The 20th EIFL (Electronic Information for Libraries) General Assembly took place in Vilnius County Adomas Mickevičius public library on 18-20 September, focusing on initiatives promoting open access and open science, library support for science, and science assessment.
The theme was chosen because this year marks the 20th anniversary of EIFL’s open access programme, EIFL-OA, whose mission is to raise awareness of open access and open science and to build the skills of thousands of librarians and researchers in developing and transition economies. The programme has contributed to the launch of more than 4,000 open access journals, the creation of more than 1,000 open access repositories and the implementation of more than 200 open access and open science policy initiatives in EIFL partner countries within period of 20 years. Kaunas University of Technology Library started its first open access initiatives in 2003, encouraged by EIFL.
Nalina Hamsaiyni Venkatesh, data manager of the Scientific information services at the KTU Library, was invited to share best practices and her personal experience on supporting researchers and doctoral students at Kaunas University of Technology. Nalina presented KTU Library’s activities to promote open science at the university, training sessions and courses for researchers and PhD students on research data management, data plan development, intellectual property rights for researchers, as well as open science. The open access self-paced learning course on Open Science, which is open to all those interested and willing to acquire basic knowledge in this field, was presented and took a big interest from participants.
EIFL is an international non-profit organisation that collaborates with libraries to make knowledge more accessible for education, learning, science and the development of a sustainable community.
