What is the good practice about?

RASH, the Albanian Academic Network, has organized several activities regarding Open Science in particular in the last 3 years as part of the consortium of the Horizon 2020 project related to Open Science in the region of South-East Europe, the NI4OS project https://ni4os.eu/. The following activities can be highlighted:

• RASH has organized activities regarding the establishment of NOSCI in Albania, online and face-to-face Open Science Days, online and face-to-face trainings with researcher from public and private Higher Education Institutions (HEIs).
• RASH participated in the working groups from the Ministry of Education and Science (MoES) of Albania in the preparation of Science and Innovation Strategy, making the Open Science an integral part of this strategy.
• RASH is working closely with the National Agency for Science, Research and Innovation (NASRI) and MoES to establish the legal framework of Open Science in Albania.
• RASH is a mandated member for Albania in the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) Association and plans to continue also in the future as promoter of Open Science and Open Access in Albania. RASH has created a dedicated website for the promotion of Open Science in Albania: https://ni4os.rash.al/en/ where activities regarding Open Science are promoted.

This activities will be a great opportunity for Albanian researcher and academia to enhance the cooperation with colleagues from the neighbour countries from the Western Balkans.

Why is this initiative needed?

The notion of Open Science was little known to researchers in Albania and until the activities of RASH not implemented. This also explained the low regional cooperation on the part of Albanian universities with HEIs or other research infrastructures from the region. There is an important opportunity to promote and internationalize Albanian scientific research and relevant institutions.

What are the main objectives?

Primary objective is the institutionalization of Open Science in Albania:

• Making Open Science one of the objectives of the national strategy for science and innovation
• Developing the Memorandum of Understanding for Open Science with the universities supported by the Ministry
• Promoting Open Science in academic and research facilities with promotional materials and various activities
• Creating an informative platform, a website for open science in Albania

What are the main activities?

The most important is the consultation process for the signature of the Memorandum of Understanding on Open Science implementation through the Albanian stakeholders. The start of registration of Albanian repositories in the NI4OS catalogue for open science: https://catalogue.ni4os.eu/?_=/search/rash, and the requests from public and private universities to have dedicated Open Science trainings for the usage of UCRIS: https://ut.ucris.rash.al/login, the RASH platform for OS catalogue for Universities.

Who is involved?

Apart from RASH, NASRI, the funding agency for scientific research and the Ministry of Education and Science (MoES) are included after the initial phase of the initiative and they have cooperated in the formulation of open science in the national research strategy. Universities and other stakeholders were involved in the phase of trainings and meetings for the UCRIS platform. They have started with the registration of their repositories in the catalogue of regional services of NI4OS.

Can this good practice be replicated?

The practices used for Open Science are specific for each country depending on the way how scientific research is organized and financed. The initiative included all countries of the Western Balkans. The website, informations and practices used in our case are in Albanian language and can also be applied in neighbouring countries such as Kosovo, which was not part of the current project, or in the Albanian speaking universities in our region. Currently the open science platform in Albania is being financed only by RASH and the NI4OS project in the framework of Horizon 2020. Thus, services are free for users until the end of the project in March 2023. The project partners are looking at possibilities of finding financing to offer Open Science services again for free or to respectively to develop a charging scheme for these OS services.

Further links:

• Information on the website dedicated to Open Science in Albania: https://ni4os.rash.al/en/ in both Albanian and English languages is structured in six main menus: 1- Declaration/policies; 2- Profiles; 3- OS services; 4- Multimedia; 5- Events; 6- Contact
• Generic services: https://ni4os.rash.al/en/eosc-services/category/generic/
• Thematic services: https://ni4os.rash.al/en/eosc-services/category/thematics/ https://ut.ucris.rash.al/login
• Services of the regional counterparts provided by NI4OS: https://catalogue.ni4os.eu/
•  AI4OS social media page: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100024591105097

Relevant RRI keys: Science Education, Open Access, Open Science, Open Data

Type of practice: Websites serving as platform for services to clients, Publications/promotional material, Participation in public policy/researches/studies, Winning new clients/members, Organisation of info days, workshop, seminars, etc., Organisation of training, webinars

Target groups: researchers (starting from PhD-candidates, on the individual level), universities, research performing organisations, research and innovation funding organisations, students (up to Master level)