Georgia

European Commission

Commission Representation in Georgia

EOSC-A Mandated Organisation

N.A.

EOSC Steering Board representatives

Tatia Mtvarelidze, Ministry of Education and Science
Nino Pavliashvili, National Science Library

Since 2016 Georgia was fully associated with Horizon 2020, EU research and innovation programme of 2014-2020. On December 7, the European Commission and the Government of Georgia signed the agreement granting Georgia the association status to Horizon Europe, the European Union’s EUR 95.5 billion research and innovation program which will be in place through 2027. Open science and EOSC are the main priorities across the Horizon Europe Program in the context of achieving the global challenges of the world and Georgia is striving to contribute to the process of implementation and development of EU missions and improve the quality, efficiency, and responsiveness of research.

Since 2021, the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia has started implementing relevant measures in connection with the integration of the scientific space of Georgia with European structures and the development of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) national strategy.

To achieve these goals, Georgia applies appropriate measures and takes effective steps:

  • Two out of seven guiding principles and values of the 2022-2030 Unified National Strategy of Education and Science of Georgia are directly connected to the ambition of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) – “provide a federated and open multi-disciplinary environment”:
    • The principles of open communication, transparency, cooperation, and partnership are encouraged in education and training, as well as research and innovation systems. These principles are applied in cooperation with stakeholders and, in general, for the further development of society and  economy.
    • Open learning environments and research and innovation ecosystems allow individuals to learn, teach, train, develop, and thereby contribute to achieving common goals.
  • In 2021, the amendment to the order N1245475 was adopted by the Ministry of education and science. According to the amendment, an additional program was added to the “science research program” to support the development of open science. The aim of the program is to  a) increase the scientific productivity of the independent scientific research units integrated in the higher educational institutions, and of the LEPL scientific and research institutions, which are part of the Ministry of Education and Science; b) creating an information base including the projects implemented within the framework of grants financed by local or international donors in the last 20 years, published publications and existing infrastructure; c) ensuring the openness of this base. The implementer of the program is Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation of Georgia.
    • The commitment of Georgia to the European Research Area Forum for the Action no. 1 - Enable the open sharing of knowledge and the re-use of research outputs, including through the development of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) submitted in July 2022 further underlines the importance of the EOSC for the country.
    • In 2022, a national working group of the European Open Science Cloud has been created, which works in the direction of the development of open science strategy in coordination with the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia and participates in the development of scientific and research infrastructure compatible with the European Open Science Cloud.
    • In October, 2022, in the frame of the EU Twinning Project “Supporting inter-sectoral collaboration possibilities between Research and Industry”, a working meeting regarding the national policy of open science (Advancing open science in Georgia) took place in the space of the National Scientific Library.
    • The EOSC national structure of Georgia is in the process of being developed under the auspices of the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia.

Since the country is not represented yet by the mandated organisation at EOSC Association, Georgia plans to establish the EOSC National Association which will be nominated to act as its mandated organisation.

The key coordination structure of EOSC in Georgia is the Ministry of Education and Science.

Contact point: Tatia Mtvarelidze (EOSC SB member, EOSC coordinator at the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia).

Email: tmtvarelidze@mes.gov.ge

In November 2022, on the initiative of the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia, an "Open Science Forum" will be held, in which representatives of the European Commission, the European Open Science Cloud Association and the member and associated countries of the European Union will participate. The forum aims to develop the national policy and strategy of the Open Science Cloud in the format of tripartite meetings, promote it and train EOSC ambassadors at the national level.

    National events

    2 - 4 November 2022  |  National Tripartite Event

     

    Presentations on Zenodo

    Recap article

    Policies

    One of the goals of the 2022-2030 Unified National Strategy of Education and Science of Georgia is to support researchers in research and innovative activities in compliance with international standards, which will lead to improving the efficiency of research, science, technology, and innovation systems. In order to achieve the goal, a National Technology Transfer Office will be established, and similar capabilities will be strengthened in leading scientific research institutions. A national platform of open access to scientific-research information will be created on which information about scientific-research personnel, infrastructure, achieved results, and projects will be placed.

    The activities determined in the Action Plan of the above-mentioned Strategy to be fulfilled by 2024 are:

    • Implementation of financial levers to improve scientific bibliometric data of Georgian researchers;
    • Creation of an open database of Georgian scientists to implement an "open science" policy;
    • Facilitating the development of innovation ecosystem hubs that provide services relevant to regional needs and capacities;
    • Integrating the national research digital platform into European networks;
    • Elaborating a legal basis for the creation of a technology transfer support center.

    In 2022 the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia created the EOSC Ambassadors Platform. Within the framework of the platform, three working groups have been created. One of them, Policy WG, works in the direction of developing recommendations on EOSC national strategy and policy.

    Best practices

    Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation of Georgia

    The Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation of Georgia (SRNSFG) is a Legal Entity of Public Law under the aegis of the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia, which supports the development of Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) system in Georgia.

    The strategic vision of the foundation conforms to the “Government Program for 2021 - 2024 Towards Building a European State” and the requirements of the Georgia-EU Association Agreement regarding the development of Science, Technology, and Innovation System.

    The mission of the foundation is to promote Georgia’s integration into the international STI system and significantly contribute to rapid socio-economic development and welfare of the country.

    The aims of the foundation are to support a new generation of Georgian scientists, increase research potential in the scientific institutions and communities, support Georgian scientists’ integration into the international scientific area by ensuring the improvements in quality, importance, and competitiveness of the innovative scientific research.

    The Foundation has the International Policy Board (IPB), which consists of leading Georgian and foreign scientists and the representatives of the Government of Georgia.

    According to the action plan of the foundation, one of the priorities for 2021-2024 is to support science information and technology infrastructure development. In the framework of this priority a specific program for Promotion of Open Science Development is adopted.

    National Science Library of Georgia

    The National Science Library was founded in 1941, in Tbilisi. In 2006 the National Science Library was formed as an independent legal entity. Currently, the National Science Library is one of the largest libraries in Georgia with a collection of 4 million books of which more than 600,000 are foreign publications. The latest information technologies are intensively introduced in the library.

    Since 2012 the National Science Library of Georgia has been actively participating in the development of OS  in Georgia in different ways, namely: 1. Making accessible academic resources to the Georgian community; 2. Conducting training and workshops; 3. Creating open infrastructures.

    The National Science Library of Georgia has been making accessible academic research databases of journals (around 15 databases) and books (around 5 databases) to the Georgian academic community.

    The National Science Library regularly conducts training and workshops for young and experienced scientists and university students. The subjects of the training and workshops concern open access academic publishing, academic integrity, academic databases, bibliography management, etc.

    • OPENSCIENCE.GE - "Digital Repository of Georgian Scientific Works" is the national level Open Access digital repository. It was created by the National Science Library of Georgia and Georgian Integrated Library Information System Consortium (GILISC) in 2018. This service increases the visibility of Georgian scientific community's research and the materials within it are centrally stored and preserved. From 2022 the repository is available in the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). The joint repository https://openscience.ge - is the first resource to become a member of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). Through this repository, the works of our scientists become findable, accessible and usable all over the world. https://openscience.ge stores Georgian scientific articles, monographs, bachelor's, master's and doctoral theses and other materials in electronic format. 
    • The second joint project of National Science Library of Georgia  and (GILISC) is http://openjornals.ge  - an OJS based platform of open access academic journals published in Georgia created in 2017. The mission of the platform is to help Georgian academic institutions and scientists with the transition from traditional to digital open access publishing. Currently the platform contains around 45 academic journals and aims to become the largest publishing platform of academic journals in Georgia. Apart from the current and archival volumes and issues of the academic journals the platform contains guides and translations of useful resources for journal editors and authors. 
    • The third project, http://openlibrary.ge  is a DSpace based repository of digitised materials preserved in the National Science Library of Georgia. The repository contains around 8000 digitised materials, among them: library collections, serial materials, manuscripts, photos, etc. The repository is freely accessible to the readers as from within the library so remotely.

    Institute for Scientific and Technical Information – TECHINFORMI

    Research Institute for Scientific and Technical information - TECHINFORMI was founded on December 10, 1958 under the decree of the Cabinet of Ministers of the Georgian SSR as a Research Institute for Scientific and Technical Information. Over the past 60 years, the official name and legal status of the institute has undergone several modifications. In 1959, according to the decree of the Cabinet of Ministers of the Georgian SSR #224, it was incorporated in the Republican House of Scientific-Technical Information and Propagation and named as the Institute of Scientific Technical Information and Propagation.

    10 years later, in March 4, 1969, the Institute was transformed into the Research Institute for Scientific-Technical Information and Technical-Economic Studies and only in 1992, under the decision of the Ministry of Science and Technology, was renamed as the Georgian Research Institute for Scientific and Technical Information - TECHINFORMI.

    In 1993, under the Resolution of the Prime Minister of Georgia, Institute TECHINFORMI was entrusted with representation of Georgia in international organizations of scientific and technical information. On the basis of the Government of Georgia’s decree in 2006, Institute TECHINFORMI was founded as a legal entity of public law – LEPL Institute TECHINFORMI and later, in 2010, on the basis of the Government of Georgia’s decree, was incorporated in the Georgian Technical University as an independent research institution.

    The institute has extended experience in working on issues related to open science and dissemination of knowledge and scientific information at the national level. Today TECHINFORMI represents one of the scientific organizations in Georgia, one of the core missions of which is to support sharing of scientific and technical information and knowledge among all HE in Georgia. It is a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research institute (one of the main components of the country's scientific and technical information system). TECHINFORMI retrieves, processes, and disseminates scientific and technological information both inside and outside the country. It creates and maintains databases describing scientific products of the country (results of research projects, scientific publications since 2007, technologies, experts, etc.). These databases are placed on the Institute's webpage and are visible and accessible for all interested individuals.

    Databases developed at TECHINFORMI:

    • Research projects of Georgian Scientists;
    • Georgian scientific publications;
    • Publications of Georgian Scientists in top-rated foreign journals;
    • Georgian Scientists’ deposited works;
    • Georgian Experts/Scientists database;
    • Innovations and technologies;
    • Scientific organisations;

    Some facts:

    §  Since 2020, TECHIFNROMI has developed and implemented a database for research projects of Georgia, an online registration system;

    §  Since 2016 the Institute in cooperation with the TSU Arnold Chikobava Institute of Linguistics plays an important role in the process of establishing the national terminology. It is an official member of the Georgian Terminology Association.

    Database of national terminology of many European countries was created at the end of the last century. In 2014, on the initiative of the Institute of Linguistics, together with the National Library of the Parliament of Georgia, the TERMINTBANK of Georgia was created. Terminology Bank of Georgia collects a bibliography of terminology to describe not only terminological dictionaries, but also all articles, presentations and even information about the list of terms that are included in a particular book. The development of the Georgian TermBank is supported by the European Terminology Societies and is marked on the map of the European Terminology Bank.

    §  Since 2000, the institute has been the national centre of the international food and agriculture database AGRIS, and since 2020 the AGRIS National Hub. AGRIS is the single most comprehensive open access multilingual database of the scientific literature on food and agriculture, providing open access to a rich collection of research results and technical information in the field of food and agriculture (FAO areas). The open international network of data providers unites more than 500 data providers from 150 countries. The international database includes more than 14 million bibliographic records in 90 different languages for free.  AGRIS - a portal that connects AGRIS knowledge with relevant web resources.

    § Since 2000 the Institute has been the publisher of a multidisciplinary and bilingual periodical abstracts journal describing scientific publications of Georgia (Georgian Abstracts Journal - GAJ). It is also the publisher since 2019 of the Caucasus Abstracts Journal of NanoScience and Nanotechnology (CAJNN), which covers scientific periodicals, collected works/articles of educational and research institutions, materials of conferences, dissertations, monographs, and other scientific publications abstracts of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia.

    The institute has cooperation with the following organisations and networks:

    • International Centre of Scientific and Technical Information (ICSTI)
    • Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
    • FAO Agricultural Research Information System (FAO/AGRIS)
    • FAO Multilingual Thesaurus AGROVOC
    • Research Data Alliance (RDA)
    • Improving Global Agricultural Data (IGAD)
    • Caucasus Environmental Non-Governmental Organisations Network (CENN)
    • Executive board member of the Memorandum of Understanding on the Georgian Open Science Cloud initiative.

     

    Currently holds EOSC related grant:

    EOSC Future Open Call grant: Expanding the IGAD CoP in the South Caucasus Region – Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

    During the 2020-2022 TECHIFNROMI as an AGRIS National HUB in Georgia conducted more than 10 trainings/workshops on Open Science among the researchers, MA and PhD Students from the field of agricultural sciences.  See our profile at the: https://www.fao.org/agris/data-provider/georgian-research-institute-scientific-technical-information

    Georgian Research and Educational Networking Association GRENA

    The Georgian Research and Educational Networking Association GRENA was founded on July 26, 1999 for the development of Information Technologies (IT) in education and research. The founders of association GRENA are five universities, Georgian National Academy of Sciences and Open Society Georgia Foundation.

    The main fields of GRENA activities are the following:

    • Providing Information Technology services to users and implementation of new, innovative services;
    • IT education;
    • Preparation and implementation of research and technology projects;
    • Providing software products and cyber security solutions to customers;
    • Promoting and supporting IT development in Georgia.

    Implementation of new services and development of projects in Information Technologies is being carried out in close cooperation with universities with the support of the European Commission, NATO Science for Peace and Security Programme, Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation, Open Society Georgia Foundation, International Science & Technology Center and other organisations.

    Several projects of GRENA supporting open science in Georgia are following:

    ●      European Commission HORIZON 2020 Programme

    Proposal title: EGI-ACE: Advanced Computing for EOSC

    Duration: 01/01/2021-30/06/2023 (30 Months)

    EGI-ACE’s main goal is to implement the compute platform of the European Open Science Cloud and contribute to the EOSC Data Commons by delivering integrated computing platforms, data spaces and tools as an integrated solution that is aligned with major European cloud federation projects and HPC initiatives.

    The specific objectives are the following:

    • Deliver the EOSC Compute Platform and expand the supply-side;
    • Contribute to the implementation of the EU Data Strategy and the EOSC Data Commons to support the green deal, health, fundamental research and social sciences and humanities;
    • Integrate the EOSC Compute Platform with the EOSC Portal and the EOSC Core;
    • Contribute to the realisation of a global open science cloud;
    • Expand the demand-side of EOSC across sectors and disciplines.

     

    ●      European Commission HORIZON 2020 Programme

    Proposal title: National Initiatives for Open Science in Europe (NI4OS-Europe)

    Duration: 01/09/2019-28/02/2023 (42 Months)

    The objective of the project is to support the development and inclusion of the national Open Science Cloud initiatives in 15 Member States and Associated Countries in the overall scheme of EOSC governance; spread the EOSC and FAIR principles in the community and train it; and provide technical and policy support in on-boarding of the existing and future service providers into EOSC, including generic services (compute, data storage, data management), thematic services, repositories and data sets - thus covering the whole spectrum of services related to Open Science, data and publications.

    With the support of the Association, the following resources were integrated into EOSC:

    • GRENA GCould infrastructure as a service platform with a wide range application https://www.gcloud.ge/
    • Ivane Beritashvili Experimental Biomedicine Center Electroencephalography sample study https://eeghub.ge/
    • National ScienceLibrary of Georgia of Tbilisi State University, repository of digital Georgian scientific works https://openscience.ge is registered in OpenDOAR and registration is in progress in OpenAIRE

    Other EOSC related activities of the association are following:

    • GRENA provides GCould resources to the EU research community
    • R. Kvatadze is a member of EOSC TF Financial Sustainability
    • The organisation makes presentations at various conferences and seminars

    EOSC Ambassadors' platform

    The EOSC Ambassadors Platform was created in 2022 with the support of the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia.

    The platform brings together representatives of universities and scientific-research institutions, scientific infrastructures and platforms, researchers, people interested in open science and organisations that are actively involved in the development and popularisation of open science throughout the country.

    Within the framework of the EOSC Ambassadors' platform, three working groups have been created, which work in the direction of developing recommendations on the OS national strategy and policy, refining the scientific terminology and popularising EOSC.

    The first success of the platform is the Open Science Forum – National tripartite event (2-4 November, 2022), which is organised by the platform under the auspices of the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia.