Croatia
European Commission
EOSC-A Mandated Organisation
EOSC Steering Board representatives
The implementation of Open Science practices is advancing in Croatia. The Open Access movement started in Croatia in 1997 with the Croatian scientific bibliography CROSBI. The systematic approach to open science in Croatia can be traced back to 2012 and the adoption of Croatian Declaration on Open Access to Scientific Information, followed by the Rector’s Conference document on open science in 2015.
The document Strategy of education, science, and technology (2014) consider open educational materials and open access to scientific information as the strategic orientation for science and education in Croatia in the future.
Croatian institutions participated in several open science related international projects which contributed to building of open science landscape, for example OpenAIRE Advance, OPERAS and NI4OS projects.
The Croatian Ministry of Science and Education, as head of the national policy for scientific information, has shown support for Open Science by positioning itself behind the Croatian Open Science Cloud Initiative (HR-OOZ) in 2021 together with the Croatian Science Foundation (HRZZ). This major advance completes the support from other stakeholders in the research community shown since at least as far back as the signature in 2012 of the Croatian Open Access Declaration, which states that all results from public funded research should be made accessible through Open Access.
Besides the Ministry and the HRZZ, members of HR-OOZ include all nine Croatian public universities and other research funding and performing organizations and research service providers are members. One of its first activities will be the establishment of a national open science plan, planned for 2023.
Research data sharing in Croatia is in its initial phase, but the Croatian Science Foundation has recently started requiring research data management plans as a mandatory part of application documentation for future projects.
SRCE and the Ruđer Bošković Institute participate in the NI4OS-Europe project that will facilitate the collaboration of national open science stakeholders and onboarding of national open science infrastructures into the EOSC. SRCE participates in EOSC-Future and EGI-ACE projects.
SRCE is operating as Research Data Alliance (RDA) national node since 2019, while representatives from Ruđer Bošković Insitute and University of Zadar serve as a OpenAIRE National Open Access Desk (NOAD).
- Mandated Organisation:
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SRCE is the main computing centre in Croatia and the architect of the e-infrastructure, covering both the University of Zagreb and the whole research and high education system. Furthermore, SRCE is the competence centre for information and communication technologies, as well as the centre for education and support in the area of ICT application. Contact e-mail: office@srce.hr.
Ruđer Bošković Institute has recently (2022) joined EOSC in the ”observer” status.
- National Structure:
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In 2021 the Croatian Open Science Cloud (locally HR-OOZ) Initiative was established. HR-OOZ Initiative (https://www.srce.unizg.hr/en/hr-ooz) has managed to bring together key stakeholders in creating the required preconditions for the implementation, realization, and promotion of Open Science in the Republic of Croatia. The Initiative is the result of the joint work of numerous stakeholders in the science and higher education system in Croatia. HR-OOZ was launched with the support of the Ministry of Science and Education of the Republic of Croatia and the Croatian Science Foundation, gathering all public universities and Croatian representatives of ERIC’s (DARIAH-HR, HR-CLARIN, CERIC-ERIC, CROSSDA the public research data service and the national service provider for the CESSDA ERIC), OpenAIRE NOAD, NGI and national RDA node.
The HR-OOZ will realise this by building a modern, high-quality, internationally relevant, and competitive science environment based on the principles of Open Science aligned and connected with the European Research Area (ERA) and other relevant European initiatives like EOSC. The HR-OOZ will play an active role in promoting and on-boarding Croatian services and resources in EOSC to become findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable at the European level. The initiative is supported administratively by the SRCE. Contact e-mail: hr-ooz@srce.hr.
National events
- 30 March 2023 | National Tripartite Event Croatia
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Policies
One of the main commitments of the HR-OOZ is the drafting of a proposal for the National Action Plan for Open Science, planned for 2023.
Another task is to establish HR-OOZ service catalogue and the on-boarding process with the goal to provide researchers with nationally available reliable services for open science and to help service providers in the process of on-boarding into EOSC. Also, Research Data Management Plan (RDMP) are since 2023 mandatory and evaluated parts to apply for projects by the Croatian Science Foundation. RDMPS must show how research data is created, stored, shared and protected during the project’s life cycle. RDMP will make research data, collected through public funding available for future use and encourage researchers to effectively manage and share their data.
Best practices
Since 2006. the Portal of Croatian scientific and Professional Journals - HRČAK is promoting OA and providing journal editors with tools to publish their issues in OA. Currently, HRČAK includes 530 OA journals and provides access to 270,000 OA papers.
Croatian Scientific Bibliography CROSBI was created back in 1997, which has served as the national bibliography and a repository from the very beginning. We have been working on implementing the Croatian Research Information System CroRIS, which will integrate all information about research in Croatia, including publications from CROSBI and will be used as a tool to support open science in Croatia.
National repository platform Digital Academic Arhives and Repositories – DABAR provides research & higher education institutions with solution for establishing and maintaining institutional or thematic repository for preserving and sharing of various types of results for research, educational and artistic results, DABAR currently hosts 159 repositories and 212.000+ digital objects.
The Isabella computer cluster hosted by SRCE was created in 2002 and is a common resource for all scientists in Croatia, enabling the use of significant computer resources for demanding data processing as part of scientific research projects. The generic services available through Isabella cluster will be included and onboarded in EOSC through NI4OS-Europe project.
The University Computing Centre (SRCE) has published several support educational materials to help researchers with data management: the handbook How to manage research data, a webinar How qualitatively organize and manage research data and two self-paced course Research data management and Documentation and anonymization of reseach data (available online, see link in ref. 2).
Back in 2005, the Croatian Medical Journal (CMJ) already showed awareness on the benefits of Open Access: it was considered to be a good growth strategy that generally serves the best interest of all parties involved with the journal—-except the publisher. The CMJ pointed to the publisher’s interest for the journal becomes ever more visible, but indicated that free on-line access to its contents was questionable on the grounds of its financial sustainability and the change needed in the market dynamics.
EOSC Association Members and Observers
University of Zagreb Computing Centre
Mandated organisationSRCE - University of Zagreb University Computing Centre as the major national infrastructural ICT institution in the area of research and higher ed... Read more
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Ruđer Bošković Institute (RBI)
ObserverThe Ruđer Bošković Institute is regarded as Croatia’s leading scientific institute in the natural and biomedical science... Read more
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