia for the research community to be aware of OA and its benefits. NOAD-Latvia organizes activities and also gives consultations on topics related to OA, open science, OA policy, etc. As the University of Latvia is one of the first higher education institutions and scientific research institution in Latvia that has made its repository OA, the university provides all interested parties with consultations and information.

In 2019 the close collaboration is grown between NOAD-Latvia and State Education Development Agency (SEDA) and National Contact Points for Horizon 2020 in Latvia in giving strong support for the post-PhD students and new scientists on writing project proposals in Horizon 2020 program. The representative of NOAD-Latvia is joining the meetings of SEDA for scientists and post-PhD students with giving various presentations on Open Access and Open Science issues and Horizon 2020 Mandates. 

Website

An important step to contribute to the OA and Open Science movements in Latvian society was the creation of National Open Access Desk web page, which is the central point for dissemination of information on OA, including news & events in Latvian.

Open e-Course

The E-course “Open Science/Atvērtā zinātne” has been created so that there could be a full understanding of the term "Open Science" as well as to promote it`s recognition amongst the members of the Latvian society of science. The principles of open science are gaining a stronger role in science`s development in the world. The course materials cover open science and its importance in research, OA, open data, open science policies, the management tools of OA information, repositories. It is possible to access the materials in various formats: presentations, videos, websites, written posts, statements and guidelines.

The course has been created thanks to the cooperation of the University of Latvia, the National Library of Latvia and Riga Technical University, in the project "Open Science - the 21st century`s benefits for researchers". The e-course contains materials from the FOSTER e-learning platform.

Main previous activities

In 2012 the Library of the University of Latvia organized a special week that promoted the repository of e-resources of the University to the academic staff of the university and all higher education institutions in Latvia.

In 2013 the Scientific Council of the University of Latvia held a session and a discussion "Copyright issues in Open Access: a burden or an opportunity?" which also took place in the Scientific café. A video devoted to the 5-year anniversary of OA in Latvia, and electronic booklets in which the main questions about copyright issues in OA where answered was produced.

In 2015 the main event was the conference "Open Science - the 21th-century benefits for researchers" which was held during the international OA week. The aim of the conference was to raise awareness about Open Science, its challenges and benefits and the recommendations of the European Commission in relation to research data management and digitalization, and sharing of experience. The event was co-funded by the European Commission’s research and innovation program (FP7) project FOSTER (Facilitate Open Science Training for European Research).

In 2016 the national workshop "Research Data Management and Open Science: Challenges and Opportunities for Latvia" was held, which was given by Iryna Kuchma, EIFL-OA Programme Manager.

In 2017 the national workshop “Open Research Data and Data Management” was held at the Academic Center for Natural Sciences of the University of Latvia. Dr. Marjan Grootveld and Elly Dijk from Data Archiving and Networked Services – DANS were presented topics about OA and Research Data Management, FAIR principles, storing and preserving data.

In 2018 May the workshop “Open license Creative Commons for open science, business and society” was held, which was given by Gwen Franck, EIFL-OA Programme Coordinator.

During “International Open Access Week 2018” the workshop “Open Science for Successful Research Grants” was held at the Academic Center for Natural Sciences of the University of Latvia. Research coordinator Ivo Grigorov at the National Institute of Aquatic Resources at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU AQUA) presented topics about the good practice of winning research project competitions, incorporating the principles of open science in the project application, as well as addressing research data management issues. 

In November 2019 there was a national workshop organized “Research infrastructures and services: Open Science Practice” with invited speakers  Milica Ševkušić  (Institute of Technical Sciences of SASA, Serbia); Lauris Cikovskis (Head of Riga Technical University (RTU) High Performance Computing (HPC) Centre, Latvia);  Alessia Bardi  (Networked Multimedia Information Systems (NeMIS) lab, Institute of Information Science and Technologies at the Italian National Research Council (ISTI-CNR), Italy);  Ivo Wijnbergen  (EMEA Engagement ORCID, Netherlands) (more information (in Latvian) and presentations here), as well later in November invited speaker Tim Smith from CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) gave a speech during “Research infrastructure – Zenodo: international, multidisciplinary, free” seminar (more information (in Latvian) here. 

Many presentations and video recordings from previous events are available at the activities website.