Open Access Advocacy In Belarus And Serbia

Key achievements, strategies, tactics and tools, success stories and lessons learnt from the two EIFL-funded open access advocacy projects in Belarus and Serbia. 

Belarusian national open access (OA) website as a focal point for advocacy campaigns to reach out to research communities

Republican Research-and-Production Unitary Enterprise "Diatech" (a leading OA publisher in the country) in partnership with the National Library of Belarus and the Belarus Council of Libraries on Information Cooperation (BelCoLib) implemented a project on building national communities of OA practitioners and decision-makers. The main objectives of the project included: create a nationwide community website to showcase and support communication and collaboration across universities and scholarly societies involved in the OA movement; promote sharing information and expertise on OA; and support cross-institutional linking between researchers and projects with shared interests.

“Open academic environment is one of the main factors for successful scholarly communication in Belarus. It is very important for all of us involved in research and education to remove existing barriers and let knowledge become a real power.”

- Vladimir Krasovski, Vice-rector, International State Ecological University named after Andrew Saharov

Key Achievements

• The Belarusian national OA website, www.openaccess.by, launched. The website brings together a wide variety of OA information sources into one website thereby making it easier to find relevant resources and to promote OA activities across Belarus. A core group of proactive users has already formed around the OA website; they regularly update the website with news and events and advocate for OA in the country...