Overview

Ukraine was one of the first-ever countries where EIFL began promoting open access, with an awareness-raising workshop in 2004. Since then there have been many training and awareness-raising events in Ukraine, in collaboration with the Association ‘Informatio-Consortium’, Ukrainian Library Association, ELibUkr Consortium and the Mohyla School of Journalism (National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy). Thousands of  researchers, students, research administrators and managers, journal editors and librarians have taken part in training on open access and open science practices and strategies. 

In 2015 EIFL took on the role of Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) Associate Editor to help Ukrainian open access publishers to improve policies and workflows to meet best practices in publishing.

In 2021, EIFL joined the OPTIMA (Open Practices, Transparency and Integrity for Modern Academia) project, funded by Erasmus+, to promote openness and transparency in research by fostering open science practices among early career researchers and others who are interested. The OPTIMA project ended in 2024. See the results of the OPTIMA project.

In 2023, EIFL joined another Erasmus+ project, Open Science for Ukrainian Higher Education System (Open4UA), which aims to reform the higher education system by prioritising open science to advance the growth of Ukraine’s knowledge-driven economy for the post-war recovery. Follow the progress of the Open4UA project.

TIMELINE

2004 - 2026

MAIN ACTIVITIES

• Advocacy and raising awareness about open access and open science.
• Developing promotional and advocacy material.
• Training on open access and open science practices.
• Strengthening open access journals and repositories.
• Developing open science courses for early career researchers.
• Contributing to open access and open science policy development.
• Advancing research assessment reform by implementing the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) principles in the policies and practices of national funders, and prioritizing open science during assessment of researchers and institutions, and in evaluation of research projects.
• Providing higher education institutions with toolkits and best practices in open science and research assessment.

ACHIEVEMENTS

• Through the OPTIMA project:
  • Released an open science practices handbook and online course, developed 19 open science courses in four project partner universities (Lviv Polytechnic National University, Sumy State University, Vasyl' Stus Donetsk National University, and Lutsk National Technical University).
  • Launched an online open peer review platform for academic conferences that supported 13 academic conferences (nine of them were organized by universities displaced as a result of Russia's invasions of Ukraine).  
• Adoption of a National Open Science Plan: In October 2022 the Government approved a National Open Science Plan stipulating integration of open science into all national science, research, education, technology and innovation policies, strategies and action plans, by 2024. The Plan introduces a new job profile of open science experts and research data stewards; encourages Ukrainian open access journals to register with the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ); allocates Government funding for a national research repository to be integrated with institutional repositories; encourages citizen science; improves research assessment and evaluation; and builds open science skills and competencies. 
  • A new methodology for assessing universities & research institutions in Ukraine that now includes open science practices was released (covers over 370 research institutes and 130 universities).
  • 462 open access journals had been indexed in the DOAJ by June 2025.
• 22 institutional open access and open science policies have been adopted.
• 169 open access repositories have been set up.
• Open access and open science have been integrated into national laws, for example, the Law of Ukraine On the Principles of Developing Information Society in Ukraine in 2007-2015.
• The National Initiative of the European Open Science Cloud Initiative was launched in November 2020.
• Earlier achievements and steps leading to the adoption of the National Open Science Plan:
  • The Open Access to Knowledge Statement was endorsed by over 150 Ukrainian university librarians (on 21 May 2009).
  • An open access to research output clause was included in the Olvia Declaration of the Universities in Ukraine: Academic Freedom, University Autonomy, Science and Education for Sustainable Development, which was endorsed by 26 rectors at the Olvia Forum in June 2009.