Library of Science

Over 320 people from around the world participated in the launch event of the Library of Science ((https://bibliotekanauki.pl).

An introductory speech was given by Dr Marek Michalewicz, director of ICM UW, who presented the unit’s activities in the field of open science and the contribution of the ICM Open Science Platform team to the development of infrastructure and resources of the Library of Science.

Dr Krzysztof Siewicz, the project coordinator, presented the new platform, its operating model and its place in the scientific communication system in Poland. The Library of Science provides full-text publications of journals and books. Thanks to the application of appropriate technical standards, publications made available on the platform are highly visible in search results in popular search engines and thus easily accessible to all interested parties.

Currently, the total number of articles with associated metadata available in the Library of Science exceeds 377,000. On its Website you can find publications from 1,441 scientific journals, as well as books. The resources cover all areas of knowledge and are constantly developed.

The European Commission policy on Open Science

The next speech addressed the open science policy adopted by the European Commission. Alea López de San Román González, a member of the Open Science team at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, discussed the Horizon Europe requirements for the open sharing of research results, both publications and research data. The speaker drew attention to the benefits of implementing an open model of scientific communication, such as improving the quality and effectiveness of research, increasing creativity and facilitating cooperation, or increasing public confidence in science.

The recently launched Open Research Europe (ORE) publishing platform was also presented, which enables the open publication of articles presenting the results of research conducted under the Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe programs, as well as the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) initiative aimed at creating an ecosystem linking various services and tools for conducting research and collecting, exchanging and sharing research results.

In conclusion to her speech, Alea López de San Román González emphasized the need to change the system for evaluating the quality of scientific activity and to implement a model based on cooperation and open science.

Panel Discussion “Open Access to scientific literature as an element of science policy in Poland – current state and prospects “

During the inauguration, two discussion panels took place. The first one, moderated by Jakub Szprot (ICM UW), was attended by the representatives of Polish scientific institutions and the Ministry of Education and Science: Prof. Zbigniew Błocki (National Science Center), Prof. Paweł Rowiński (Polish Academy of Sciences), Prof. Elżbieta Żądzińska (Conference of Rectors of Academic Schools in Poland), Miłosz Rojek and Piotr Krasiński (Ministry of Education and Science).

Discussions concerned the place and role of open access in science policy in Poland, sources of financing OA publications, especially in the diamond model of open access publishing, which is widely used in Poland. Moreover, the panelists raised the issues related to the evaluation of the quality of research and the journals themselves, indicated the directions of development of the scientific journals market in Poland and emphasized the importance of international cooperation in the development of science.

Moreover, the services and tools for implementing open access in Poland were discussed, including the Library of Science, as well as activities in the field of promoting open science and supporting researchers in open sharing of research results.

Discussion Panel “Open Access to scientific literature around the world – exchange of experiences”

In the next discussion panel, devoted to the issues of opening up access to scientific literature around the world, experiences in these fields were presented by speakers involved in the construction of local infrastructures for scientific journals. The main goal of presented platforms is to increase the visibility of journals and to support publishers in making their publications available openly, taking into account technical standards and solutions facilitating scientific communication.

Susan Murray from AJOL (African Journals OnLine) spoke about the open platform of journals published in African countries, which currently provides access to 527 journals from 34 countries and offers permanent and safe storage, and the possibility of assigning persistent identifiers to articles. The AJOL team also conducts training for publishers and editors and provides support for the users of the platform.

Then Miroslav Milinović introduced HRČAK, the Portal of Croatian Scientific and Professional Journals, which supports publishers and editorial offices in making their publications openly available. The website’s resources currently include over 500 titles and over 240,000 open access articles. The website uses a number of solutions that help to combine information about research results, such as persistent identifiers or metadata indicating for example t the source of funding.

Arianna Becerril García from Redalyc, the Mexican open access library of scientific publications, discussed the platform’s operation in the context of the global scientific communication system and the challenges faced by institutions involved in the promotion of open science. Redalyc, like the other platforms presented, aims to support non-commercial publishing models as well as sustainable development and bibliodiversity. Currently, the platform provides access to approximately 719,000 full-text articles from 1,420 journals from 31 countries.

Ritsuko Nakajima presented J-STAGE, an electronic journal platform for science and technology information in Japan, which aims to increase the visibility of journals and promotes open access. The website is used by over 1,850 publishers. The resources of the platform include over 5 million articles from 3,262 journals, of which over 85% are open access.

The last speaker at the event was Abel L Packer, representing SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library Online) that collects scientific literature from Latin America and the Caribbean, Spain, Portugal and South Africa. SciELO includes both scientific journals (about 1,300 active journals in total), as well as books, preprints and research data.

During the presentation and discussion, an operating model for platforms was discussed, both in the financial, organizational, and technical dimensions, which includes, among others, the method of adding data and metadata, the scope of collected information, and statistics or technical standards ensuring the availability and visibility of resources. Local conditions relevant to the implementation of open access, platform development plans and the challenges they face were also discussed.

The Library of Science is an Open Access collection of articles published in Polish scientific journals and of scientific books. The resources are available as full-text with metadata.

The new version of the platform has been developed in the project titled “Platform of Polish Scientific Publications”, co-financed from the European Regional Development Fund, 2nd priority axis of the Operational Program Digital Poland for 2014-2020, Measure 2.3. (total project value: PLN 5,164,777.78, co-financing from European Funds: PLN 4,370,951.43).

Within this project, we have already gathered over 300 new journal titles and tens of thousands of new scientific articles to make them available in Open Access. The project also includes the preparation of mobile versions of selected scientific books. This is a continuation of our previous activities – we currently make openly available few hundred thousands of scientific articles from almost 1,400 journals. We have also collected almost 600 scientific books that we successively make available on the same platform.

The new version of the “Library of Science” provides full-text publications of journals and books, along with an interface for automatic imports and for uploads of new resources by journal editors and publishers. Thanks to the implementation of recognised technical standards, scientific publications made available on our platform are very well visible for search engines and are thus easily accessible to all interested readers. We have now provided for an even more attractive presentation and we have introduced additional features such as a citation generator in popular formats. Each journal operates from its own “home page” on the website, where they can present the content of each issue, as well as information about journal official score, indicators, editorial board, the rules for accepting and reviewing manuscripts, etc. It is a great help in promotion not only for the authors of these publications, but also for the publishers and editors themselves.

As part of the project we have been also carrying out a series of training courses for publishers and editors, devoted to legal, technical and organizational aspects of Open Access publishing. We provide guidance on the transition to open licenses, which has been recommended to the publishers of Polish scientific journals by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education and the signatories of Plan S, including the National Science Center.

Alea López de San Román González

Policy Officer at the European Commission’s Directorate for Research and Innovation. Alea works in the Open Science unit, where she contributes to the development and implementation of the EU policy on open access to scientific results. Before joining the European Commission, Alea coordinated the Information and Open Access policy group at the League of European Research Universities (LERU). She is a graduate in Law, Political Sciences and Public Management from Universidad Carlos III. She obtained a Master’s Degree in International Affairs (Universidad Pontificia de Comillas) and a Master’s Degree in European Studies (KU Leuven). Her areas of work and expertise include EU Research Policy, Copyright and Open Access.

Arianna Becerril García

Full-time professor-researcher at the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico (UAEM). Member of the National System of Researchers (SNI) of Mexico. She holds a PhD and MSc in Computer Science, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico. And she holds a BA in Computer Engineering, UAEM. She’s part of the founding team of the Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America and the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal (Redalyc.org) where she is the current Executive Director. Dr Becerril is founder and president of AmeliCA Conocimiento Abierto S.C. She’s co-founder of the Mexican Network of Institutional Repositories. She’s member of the steering committee of InvestInOpenInfrastructure, and board member in SCOSS, she is also part of the council of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).

Miroslav Milinović

Assistant Director for Information and Middleware Infrastructure at SRCE – University of Zagreb, University Computing Centre (Croatia). He has been leading SRCE’s research in the areas of middleware, web technologies and digital archives for over 20 years. He was leading development of HRČAK – Portal of scientific journals of Croatia, Croatian Web Archive (HAW) and Croatian identity federation AAI@EduHr. He received a MSc. degree in computer science from University of Zagreb, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing. His main professional interests are related to middleware, metadata, web technologies and digital repositories.

Wojciech Murdzek

The Deputy Minister at the Ministry of Science and Higher Education. A longtime mayor of Świdnica, member of Sejm (lower house of the Polish Parliament) of the 8th and 9th term, activist of the Agreement party. He chaired the Sejm’s extraordinary deregulation committee. He also sat on the parliamentary committees of: economy and development, public finance and the so-called inquiry commitee on VAT fraud. As a parliamentarian he participated in the drafting of the first and the second Act on innovation. On December 5, 2019, he was appointed the Secretary of State in the Ministry of Development. From April 16, 2020 to October 19, 2020, he was the Minister of Science and Higher Education. On November 17, 2020, he has been appointed the Secretary of State at the Ministry of Science and Higher Education. He is a member of the Łukasiewicz Research Network Board.

Susan Murray

For 14 years, Susan Murray has been the Director of African Journals OnLine, (ajol.info) a South African NPO working for increased accessibility, awareness and quality of African-published research. AJOL is the largest online library of peer-reviewed, African scholarly journals, and provides journal-specific support, OA resources, publishing quality assistance, and regional Editors’ workshops throughout the continent. Murray has an academic background in Development Economics and a deep commitment to the constructive role that emerging economies can play in setting equitable research agendas for their citizens’ well-being, by increasing eminence of and access to relevant Global South research outputs. Murray is an Advisory Committee Member and Board Director of several regional and global scholarly initiatives, an experienced workshop facilitator, and a frequent conference speaker.

Ritsuko Nakajima

Director of the Department for Information Infrastructure at Japan Science and Technology Agency(JST), where she is responsible for information services, including the Japanese journal aggregator “J-STAGE”, the DOI registration agency “Japan Link Center”, the Japanese researcher directory “researchmap” etc. Ritsuko is also taking care of promoting open access for articles/data as research output derived from research projects funded by JST.

Abel L. Packer

Abel co-founded the Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO) in 1998, a Program of the São Paulo State Foundation (FAPESP) committed to the advancement Brazilian scientific research and communication through the open access indexing and publication of a selected collection of quality peer-reviewed journals. The SciELO Publishing Model is adopted by 17 countries as part of the SciELO Network. Since 2010, Abel has been Director of SciELO. He is also Project Coordinator at the Foundation of the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP) and former Director of the Latin American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences of the Pan American Health Organization / World Health Organization (BIREME/PAHO/WHO). Abel has a bachelor’s degree in Business Management and a Master of Library Science with extensive experience in information science, librarianship, information technology, and information management.

Paweł M. Rowiński

Paweł Rowiński holds a degree in mathematics by the University of Warsaw, and doctoral and habilitation degrees in earth sciences with a specialisation in geophysics by the Institute of Geophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences. Among others, his research interests include mathematical methods in geophysics, geophysical flows, river hydrodynamics, and fluvial hydraulics. Paweł Rowiński has published more than 170 refereed scientific publications. He serves as Associate Editor for several prominent scientific journals and publications. In 2018 he was elected the Vice Chair of the Europe Division Leadership Team of the International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering and Research IAHR, he is also a member of Board of ALLEA – the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities. Since May 2015, he serves as Vice-President of the Polish Academy of Sciences (second term in office).

Krzysztof Siewicz

Doctor of Law, mediator, and legal counsel specialising in legal issues concerning information processing. At ICM he coordinates the project “Platform of Polish Scientific Publications”, funded from Operational Programme Digital Poland. He co-represented ICM in the team of experts on Open Access formed by the Ministry of Science and Higher Eduction. Formerly, a lecturer at Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw and Koźmiński University. As the Creative Commons Poland Legal Lead he prepared the Polish implementation of CC 3.0 licenses. His doctoral thesis concerned the legal protection of the freedoms of software users (Universiteit Leiden, the Netherlands). LLM, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary, Graduate of the Uniwersity of Warsaw, Legal Studies Department.

Jakub Szprot

Head of the Open Science Platform at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modelling (ICM), University of Warsaw. He is in charge of nationwide services providing open access to scientific literature and data (Library of Science, CeON Repository, CeON Aggregator, Repository for Open Data); edited and co-authored reports on different aspects of open science; is responsible for policy advocacy as well as oversees a variety of training and educational activities in the field of open science and research data management. Since 2006 he has participated in numerous Polish and European projects concerning research infrastructures, open access, open data, and digital humanities; currently; currently, he leads the Disciplinary Open Research Data Repositories project. He has been a member of committees and expert groups of UNESCO, the European Commission, and the Polish Ministries of Science and Higher Education and Education and Science. As a DARIAH-PL National Coordinator, he is also involved in developing digital research infrastructure for the arts and humanities on both the national and European levels.

Elżbieta Żądzińska

Rector of the University of Lodz and the President of the Science Committee of the The Conference of Rectors of Academic Schools in Poland (CRASP). In 2005-2008, she held the position of the Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Biology and Environmental Protection. From 2008 to 2016, she was elected the Dean of this Faculty, and in the 2016-2020 term she was the Vice-Rector for Science at the University of Lodz. Since 2014, she has been an Honorary Visiting Research Fellow School of Medical Sciences University of Adelaide. Her main research areas are: human biology of contemporary and historical populations, determinants of population stress, odontology. In 2014, the President of the Republic of Poland awarded her the title of professor of biological sciences.

June 15th, 2021, 9:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m., online (Warsaw, UTC +2)

9:30-10:00	opening of online room, solving any technical issues
10:00-10:15	opening Marek Michalewicz (ICM UW) presentation in English
10:15-10:45	Presentation of the new platform of the Library of Science Krzysztof Siewicz (ICM UW) presentation in English
10:45-11:30	Recent developments in the European Commission policy on Open Science Alea López de San Román González presentation in English
11:30-11:45	break
11:45-13:15	discussion panel (in Polish) Open Access to publications as a part of scientific policy in Poland – present and future Zbigniew Błocki (NCN) Wojciech Murdzek (MEiN) Paweł Rowiński (PAN) Elżbieta Żądzińska (KRASP) moderator: Jakub Szprot (ICM UW)
13:15-14:00	break
14:00-16:00	discussion panel (in English) Open Access to scientific literature around the world – exchange of experiences Arianna Becerril García – Redalyc: A platform to advance non-commercial Open Access publishing Miroslav Milinović – HRČAK – the national infrastructure for OA journals Susan Murray (AJOL) Ritsuko Nakajima (J-STAGE) Abel L Packer – SciELO advances as an Open Science program moderator: Krzysztof Siewicz (ICM UW)
16:00	closing

We look forward to cooperating with you!

The publications are made available under agreements concluded directly with publishers or other copyright holders for these publications. Public financing of our activities allows us to make scientific publications available free of charge, both for their recipients, as well as for publishers and editors. Collecting such a large number of journals and scientific books on one nationwide platform leads to the effect of scale – very good visibility on the Internet, which is not easily attainable for the dispersed, single home pages or sites of individual publishers and editorial offices.

At the same time, open access means that we do not require and do not need exclusive rights to share our partners’ publications. We are not a competitor to other forms of publishing.

Our platform is equipped with features that help publishers and editorial offices to manage journal resources and reporting, including partial automation of metadata input and the ability to export it to popular formats and platforms.