EIFL is one of 11 partners taking part in the OPTIMA project, which promotes openness and transparency in research in Ukraine by fostering open science practices and open peer review among early career researchers and others who are interested. Open science is an open and collaborative approach to scientific research; open peer review brings transparency to the already familiar practice of academic evaluation. 

Short for Open Practices, Transparency and Integrity for Modern Academia, OPTIMA (project # 618940-EPP-1-2020-1-UA-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP) is a three-year project funded by the European Union's Erasmus+ Capacity-building in Higher Education programme.

The project partners

The project is Coordinated by Lviv Polytechnic National University, and includes five other partners in Ukraine - Lutsk National Technical University, National Agency for Higher Education Quality Assurance, National Antarctic Scientific Center, Sumy State University and Donetsk National University (relocated to Vinnytsia). There are also five partners from European Union countries - Eurodoc - the European Council for Doctoral Candidates and Junior Researchers, EIFL, Graz University of Technology, Wrocław University of Science and Technology and the University of Côte d'Azur. 

Timeline

2021 - 2024

Activities

The project activities include - 

• Developing and offering generic and discipline-specific open science courses for Masters students and PhD candidates;
• Creating an online open peer review platform for academic conferences that will provide hands-on learning opportunities for early career researchers, helping to build new skills;
• Building an international virtual community of peer reviewers to mentor the early career researchers.

EIFL’s main contribution will be to develop the generic and discipline-specific open science courses for Masters students and PhD candidates. The courses will be offered in the five Ukrainian universities.  

Results

• 15 courses in Ukrainian have been developed and received accreditation in four project partner universities: Lviv Polytechnic National University, Sumy State University, Vasyl' Stus Donetsk National University, and Lutsk National Technical University.
• D1.3 Requirements to the Open Peer Review Platform. This report specifies contextual requirements for developing an open peer review platform to be used in later OPTIMA activities, implementing open peer review processes at academic conferences in Ukraine to increase academic integrity and build a virtual community of reviewers. EU experts from the OPTIMA consortium conducted two online open science training workshops in March and June 2021, which were used to gather requirements for the open peer review platform. This report summarizes the findings of these requirements-gathering exercises. 
• D1.4 Requirements to Updated Courses with New Subjects on Open Science. This report summarizes findings from two workshops on gathering requirements for introducing open science training to Ukrainian higher education institutions and presents a roadmap for implementation. It develops recommendations for open science training implementation based on the findings of the two requirements gathering workshops and a roadmap for open science course development for Ukrainian higher education institutions.

Find out more  

• Follow the project on social media - Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube;
• For more information, contact Iryna Kuchma, EIFL Open Access Programme Manager, iryna.kuchma [@] eifl.net;
• More about EIFL's contribution to open access and open science in Ukraine.