Iryna Kuchma has been managing the EIFL Open Access Programme (EIFL-OA) since 2008. Working in collaboration with libraries and library consortia in more than 60 countries in Africa, Asia and Europe, she advocates for open access to research results, facilitates the development and implementation of open science policies and infrastructures, and provides support and training.
An expert in open access, open data and open science, Iryna has published several works (see the full list here), and contributed to recent reports including ‘Fostering Bibliodiversity in Scholarly Communications – A Call for Action!’; ‘Towards Sustainable Cooperative and Non-APC Publishing Models’; ‘Training in the European Open Science Cloud’, and ‘RDA COVID-19 Data Sharing Guidelines and Recommendations’.
Under Iryna's management, EIFL-OA’s many achievements include the establishment of more than 1,200 open access repositories and more than 4,000 open access journals in EIFL partner countries, opening up a wealth of new knowledge and research to the world. The programme has also supported the development of 176 institutional and eight national open access policies in EIFL partner countries, and has trained over 289,400 librarians, researchers, policy-makers and open access champions across the EIFL network.
Iryna’s contributions to EIFL’s work in response to the COVID-19 pandemic include curating the OpenAIRE COVID-19 Gateway and the Coronavirus Disease Research Community - COVID-19 on Zenodo.
Iryna sits on the boards of Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR), the Global Sustainability Coalition for Open Science Services (SCOSS) and the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD). She serves on the UNESCO Open Science Advisory Committee as an international expert. In addition, she serves on the advisory boards of the Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures Project (COPIM), and Open Access Week. Iryna co-chairs the OpenAIRE Training and Support Standing Committee, and is a member of the Coalition Publi.ca International Committee, the DSpace Community Advisory Team and the CODATA Policy and Legal Working Group. She is an Associate Editor for the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), and a member of the DOAJ Council. In 2020 Iryna served as a Rapporteur for the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) Skills and Training Working Group, and is now serving on the EOSC Association Data stewardship curricula and career paths Task Force.
In 2013, Iryna received the Electronic Publishing Trust (EPT) for Development Annual Award, in recognition of her ‘efforts in the furtherance of open access to scholarly publications in the developing and emerging countries’.
Before joining EIFL, Iryna worked as an Information Programme Manager at the International Renaissance Foundation (part of the Soros Foundations Network in Ukraine) and also coordinated the Arts and Culture Programme there.
Iryna completed the PhD programme at the Institute of Social Sciences, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, and has an M.A. in Cultural Studies from the National University ‘Kyiv-Mohyla Academy’, Ukraine.
Languages: English, French, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian
More about the EIFL Open Access Programme