OPTIMA - Open Practices, Transparency and Integrity for Modern Academia - a three-year project of the European Union's Erasmus+ Capacity-building in Higher Education programme has begun in Ukraine. 

The project aims to promote 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. 

Coordinated by Lviv Polytechnic National University, the project 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), and 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. 

The project partners will develop and offer generic and discipline-specific open science courses for Masters students and PhD candidates in the partner universities. 

In addition, the project partners will create an online open peer review platform for academic conferences and build an international virtual community of peer reviewers. The open peer review platform will provide hands-on learning opportunities for early career researchers, helping to build new skills under the collective mentorship of international experts.

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