“OpenAIRE Team has the pleasure of speaking to Alina Irimia, Open Science projects coordinator at UEFISCDI [Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research and Innovation Funding] in Romania. Mrs Irimia, talked about the priority to connect and engage the Romanian community to the open science dynamics through a national dedicated platform that is now under development. …
UEFISCDI administrates the major part of the public Research, Development and Technology (RDT) competitive funds in Romania but is also actively involved in evidence-based policy making. The institution administrates the major tools that support collaboration and dialogue between Research Development and Innovation (RDI)actors involved in research and innovation: BrainMap and ERRIS. Since 2014, UEFISCDI has been contributing to the actions of the European Commission towards strengthening the policies and practices in support of open science. Through the Open Science Knowledge Hub Romania (OSKH) created in 2019, our institution is connected to the major initiatives dedicated to the development and implementation of the European Open Science Strategy and the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC): being the Romanian OpenAIRE NOAD, a member in the EOSC Association, a partner in the NI4OS project and the RDA Node Romania. For Open Science policies support we also collaborate with Science Europe, CoNOSC and the UNESCO Chair for Science and Innovation Policies – SNSPA. Currently, OSKH-UEFISCDI contributes significantly to the development of the national strategic framework for Open Science, part of a project financed through structural funds, developed in partnership with the Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digitisation….
Among the many challenges facing Open Science, three main dimensions impact cultural change and may inhibit or unblock a real transition to OS, and they should be clearly addressed in the near future in the national context: 1) career evaluation, rewards and incentives – career benefits or on the contrary, disadvantages for researchers who promote Open Science; 2) costs – Open Science is a costly process both in terms of OA publications and FAIR data; identifying the specific needs of the national context and engaging in transformative negotiations with major journals are essential, along with creating new mechanisms for collaboration and funding; 3) Open Science literacy – providing long-term opportunities for capacity building to support the systemic change….”