University of Cyprus is a young and rapidly expanding university which despite its brief history, has managed to earn the respect of the international academic community and the appreciation of Cypriot society.
Among other tasks, for the last 12 years, the University of Cyprus through its Library is actively supporting the European Commission’s vision for Open Science. Since 2009 the Library is participating in European projects and acting as the only National Open Access Desk (NOAD) of the country and is actively involved to the promotion and transmission of knowledge regarding Open Science aspects.
Since then, almost every year the University of Cyprus Library is organising numerous webinars and conferences or other face to face events in order to provide the necessary knowledge to all different stakeholders. Having as one of the main goals to reach and support not only academia but also to engage and involve the local community, the thematic areas covered to the dissemination events varies.
Respectively, this year and after 3 successful webinars and one National Dissemination event with a total of more than 620 participants, the University of Cyprus Library successfully organised the 10th UNICA Scholarly Communication online Seminar entitled “Academic Libraries. Supporting the university community in the Open Science era”. The seminar, which took place on the 14-15th of October 2021, covered in 4 sessions issues like Supporting researchers in the Open Science landscape, Licensing issues, transformative agreements, the Impact of Plan S on university libraries and researchers, Open Access and copyright issues, lessons learnt from the pandemic – Sharing experiences, Innovative metrics etc.
Accordingly, as October is the month of Open Access week, the Library will also participate in the 27th Panhellenic Conference of Academic Libraries with a workshop and one presentation sharing experiences about the Greek and Cyprus National Open Access Desks collaboration for promoting Open Science to the local communities.
Open Science and Open Access to Research Publications and Research Data, are these days critical for the Academia and the research eco-system. It is needless to say, they are even more crucial for the University libraries, being amongst of the most important stakeholders in promoting the Open Science principles globally. In the new context of Open Access to the Academic research output, new norms to research are expected to be established and implemented. Likewise, other deep-rooted habits are difficult to change, this is about changing an Academic culture of many decades. It is not an exaggeration to say that this is a revolutionary revision of this culture.
Undoubtedly, the University of Cyprus via its Library and through the participation in European projects and networks, is working hard for the establishment and implementation of Open Science aspects in the local research – and not only – community in order to take advantage of all the potential opportunities arise.
