The Government of Ukraine has approved a National Open Science Action Plan and mandated all Ministries to ensure that it is implemented, and to provide annual monitoring reports. 

Iryna Kuchma, EIFL Open Access Programme Manager, is a member of the National Open Science Working Group at the Ministry of Education and Science that developed the National Open Science Action Plan. 

The Action Plan includes integration of open science into national science, research, education, technology and innovation policies, strategies and action plans by 2024. It stipulates working in collaboration with EOSC - European Open Science Cloud - and Horizon Europe partnerships. 

What's in the plan

Recommendations drafted by the Ministry of Education and Science and the Action Plan implementation team on using open content licences (Creative Commons) will be released next year (2023), and an independent research infrastructure audit will be completed, with good practice advice on running research infrastructures. 

The Action Plan encourages Ukrainian open access journals to register with the DOAJ - the Directory of Open Access Journals (424 Ukrainian journals are currently indexed in DOAJ). 

A national research repository integrated with institutional repositories will be supported annually, with Government funding, and interoperable standards. In addition, three data repositories will be set up by 2025. 

Reforming research assessment is one of the priorities for 2023, and recommendations for research assessment will be provided to universities and research institutes. The recommendations will be aligned with the San Francisco Declaration on Reforming Research Assessment.

Open science online training will be launched in 2023. Open science and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) data professional profiles will be developed as new career paths in 2024; rolled out in institutions by 2026, and 10 competence centres will be set up by 2030.  

A citizen science action plan will be released in 2024, based on the Ten Principles of Citizen Science of the European Citizen Science Association. 

Universities and research institutes will receive guidance on implementing Data Management Plans next year and on developing their open science policies and strategies by 2025. 

Recommendations for publishing open access monographs will be released in 2025.   

A National Research Information System (URIS) will monitor open science implementation in Ukraine by 2026. 

More about EIFL’s contribution to open access and open science in Ukraine.