The Serbian Government has adopted a national policy mandating open access (OA) to all publications resulting from publicly-funded research in Serbia.

The policy, titled the Open Science Platform, was introduced by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development (MESTD), the main funder for research in Serbia, in July 2018.

EIFL welcomes the adoption of the policy, which makes a major contribution to improving visibility and discoverability of Serbian research outputs.

A working group set up by MESTD, including stakeholders from the Serbian research and library sectors, led policy development. Two major European Union-funded projects PASTEUR4OA and OpenAIRE, in which EIFL is a partner, contributed to the policy drafting process.

THE MAIN ELEMENTS OF THE POLICY

In addition to mandating OA to MESTD-funded research, the policy states that universities and research institutes should define and adapt their open science institutional policies and infrastructure within six months to comply with the national policy. [See the policy in Serbian here and in English here.]

The main elements of the policy are:

Open access is mandatory for all publications resulting from research that is fully or partially-funded by the MESTD, including journal articles, monographs, book chapters, conference objects and PhD theses.

The policy stipulates that OA to the full text of published research outputs must be enabled immediately when possible. If not possible, an embargo period of up to 12 months after the date of publication is allowed in the case of physical and medical sciences, and engineering, and of up to 18 months in the case of social sciences and humanities.

The MESTD primarily supports ‘Green’ OA, i.e. depositing published research outputs in digital repositories with full respect to copyright and rights granted to publishers.

For Gold Open Access, i.e. publishing in an open access journal, Article and Book Processing Charges (APC/BPCs) will be considered eligible only if foreseen by the project budget.

The policy recommends, but does not mandate OA for research data.

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EIFL has been supporting OA and OA publishing in Serbia since 2000.