Greece

6 October 2022 | National Tripartite Event in Greece > Read the article

The proposal for a National Open Science Plan was published in June 2020, prepared by a collaborative bottom-up initiative of twenty-six national academic and research organisations, research infrastructures & civic initiatives, including provisions for open access to scientific outputs produced from publicly funded streams and for better access to and FAIR-aligned infrastructures and services. This report proposes a series of goals, commitments, policies and actions for the adoption of Open Science in Greece.  It is intended to serve as a reference point for national policy makers towards the establishment of a national strategy for Open Science, assist national organisations in embracing Open Science principles, and ensure national alignment with the EOSC.  

In addition, the Digital Transformation Strategy 2020-2025, the latest policy document in Greece, introduced by the Greek Ministry of Digital Governance in 2020, includes several actions regarding Open Science policies and contains as a key target the adoption of the National Open Science Strategy. More specifically, Open Science is referred as one of the accelerators of digital transformation. It takes into account several elements from the proposed Open Science Plan to advance the national Open Science Cloud status quo and boost national participation into EOSC. It includes guiding principles from the strengthening of national e-infrastructures and services, to their interconnection with EOSC, to Open Access for scientific publications, research data and software, and to empower the Greek R&D community with the necessary qualifications, digital skills, incentives and reward mechanisms for the adoption of OS at national level.

At institutional level, all HOSI member organisations will adopt the National Open Science Plan and work towards their implementation.

For OpenAIRE and libraries in Greece and Cyprus over many years, OpenAIRE NOADs (National Open Science Desk) in Greece have run joint webinars and workshops to raise awareness and train their national academic and research communities on Open Science practices. The NOAD from Greece started the activities for Open Science in 2008 and is now run by ATHENA RC and HEAL-Link. The Greek NOAD undertook preparatory work and together with academic and research organisations collaborated on the publication of National Open Science Plan for Greece. They were also involved with translating the Open Science training handbook in the Greek language. In addition, the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens provides a course for the 'Basic Concepts of Open Science' in the form of e-learning material. Research infrastructure nodes, such as ELIXIR-GR and SODANET, run seminars to train researchers in specific domains into best practices and use of their services. Open Science webinars run regularly through OpenAIRE and the Scholarly Communication Unit of HEAL-Link channels.

GRNET as a core member of Skills4EOSC project is involved in a common endeavour with 22 countries in Europe to set up a network of national Competence Centers in Skills and Training in Open Science Commons – targeted not only at the researchers and scientists, but also at civil servants and policy makers. Learning paths, OS skills profiles and training courses are under development targeting broad range of OS stakeholders. Moreover, GRNET is a key infrastructure and service enabler for Open Science in Greece and leader in a coordinated effort for development of electronic infrastructures and services in Southeast Europe (SEEREN, SEE-GRID series, HP-SEE, VI-SEEM, NI4OS-Europe projects) and the wider region. GRNET has also been involved in the pan-European and global integration efforts in the full spectrum of electronic Infrastructure technologies over the past 20 years: this covers the underlying networking technologies within GEANT, Cloud & High-Throughput Computing via EGI, data infrastructures via EUDAT, High-Performances Computing via PRACE and EuroHPC, and Quantum Communication Infrastructures via EuroQCI. GRNET actively contributes in a number of the EOSC advisory groups tasked in shaping the architecture and policies