Croatia

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:

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:

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.