Croatia

The Croatian Ministry of Science, Education and Youth, as the head of the national policy for scientific information, has strongly supported Open Science by participating in the Croatian Open Science Cloud Initiative (HR-OOZ) since the creation of the Initiative in 2021, together with the Croatian Science Foundation (HRZZ). HR-OOZ currently comprises 21 organisations, including the Ministry of Science, Education and Youth (MSEY), the Croatian Science Foundation (HRZZ), all public universities, major service providers, national representatives of European Research Infrastructure Consortia (ERICs), and other research infrastructures from Croatia that are on the roadmap of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI). One of the key activities of HR-OOZ was drafting the proposal for the national Open Science Plan, which subsequently served as the basis for the Ministry’s adoption of the Croatian Open Science Plan in 2025.

Croatian institutions have participated in several INFRAEOSC projects such as OpenAIRE Advance, OPERAS. EOSC-Future, EGI-ACE and NI4OS. More recently, Croatian institutions are part of many international EOSC and OA related projects, for example Horizon Europe projects PATTERN, DIAMAS and OPUS, as well as EOSC Beyond, EOSC Data Commons, CRAFT-OA, while several other projects are in the pipeline.

Mandated Organisation:

The University of Zagreb University Computing Centre (SRCE) was founded in 1971 and is the main computing centre in Croatia and the architect of the national e-infrastructure, serving both the University of Zagreb and the entire research and higher education system. SRCE plays a key role in building digital bridges with Europe through initiatives such as the European Grid Initiative (EGI), Authentication and Authorisation Infrastructure (AAI) – eduGAIN, the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU), or CroRIS – EuroCRIS. 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. It also coordinates the National Competence Centre for High-Performance Computing (HR HPC CC). Since 2019, SRCE has operated the national node of the Research Data Alliance (RDA), while representatives from the Ruđer Bošković Institute serve as the OpenAIRE National Open Access Desk (NOAD). SRCE and the Ruđer Bošković Institute collaborated on the development of national Current Research Information System (CroRIS), by integrating and unifying the data from various databases, such as the Croatian Scientific Bibliography (CROSBI), the research equipment database, and the project database.

Since 2022, SRCE is EOSC-A mandate national organization for Croatia.

Together with SRCE, Ruđer Bošković Institute participates in the EOSC-A since 2022 in the status of “observer”.

Contact e-mail: office@srce.hr.

National Structure:

Croatian Open Science Cloud Initiative

In 2021, the Croatian Open Science Cloud (locally: HR-OOZ) Initiative was established to advance Open Science in Croatia. The HR-OOZ Initiative (https://www.srce.unizg.hr/en/hr-ooz) has managed to bring together key stakeholders to create the necessary preconditions for the implementation, realisation, and promotion of Open Science within the national research and higher education system. The Initiative is the result of the joint work of numerous stakeholders in the science and higher education system in Croatia. It was launched with the support of the Ministry of Science, Education and Youth of the Republic of Croatia and the Croatian Science Foundation, bringing together all public universities as well as Croatian representatives of ERICs (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 the national RDA node.

The HR-OOZ Initiative aims to achieve its objectives by building a modern, high-quality, internationally relevant, and competitive scientific environment based on the principles of Open Science aligned with and connected to the European Research Area (ERA) and other relevant European initiatives, especially the EOSC. The HR-OOZ will play an active role in promoting Croatian services and resources and onboarding them into the EOSC to become findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable at the European level. The initiative is administratively supported by SRCE.

Contact e-mail: hr-ooz@srce.hr.