The e-government further development and the investments in building the next generation broadband communication infrastructure (NRP 2015) present priorities within both administrative reform in Bulgaria, as well as in the broader framework to improve the business environment and the investment climate. In 2015 National Plan for Broadband Infrastructure for the Next Generation Access is developed, publicly consulted and adopted. Gradually, e-science is transformed into a field of policy interest, although there is still the need to develop a strategic agenda for e-research support, e- infrastructures and researchers electronic identity.
The Bulgarian Current Research Information System (BulCRIS) is developed and maintained by the Ministry of Education and Science, under Article 7b of the Act for Scientific Research Promotion. BulCRIS159 is a starting point for detailed information about Bulgaria’s research, development and innovation resources, and for staying in touch with the latest innovations. BulCRIS is targeted to bring together the abilities of universities and scientific institutes in Bulgaria, and of organisations throughout the world to help them make efficient use of these resources.
158https://ec.europa.eu/research/swafs/pdf/pub_gender_equality/she_figures_2015-leaflet-web.pdf 159http://www.cris.government.bg/
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4.5.2 Open Access to publications and data
The evolution of open access in Bulgaria cannot necessarily be connected to strategic policy orientation. Instead, it can be examined as a series of steps that the government and educational and research institutions undertake to gradually create an open-access infrastructure. The joining of the eIFL (electronic information for libraries) consortium in 2009160 suggested project driven open-access in Bulgaria. The next step is participating in OpenAIRE (open access infrastructure for research in Europe) consortium. OpenAIRE National Open Access Desk (NOAD) is established for Bulgaria at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Mathematics and Informatics to connect researchers and research institutions at a national to OpenAIRE project services.
MES provides national access to scientific information of the best quality, ‘bibliometric’ resources and analytical tools. It is the institution concentrating the national efforts to implement the digital ERA policies on access and preservation of scientific information through building and maintaining high-performing computing, and access infrastructures such as on-line databases. The beneficiaries are currently 58 research institutions, public and private universities, and research centres in hospitals. Additionally, ‘Bulgarian Information Consortium’ (BIC) has been set-up as an organization of 38 members, representing academic institutions and libraries, aiming at resource-sharing.
The Bulgarian research community is informed about the benefits of open access and uses open access research publications, and although progress is continuously achieved, the rate of change may often be considered insufficient. The overall level of awareness is increasing among libraries, especially university libraries, though still very few institutions are involved in managing repositories. There are 6 Open Access Bulgarian repositories in OpenDOAR: 1) Bulgarian OpenAIRE Repository; 2) New Bulgarian University; 3) Institute of Mathematics and Informatics at Bulgarian Academy of Sciences; 4) Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski"; 5) Medical University of Sofia (MUS); and 6) Bourgas Free University (BFU)161.
In 2013 Bulgaria made available 51 journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)162, compared with 6 journals in 2007 (NIF, 2013). In addition, Bulgaria has achieved 56% adjusted score for open access contribution, compared with 58.8% average European participation measure (Archambault, et.al., 2014). According to OpenAIRE data, Bulgaria163 participates with 7821 open access publications in 13 on-line repositories . BAS central library provides also free on-line access to digital resources. The resources are accessible via BAS IP addresses. There are different databases for on- line resources (Central Library BAS). Among these is the ‘WorldCat’ – the largest worldwide bibliographic database, providing the foundation of cooperative library services in metadata management, discovery, resource sharing and collection management (OCLC WorldCat).
Through these activities Bulgaria has made a significant progress toward participation in the ‘open access’164 movement and the ‘digital repository infrastructure in European research’ (Driver). 160http://www.eifl.net/country/bulgaria 161www.openaire.eu 162https://www.doaj.org 163 June 2014
164 There are 4 types of Open Access: (i) 'Gold’ open access (open access publishing): payment of publication costs is
shifted from readers (via subscriptions) to authors. These costs are usually borne by the university or research institute to which the researcher is affiliated, or by the funding agency supporting the research.
(ii) ‘Green’ open access (self-archiving): the published article or the final peer-reviewed manuscript is archived by the researcher in an online repository before, after or alongside its publication. Access to this article is often delayed (‘embargo period’) at the request of the publisher so that subscribers retain an added benefit. The green access model allows for certain variations: the length of the embargo period and the version that may be archived at different moments in time vary, e.g. depending on the agreements between publishers and authors.
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Table 23: Proportion of OA per country, 2008–2013 (extract)
Source: Proportion of Open Access Papers Published in Peer-Reviewed Journals at the European and World Levels – 1996-2013.165
Open data initiative also gained speed in 2015. The opendata.government.bg portal exists already as a single, central, web-based public information system that provides publication and management of information for reuse in an open, machine-readable format together with the metadata. The platform is constructed in a manner that allows the complete extraction of the published information, or parts thereof. Technically, at the basis of the project stands open source platform CKAN166, developed by the Open Knowledge Foundation, the UK, and used extensively by countries like Great Britain, Romania, Slovakia, the Netherlands, Austria, Italy, Sweden, South Korea, including the European Commission. The Vision platform is made of "obshtestvo.bg"167 and is also open source. Information on all projects that drive the portal and its source code can be found in the GitHub168 repository.
(iii) Hybrid open access refers to a publishing model in which subscription-based journals allow authors to make individual articles open access on payment of an article publication fee.
(iv) Pay attention to whether the ID/OA mandate (i.e. Immediate deposit/Optional Access) has been introduced in your country (cf., for instance http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/71-guid.html)
165 See a.o.
http://science-metrix.com/files/science-metrix/publications/d_1.8_sm_ec_dg-rtd_proportion_oa_1996-2013_v11p.pdf supplemented with any new/more accurate data and new policy developments
166http://ckan.org/
167 meaning ‘society’ in translation
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