Documents regulating open access

National documents regulating open access

The conditions for the publication of scientific data are established by the Law of the Republic of Lithuania on Science and Studies, in article 51 “Publicity of Results of Scientific Activities”

Open access to scientific data and publications 19 “In order to ensure the quality of research carried out with state budget funds, the transparency of the use of state budget funds, and to promote the progress of science, all the results of research and experimental development carried out in research and study institutions with state budget funds must be made publicly available (on the website and via other means), insofar as it is not contrary to the legislation regulating the protection of intellectual property and commercial or official secrets.”

Lithuanian Science Council, with resolution No. VIII-2, on 29 February 2016 approved the “Guidelines for Open Access to Scientific Publications and Data”.

The guidelines include the following aspects of open access to scientific publications:

1. Open access to scientific publications is provided through repositories and/or open access journals.
2. Article processing charges (APC), book processing charges (BPC), and other costs of publishing articles in open access journals or open access books may be charged to projects funded by the Council, and shall be included in the project cost estimate.
3. The costs of opening publications in hybrid journals is not covered by Council projects.

The guidelines include the following aspects of open access to scientific data:

1. The project manager must ensure that the data generated by the project is preserved in digital format and, at the end of the project, is transferred to the institution for safekeeping and/or submission to the repository. The data must be kept for at least 5 years after the end of the project.
2. The promoters of the project, for which the data will be collected, shall submit a data management plan in the application. The data management plan may be revised during the course of the project.
3. Costs incurred for the implementation of the data management plan during the project period may be charged to projects funded by the Council, and shall be included in the project cost estimate.
4. The data based on the scientific publications referred to in Section IV of the Guidelines must be made openly available at the same time as the publications. This data must be made available in repositories, or by other means specified by the publishers and linked to the relevant publications.

The Lithuanian Science Council encourages Lithuanian research and study institutions, infrastructures, and other relevant organisations to adopt institutional open access policies and procedures for the management of scientific data.

RoarMap, the registry of open access archiving policies for repositories, contains open access policies from universities, research institutes and funding bodies around the world. The register contains 11 open access regulations (2020-08-05 data) approved by Lithuanian institutions.