Open Science and Open Access Event Held

The ’Open Science and Open Access’ event, which was held on 22 September 2022 in the lecturing hall at the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Banja Luka, brought together 55 participants.

The event, organized by the University of Banja Luka, gathered participants from the Western Balkans, but also from Europe, and 33 of them were physically present, while 22 attended the event online.

The event was organized in cooperation with partners within the WBC-RRI.NET Horizon 2020 project, and it is dedicated to issues of open science and open access, with the aim of promoting and implementing free access to scientific knowledge and scientific research data and results.

The event was opened by Vice-Rector for Scientific Research and University Development Prof. Miroslav Malinović, PhD. He welcomed the participants and emphasized that the University of Banja Luka is one of the first institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina that included the principles of open science and open access in its focus of work.

During the first part of the event, professors from the faculties at the University of Banja Luka and the region presented regional and national initiatives for open science and open access, as well as the application of this concept in practice. The representative of the Regional Cooperation Council, Monika Petrova, presented the activities of this institution on the creation and connection of regional research infrastructures with open access. Mihajlo Savić, PhD, assistant professor at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the University of Banja Luka, presented the activities through the Horizon 2020 project "National Initiative for Open Science in Europe" and the advantages of inclusion in the European cloud of open science, noting that the University of Banja Luka is already part of it. Snežana Smederevac, PhD, professor at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Novi Sad, presented the results of the analysis of open science practices in the Western Balkans region, made within the WBC-RRI.NET project. Thereafter, Amela Kurta, PhD, from the Centre for Development Evaluation and Social Science Research demonstrated what open science and open access look like in practice, using the example of the work of the Archive for Social Sciences in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In the second part of the event, Johan Rooryck, PhD, presented the work of cOAlition S (a group of organizations established with the support of the European Commission and the European Research Council), which brings together institutions and organizations that finance research and strives to provide open access to research publications. He emphasized the advantages of joining and supporting the work of cOAlition S and the implementation of Plan S. The participants had the opportunity to hear what it looks like in practice on the example of Slovenia, which was presented by Miro Pušnik, Director of the Central Technical Library at the University of Ljubljana. They will then have the opportunity to participate in a discussion planned after the presentation, and to share experiences on open access with representatives of regional organizations that fund research and innovation.

The event was followed by the work of working groups within the project, which are focused on gender equality and ethical issues in research, as well as on open science and open access.