Croatia
There is an active scientific publishing community in Croatia. The first Croatian Open Access initiative was launched in 1997, when Hrvatska znanstvena bibliografija (Croatian Scientific Bibliography or CROSBI) went online. CROSI allows researchers to search for scientific articles and books that were published in Croatia. As of July 2015, there are approximately 100 OA journals indexed in DOAJ which have been published in Croatia. There is also a central portal of Croatian scientific journals (Hrcak) which offers Open Access to over 250 journals. As of May 2013 the Hrčak portal of scientific journals hosted 333 journal titles with 91,737 full-text articles, including dozens of journals in the Humanities and Social Science fields. Both the CROSBI and Hrčak demonstrate the effectiveness of Croatian open access policy initiatives. Whereas the official statement on open access in Croatia became public in October 2012, the projects that supported these initiatives came to fruition at a much earlier date. Although the success of these two open access projects may not point to a generalized conclusion about the development of open access in the Croatian context, their success clearly indicates a promising future for open access policy initiatives in Croatia
07 OA institutional repositories are registered in OpenDOAR. 02 institutional OA policies are currently registered in ROARMAP.
Enabling Environment:
University of Zagreb Medical School Repository is a fully functioning OA institutional repository. Academic librarians have high awareness of OA. The public nature of the Croatian publishing industry lends itself to OA and self-archiving – publishers of Croatian scientific journals are non-for-profit organizations (mostly universities, scientific associations, scientific institutes) and they allow self-archiving.
Potential Barriers:
Lack of national mandates; non-Croatian publishers that publish research results of Croatian scientists do not always support OA – some of the articles written by Croatian scientists and published abroad cannot be self-archived (i.e. made accessible through OA repositories).
Major Projects/Initiatives:
Croatian Information and Documentation Society’s (HID) OA working group initiated in 2004. The result was the launch of the Hrcak portal for Croatian scientific journals (supported by the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports, developed and maintained by University Computing Centre SRCE).
National and Institutional Level Policies/Mandates:
None, although in the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports’ document “Science and technology policy of the Republic of Croatia 2007-2010” it is specified that the results of research (all research is publicly funded) should be accessible to the general public through open publications or databases.
Funding Mandate
Ministry of Science, Education and Sports’ document “Science and technology policy of the Republic of Croatia 2007-2010” it is specified that the results of research (all research is publicly funded) should be accessible to the general public through open publications or databases.
New OA mandates:
On 17 April 2015, the Rudjer Boskovic Institute (RBI) adapted a new OA Policy which mandates researchers to submit a digital copy of all articles to the institutional OA repository FULIR (which is OpenAIRE compliant) upon acceptance for publication.
Details of Key Organizations:
University of Zagreb Medical School Repository
Overview: Medical School repository providing open access to the publication output of the University of Zagreb's Medical School and some theses. Uses GNU software. Compliant with Open Access Initiative protocols. Communication address: University of Zagreb, Medical School, 10 000 Zagreb, Šalata 3; e-mail: smk(at)medlib.mef.hr
Croatian Information and Documentation Society (HID)
Overview: Established to develop information and documentation sciences in Croatia, to promote professional principles and encourage free flow or materials including OA initiatives.
OA mandate: Article 7 of HID Statute includes “encouraging development of free flow, access and openness of scientific, professional and public information channels, which derives from the users right on information is making them equally accessible to everyone”.
Communication address: HID c/o National and University Library, Hrvatske bratske zajednice 4, 10 000 Zagreb, Croatia; e-mail: Marina Mayer, secretary, e-mail: mmayer(at)irb.hr
Past and Future OA Related Activities:
18-19 September 2014: The Plurality of Approaches to the Scholarly Publishing and Assessment; Zadar, Republic of Croatia
HID have organised a number of conferences and seminars that have included a focus on OA. OA was one of the topics of several conferences organized by Croatian Library Association (e. g. the Academic and Special Libraries Conference and the AKM - Archives, Libraries, Museums - Conference).
Open Access Week October 2011 at the University Campus in Rijeka, Croatia.
List of Publications
Jadranka Stojanovski. Do Croatian open access journals support ethical research? Content analysis of instructions to authors. Biochemia Medica 2015;25(1):12-21
Ivana Hebrang Grgić (2015) Publishing Croatian scientific journals: to e- or not to e-? Libellarium: journal for the research of writing, books, and cultural heritage institutions Vol 8, No 1
Hebrang Grgić, Ivana. (2014). Scholarly Journals at the Periphery: the case of Croatia. Learned Publishing, 27 (1). pp. 15-20
Hebrang Grgić I and Barbaric, A (2010) The future of open access in Croatia: a survey of academic and research libraries Library Review, Vol. 60, 2: 155 – 160.
Hebrang Grgić I, Barbaric, A and Dzambaski, I (2009) OA repositories at special and academic libraries in Zagreb in Stancic, H et.al eds. 2nd International Conference: The future of Information Sciences: INFuture 2009 - Digital resources and Knowledge Sharing, Department of Information Sciences, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Zagreb: 469-77.
Hebrang Grgić, I (2011) Open Access to Scientific Information in Croatia Increasing Research Impact of a Scientifically Peripheral Country. Lambert Academic Publishing: Saarbrücken, Germany. ISBN-10: 3844318593
Stojanovski, J, Petrak, J and Macan, B (2009) The Croatian national open access journal platform Learned Publishing, Volume 22, 4: 263-273.
UNESCO (2006) Accessing and disseminating scientific information in South Eastern Europe.
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