The conference Open Science Days IV was held on 3-4 November 2022, at the Science Technology Park Belgrade, Serbia, as an in-person event. It was organized by the NI4OS-Europe team at the University of Belgrade and supported by the NI4OS-Europe and EOSC Future projects.
The aim of this two-day conference was to inform the local stakeholders and especially the research community about the status of Open Science development in Serbia and current international activities in this domain.
The NI4OS-Europe dissemination event occupied the second day of the conference. Along with the local NI4OS-Europe team members, colleagues from Greece (Dr. Ognjen Prnjat, Eleni Toli), North Macedonia (Prof. Sonja Filiposka, Prof. Anastas Mishev, Prof. Vladimir Trajkovikj), Cyprus (Dr. Andreas Athenodorou), Albania (Dr. Arjan Xhelaj) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (Dr. Mihajlo Savić) had a prominent role as presenters throughout the conference.
The first day’s sessions focused on international projects and initiatives (Open Research Europe), especially those involving local institutions (WBC-RRI.net, Circle U. European University Alliance, OpenAIRE, EOSC Future, NI4OS-Europe, Skills4EOSC, Regional Cooperation Council), and recent open science-related developments in Serbia (RDM, free software and open hardware, community building, discipline-specific efforts and open access textbooks), highlighting the key role of European projects and informal local bottom-up initiatives for the adoption of Open Science in Serbia. A whole session was dedicated to Open Science challenges in the Western Balkans. The session dedicated to training for Open Science and the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), which also included a panel, covered the international training offer (e.g. EIFL’s programmes, OpenAIRE’s Open Plato, EOSC training and Southeast Europe and Western Balkans through NI4OS-Europe, EOSC Future and Skill4EOSC) available to various Open Science stakeholders in Serbia and presented an example of a local informal training initiative.
The second day’s sessions were fully focused on NI4OS-Europe. The first session offered an overview of the project results (National Open Science Cloud Initiatives, the regional catalogue of services, the NI4OS training platform and the regional network of EOSC promoters) and a brief presentation of the latest update of the EOSC Portal. The second session was dedicated to the tools and services developed in NI4OS-Europe to support Open Science practices and the integration of services in the region into the EOSC Catalogue & Marketplace. The results of the NI4OS-Europe Open Call were also presented.
The event gathered an audience of more than 120 people (more than 60 during the second day). The event feedback reveals a growing interest in Open Science topics. The need for more dissemination and training events in the local language was particularly highlighted.
The conference programme and presentations are available on Serbia’s National Open Science Portal.