Greece

Enabling Environment:

The National Documentation Centre (EKT) maintains a centralised information source on OA in Greece and elsewhere in Europe.

Potential Barriers:

Very limited funds available for research and reliance on EU funding; no national mandate; lack of publication business models; lack of national strategy (Georgiou and Papadatou, 2009).

Major Projects/Initiatives:

Hellenic Academic Libraries Link (HEAL-Link) operates as a Consortium and comprises 38 higher education institutes and 14 techological education institutes, and 8 other libraries), the Academy of Athens and the National Library of Greece. HEAL offers a portal to 11,000 full text electronic journals, including keyword and subject search to all.

National Information Research and Technology System (NISR+T) project is part of the project ‘'Digital Greece'', and is co-sponsored by EU Regional Development funds and Greek government funding. It aims is to develop digital library services; to collect, document and disseminate Greek digital content;  develop applications and tools that support the organization, management and dissemination of digital Research and Technology content, using internationally accepted standards and practices that have been adapted to the particular situation of Greece;  develop services for the dissemination and exploitation of Research and Technology results; establish cooperation with academic and research institutions and groups, nationally and internationally; develop alternative infrastructures for the collection, organisation and dissemination of digital Research and Technology content

Open Knowledge Greece: A group of hackers, developers, academics, government representatives and citizens who have joined forces to build the Greek section of the Open Knowledge Foundation.

Details of Key Organizations:

National Documentation Centre (EKT)
Overview provides documentation, information and support services on science, research and technology issues to the research, business, government and wider community. Hosts an online platform that provides information about Open Access with links to journals, repositories, OA policies, projects and events in Greece and elsewhere in Europe.

Since 1980, EKT the national institution for the aggregation, documentation and dissemination of S&T information, serves the country’s research, education, business communities and the wider public, enabling access to knowledge and facilitating research and innovation (R&I).  Its activities contribute to the development of the Information Society and to the promotion of Innovation. The organization develops and promotes Greek digital content in science and culture, repositories and digital libraries such as the National Archive of PhD Theses with an aim to facilitate the growth of knowledge through open content and facilities, digital resources, software, collaboration tools and related user-oriented services for R&I. It disseminates research results and innovative technologies to the market, operates the Science and Technology Digital Library, supports the automation and networking of libraries and develops state-of-the-art library tools.

EKT and Open Access Initiatives: advocates open access and data initiatives that support the development and implementation of relevant policies for scientific and cultural data. EKT empowers access to significant volume of peer reviewed and quality assured scientific content (e-publishing.ekt.gr), adopts open source software to build and maintain open access e repositories. It contributes to the wider discussion on issues related with Open Access in Greece and promotes open dialogue through targeted information campaign, Open Access Blog, events and conferences (e.g International Open Access Conference).

Communication address: National Documentation Centre (EKT), 48 Vassileos Constantinou Av, GR-11635, Athens, Greece; e-mail: openaccess(at)ekt.gr

Thematic Open Access projects/Initiatives

• Anemi Digital Library: contains a rich collection of digitized material related to Modern Greek Studies
• National Hellenic Research Foundation depository: The Helios repository is an organized infrastructure of digital content that offers free and unrestricted access to scientific and research material from the National Hellenic Research Foundation. Scientific results, publications in international journals, research work, conference proceedings, books, training material, sound and image files are available in a fully organized environment, compatible to international standards.
  
• Pandektis: A major digital collection of Greek history and civilization. The collections have been developed by the Institute of Neohellenic Research, the Institute of Byzantine Research and the Institute of Greek and Roman Antiquity. 

Past and Future OA Related Activities:

• 15 and 16 January 2015: The RECODE (The Policy RECommendations for Open Access to Research Data in Europe ) Project  held its final conference “Open Access to Research Data as a Driver for Open Science” at the National Documentation Centre (EKT) in Athens.
• 19 – 20 June 2014: 18th International Conference on Electronic Publishing (Elpub), was held at the Alexander Technological Institute of Thessaloniki, Greece. The theme for the conference was: “Let´s put data to use: digital scholarship for the next generation”. RECODE partners, Peter Linde, Merel Norman, Bridgette Wessels and Thordis Sveinsdottir presented their paper during the conference – “How can libraries and other academic institutions engage in making data open?”.
• 12-13 June, 2014: WIRE 2014 (Week of Innovative Regions in EUROPE 2014) held in Athens, Greece. WiRE214 Conference was hosted by the Greek EU presidency and was organized by the National Documentation Centre of Greece (EKT) and the European Commission, in collaboration with the General Secretariat for Research and Technology. 
• October 2014: Open Access Week 2014: Organized by Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Library (AUTH) in cooperation with Open Knowledge Greece, the event explored topics such as Open Research Health Data Management and Open Data in the Knowledge Society.
• 9-10 June 2014: Susan Reilly (LIBER) gave a presentation on User Requirements at the eIRG Workshop in Athens.
• 16-18 October, 2013: "International Open Access Conference @ EKT:Towards Common European Policies for Innovative Reuse of Public Sector and Scientific Information" held in Athens, Greece. It was the third in a series of international conferences focusing at Open Access to scientific knowledge. The first part (16^th October) focused on recent policies and initiatives supporting open access with regards to public sector information and scientific research, with a particular focus in developments in Greece. Presentations included the Ministry of Finances’ Open Government inititatives and the country’s participation to the Open Government Partnership (OGP), the design of a National Strategic Plan for Open Government, and data.gov.gr, the new central online space for making available public sector data. Other topics covered include national policies and projects in the area of open data, open research and science. Also, important civil society initiatives were discussed that promote the reuse of open data as a means to fight corruption, to promote transparency and to enhance citizen participation in the public sphere.
• EKT organises seminars and conferences on OA issues and publicises events through its website.
• Digital Repositories and Open Access Journals at a Conference organized by the National Documentation Centre (Athens, 15-16 December 2008)
• International Conference "Open Access: Research-Education-Public Data" 16-17 December 2010, Athens (National Hellenic Research Foundation).

Open Science and Open Data Related Events

June 2015: Discovering Open Science and Open Opportunities

This was a FOSTER-supported training programme organized in partnership with EIFL with the aim of setting in place sustainable mechanisms for EU researchers to Foster Open Science. This was one of the 24 training programmes organized in 2015 for the the research communities of 17 other EU countries.

January 2015: Open Access to Research Data as a Driver for Open Science

The conference was organized by the RECODE project.

The interest for the adoption of OA over the past years has broadened its scope and interest from publications to research data. The acknowledgement of the societal and economic benefits resulting from OA to research data, consistent with the notion of Open Science, has in turn translated in an increasing number of initiatives at both national and international level. 

Recognizing the importance of enhancing further the transition to an OA ecosystem, the RECODE project organized this conference to provide a forum for European stakeholders to work together on common solutions.

The Conference focused on the following themes: policies for OA to research data; good practices in enabling the re-use of data; open research data and research cultures; government data; grand challenges and future developments for OA to research data.

List of Publications

National Open Access and Preservation Policies in Europe: Analysis of a Questionnaire to the European Research Area Committee; EUROPEAN UNION, 2011.

Banou, G.C. and Kostagiolas, A. P. (2007). “Managing Expectations for open access in Greece: Perceptions from the Publishers and Academic Libraries”. In: Proceedings ELPUB2007 Conference on Electronic Publishing, Vienna, Austria - June 2007.

Chantavaridou, E (2009) Open access and institutional repositories in Greece: progress so far. OCLC Systems & Services, 2009, Vol. 25 (1):47-59.  DOI: 10.1108/10650750910931922

Georgiou, P, Koumoutsos, K and Papadatou, F (2008). “Directory of Greek Digital Resources”. In: 17th Hellenic Academic Libraries Conference, University of Ioannina, Greece, 24-26 September 2008.

Georgiou, P and Papadatou, F. (2009). Digital scholarly publishing in Greece In: Academic Publishing in the Mediterranean Region, University of Florence, Italy, 19-20 March 2009.

Georgiou, P and Papadatou, F (2010). Open access in Greece In: Anglada, L and Abadal, E (eds). Open access in Southern European countries.
Madrid: FECYT: 39-62.

Georgiou, P and Papadatou, F (2009). Scholarly publishing & open access in Greece.

Sachini, E. et.al (2009). Open access in the Humanities: a case study of developing three open-access electronic journals in Greece. In: 13th International Conference on Electronic Publishing: Innovation in Communication Paradigms and Technologies, 10-12 June 2009, Milan, Italy: 543-556.

Vlachaki, A.; Urquhart, C. (2010) Use of open access journals in biomedicine in Greece Library Management, Vol. 31 (1/2): 19-26. DOI: 10.1108/01435121011013368

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