Open science

Open Science

About Open Science

About Open Science

Open Science is the practice of science in such a way that others can collaborate and contribute, where research data, lab notes and other research processes are freely available, under terms that enable reuse, redistribution and reproduction of the research and its underlying data and methods. Open Science encompasses a variety of practices, usually including areas like open access to publications, open research data, open source software/tools, open workflows, citizen science, open educational resources, and alternative methods for research evaluation including open peer-review (Pontika et al., 2015). The academic libraries mainly focus on the insurance of open access to publications and open access to research data.

Modern research builds on extensive scientific dialogue and advances by improving earlier work. The Europe 2020 strategy for a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy underlines the central role of knowledge and innovation in generating growth. Therefore, broader access to scientific publications and data helps to:

Build on the previous research results (improved quality of results)
Encourage collaboration and avoid the duplication of efforts (greater efficiency)
Speed up innovation (faster progress to market means faster growth)
Involve citizens and society (improved transparency of the scientific process).

Useful links:

FOSTER Open Science taxonomies
Open Science Training Handbook
Online courses on Open Science – Courses
European Commission Open Science monitoring – Open Science Monitor

Open Science Policies

Open Science Policies

Open Science policies are strategies and actions aimed at promoting Open Science principles and acknowledging Open Science practices. Those policies are usually established by the institutions performing research, the research funders, the governments or the publishers.

On 29 February 2016, the Research Council of Lithuania approved the GUIDELINES ON OPEN ACCESS TO SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS AND DATA, influenced by the participation in the FP 7 project PASTEUR 4 OA. The guidelines present the legal aspects, financial models, roles and duties of researchers. The access to data is discussed in detail, especially the preparation of data management plans, the compilation and preservation of data during and after the duration of a project.

According to these guidelines, the Council calls Lithuanian academic institutions, research infrastructures and other related organisations to approve the provisions of their policies on Open Access to research results, and the procedures for the management and stewardship of such data. After the guidelines were adopted, Vilnius University, Kaunas University of Technology, and Vilnius Gediminas Technical University adopted the institutional open access guidelines.

The Registry of Open Access Repository Mandates and Policies RoarMap provides open access mandates and policies adopted by universities, research institutions and research funders from all over the world.

11 open access policies registered in the registry (data of 11 November 2019) are adopted and approved by the Lithuanian institutions.

The consultations regarding the Open Science policy implementation at Kaunas University of Technology are provided at KTU Library. Contact person: Ieva Cesevičiūtė, email ieva.ceseviciute@ktu.lt, tel. +370 (37) 300 284.

Guidelines on Open Access to Scientific Publications and Data.

Research Council of Lithuania. Guidelines on Open Access to Scientific Publication and Data.

Kaunas University of Technology Open Access Guidelines

European Open Science Cloud

European Open Science Cloud

It is an environment that integrates research infrastructures, allowing European researchers, and science and technology professionals across disciplines and countries to store, share and re-use data.

The European Open Science Cloud website was officially launched on 23 November 2018, in Austria. It unifies previously fragmented scientific research ecosystem, and it promotes the compliance with FAIR Data Principles: Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable. This environment is expected to integrate the various elements of the scholarly communication process, from peer-reviewing and publishing to the dissemination of research results, and to provide a format that meets the needs of the digital space and is user-friendly.

Open access to scientific publications

Open access to scientific publications

Lithuanian Academic Electronic Library (eLABa) is a national repository of the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport and an open access repository of the Lithuanian academic institutions. 50 institutions are members of eLABa consortium (universities, institutes and research centres).

Green Open Access Road (self-archiving)

The published work or the final peer-reviewed manuscript that has been accepted for publication is made freely and openly accessible by the author, or a representative, in an online repository. Some publishers request for Open Access to be granted only after an embargo period has expired. The embargo period can vary between several months and several years. Usually, for the publications that have been deposited in a repository but are under embargo, at least the metadata are openly accessible.

Gold Open Access Road (Open Access publishing)

Gold Open Access (Open Access publishing): the published work is made available in Open Access mode by the publisher immediately upon publication. The most common business model is based on one-off payments by authors (commonly called APCs – article processing charges – or BPCs – book processing charges). Where Open Access content is combined with the content that requires subscription or purchase, in particular, in the context of journals, conference proceedings and edited volumes, this is called a hybrid Open Access.

In the Registry of Open Access Repositories – researchers can find 4725 (data of 11 November 2019) registered institutional and thematic repositories where research publications can be uploaded. The institutional repositories are often administered by the research institutions in order to preserve and share the research results. The thematic repositories are usually administered by the research community; these repositories preserve the subject-specific research publications. The publication repositories are an alternative way to have access to the research publications when access to the primary resource is unavailable.

Over the last few years, the number of open access journals has rapidly increased, researchers have greater freedom of choice where to publish the research results. Currently, there are more than 13 900 research journals and 75 Lithuanian journals registered in the registry of open access journals Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) (data of 11 November 2019). The open access journals not only ensure open access and licencing but also provide the necessary conditions for reusability. The majority of journals registered in DOAJ registry do not charge any article processing charges; more information about research is available here.

Directory of Open Access Books is a registry of open access books providing access to more than 22 000 books (data of 13 November 2019).

Plan S

On 8 September 2018, a group of national research funding bodies, supported by the European Commission and the European Research Council (ERC), announced the launch of the Coalition S (cOAlition S), an initiative to ensure the immediate implementation of open access to scientific publications. This initiative is designed to implement Plan S, which consists of 10 principles.

Coalition S will implement an action plan to achieve this goal:
“From 2021, all scientific publications funded by national, regional or international research councils and funding bodies must be published in open access journals, open access platforms or made immediately available on open access repositories, without an embargo period”.

The founders of the S Coalition (a group of national research funding bodies and charitable foundations) decided to jointly implement the 10 principles of Plan S with the European Commission and the European Research Council. Public and private research funders from all over the world are invited to join Coalition S. Representatives of research funders who would like to join the initiative can apply here.

For more information on Plan S.

Open access to research data

Open access to research data

The researchers who are coordinating Horizon 2020 projects and aim to comply with the requirements of funding institutions as well as PhD students of Kaunas University of Technology who have started their studies from 2018 must prepare a research data management plan DMP.

Research Data Management plan is a key element of good data management. A DMP describes the data management life cycle for the data to be collected, processed and/or generated. Since a DMP makes the research data findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR), it should include the information on:

The handling of research data during and after the end of the project;
Which data will be collected, processed and/or generated;
Which methodology and standards will be applied;
Whether data will be shared/made open access; and
How data will be curated and preserved (including after the end of the project).

DMP Online tool helps to create, review, and share data management plans that meet institutional and funder requirements. It is provided by the Digital Curation Centre (DCC).

FAIR (FAIR – Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable) principles provide guidance for scientific data management and stewardship and are relevant to all stakeholders in the current digital ecosystem. They directly address data producers and data publishers to promote the maximum use of research data.

Lithuanian research data repositories:

LiDA

Data archive

MIDAS

National Open Access Research Data Archive

COD

Crystallography Open Database

CLARIN-IN

Repository of resources in Linguistics, Humanities and Social Sciences

Re3Data.org – registry recommended by European Commission where researchers can find appropriate repository among more than 2400 repositories for data preservation.

Data journals

The researchers can publish information about data sets in the data journals by publishing an article about data. In this publication, data analysis or data results are not published, the main focus is on a detailed data description and its relevance to the analysis. In the data journal, data sets are not provided; however, an active link is available indicating the repository where data are published.

GigaScience

Scientific Data

Data in Brief

Useful links:

Review of various data publishing routes Expert tour guide on Data Management.
Open Data Handbook – Open Data Manual
Online seminars, cources about research data management: DataOne; Coursera; MANTRA; OpenAIRE online seminar about research data management

Research Data Management

Research Data Management

Research Data Management – the creation, storage and sharing of scientific data and associated descriptive metadata in order to preserve the validity and reliability of the data, taking into account confidentiality and data protection concerns throughout the lifetime of the data.

For more information on research data management, click here.

Citizen Science

Citizen science

Citizen science allows people who are not professional scientists to participate in a wide range of scientific activities, from collecting and analysing the data for a research, to disseminating the results of the research or even formulating the research problem. Citizen science brings opportunities for collaborative learning, for building a scientifically literate society, for creating innovations that respond to community needs, for sharing resources and for sustainable problem solving.

For more information on citizen science, click here.

Seminars, conferences

Seminars, conferences in Lithuania

Recordings of the webinar „Horizon Europe Open Science requirements in practice“

The OpenAIRE webinar “Horizon Europe Open Science requirements in practice”, held on 14 March 2025, addressed relevant aspects of research project compliance with Horizon Europe. During the workshop. The speakers presented the Open Science and Open Access requirements for scientific publications and research data for projects under the European Horizon (HE) Programme. Also the European Commission’s Open Access publishing platform “Open Research Europe”, and other useful tools for researchers from OpenAIRE, such as the EOSC EU Node platform, the anonymisation tool AMNESIA, and the ARGOS platform for data management plans were presented for the atendees.

Recording of the webinar: https://youtu.be/dN0ehvmUs9c.
Slides of the presentations: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7324363

KTU Library organised a webinar “Unlocking Knowledge: Perspectives on Open Science”

On 21 October, the KTU Library organised a webinar “Unlocking Knowledge: Perspectives on Open Science” to celebrate Open Access Week. Three guest speakers gave presentations on the topics of increasing the visibility of scientific knowledge and research data management for early career researchers. The event was held in English.

Presentations:

Milica Ševkušic, Project Coordinator of the EIFL Open Access Programme, in her presentation “Elevate research with Open Science practices”, presented how Open Science ensures visibility and accessibility of scientific knowledge, why it is important, and what Open Science tools are easily and simply available to early career researchers. Presentation recording
In his presentation “Research Data Management as a Good Research Practice”, Obrad Vučkovac from the Vinca Institute of Nuclear Sciences Library, University of Belgrade, shared valuable insights into the impact of good research data management on the quality of science. Presentation recording.
On the activities and challenges of being a research data steward in her presentation “What is there to know about being a data steward?” was presented by Agnieszka Cybulska-Phelan from the Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computer Modelling at the University of Warsaw. Presentation recording.
Aistė Pranckutė, Head of the Research Information Services, provided a brief reminder to the KTU community about the Library’s support for researchers, training and consultations on various scientific communication issues. Presentation recording

“Focus on Open Science” event for researchers, research administrators, representatives of academic libraries

On the 29th of October, 2019 in Kaunas University of Technology “Santaka” valley event for researchers, research administrators, representatives of academic libraries took place. In the event were discussed issues related to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), research data management skills, research evaluation and other changes in scholarly communication.

The event is part of the series “Focus on Open Science”.

Video recording

Practising FAIR and Open Data Management

On the 19-20th of April, 2018 PhD students and researchers participated in practical seminar on open research data management Practising FAIR and Open Data Management”, seminar was held by data management experts Elly Dijk and dr Marjan Grootveld from „Data Archiving and Networked Services“ (DANS) organization (Netherland). Seminar was organized as one of OpenAIRE2020 project activities.

Video recording

International conference “Academic Library and Open Science”

On the 6th of December, 2016 international conference “Academic Library and Open Science” was organized. Video recording and slides:

- Why we need a large-scale transformation of the current subscription system. Speaker: Dr Ralf Schimmer (Max Planck Digital Library).
- The Open Access Policy by the Research Council of Lithuania: Implementation of Guidelines. Speaker: Prof Rūta Petrauskaitė (Lithuanian Research Council)
- OpenAIRE: e-Infrastructure and policies for Open Science and facilitating Open Science training for European Union Research. Speaker: Iryna Kuchma (EIFL- Electronic Information for Libraries)
- Open Access, academic libraries and the future of scholarly publishing. Speaker: Elena Šimukovič (Vienna University of Economics and Business).
- OpenAIRE2020:infrastructure and support for Open Science. Speakers: Dr Ieva Cesevičiūtė and Dr Gintarė Tautkevičienė (Kaunas University of Technology)
- Open Access Publications of Vilnius Research Centers in Web of Science. Speakers: Eglė Šegždienė, Audrė Trumpienė (The Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences)
- Open Data Repositories and Citation Indexes – Data Citation Index of Web of Science. Speaker: Marcin Kapczynski (Clarivate Analytics).
- Embrasing Research Data. Speaker: Dr Lucie Boudová (Elsevier).

FOSTER seminars

On the 29th of October, 2019 a seminar “Open Access to Research Data” was organized. Video recording and slides are available.

“EC/OpenAIRE FP7 Post-Grant Open Access Pilot and Open Access policies. Speaker: Pablo De Castro Open Access Project Officer at the Association of European Research Libraries (LIBER).

On the 31st of March, 2016 a seminar „Open Access to Research Data“ was organized. Slides:

Benefits of Open Science. Speaker: dr Lennart Martens, Ghent University (Belgium).
Open Science and Creative Commons. Speaker: Creative Commons coordinator in Europe, EIFL open access coordinator.

Open Science LT

Open Science Lt

This is the Open Science Lt website, developed by the library staff, where you can find relevant information and news.