Vision and Policy

The primary focus of the ECA’S RESEARCH POLICY PLAN (2021-2027) lies upon:

1) improving the environment in which researchers work. We stimulate the concept of Shared Ownership which has been developed during 30 years at ECA – a healthy, dynamic environment, populated by stimulating colleagues is not only essential for qualitive productivity, creativity and integrity of researchers, but is also a major factor that determines their job satisfaction and their overall well-being.

2) Open Science for ECA means an approach to the scientific process that includes early and open sharing of applied research, open access to and responsible management of results reproducibility measures and involving citizens and end user in research and innovation.

This premise leads to SIX STRATEGIC GOALS:

1. To stimulate working as a team. Strong together at ECA. Research progress does not resolve form the work of single individual, but requires the efforts of multiple researchers each of who contribute towards the whole. Addressing scientific problems of the applied research together makes sense based on the way of working in contemporary research manner, and leads to more innovative and high quality research, and has positive side effects. Trust and collaboration always drive passion and enthusiasm to flourish which is the key driver of excellence.
2. To facilitate and consolidate accrual of knowledge by means of outstanding data management; data are the "new gold".
3. To ensure friendly administrative processes; pragmatism and clear mind first.
4. The continued ongoing professionalization of the research support and research policy; team research at ECA.
5. To disseminate results effectively, standing strong together within our region for social innovative development based on interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity.
6. Financial stimulation for more effective performance in research is undertaken by ECA, and is connected with other actors, such as financial donors, who are interested in strategic development of ECA. We include also churches and European Commission’s organizations as well active role of the International Support Council to assist the research perspective at ECA.

Open Science

Discover how Open Science is implanted at ECA in a pragmatic, non-dogmatic way with respect for the diversity of research practices.

Open Science aims to make scientific research freely available to other scholars and society. It makes the whole research process more transparent.

Nowadays Open Science is debated topic and it has many issues. We insist on the collaborative and collective nature of research process. Every researcher is building upon previous research results to produce new knowledge. It also implies that research results have to be available to different stakeholders and to society as a whole. In this sense, Open Science is a core preoccupation of ECA as a truly international Academy, leveraging the opportunities of digital transformation, fosters interdisciplinarity and wishes to contribute to the public debate. As a Academy of applied sciences, our role is to participate in the knowledge economy and to promote general welfare.

Our Open Science Vision

ECA embraces Open Science as the new normal.

1. ECA is committed to play a role in international academic Open Science community;
2. ECA wishes to safeguard the independence of academic institution. This implies critical assessment with attention to transparency; to create awareness that the quality is first. Contribute to sustainable publishing system and take precautions against the risk of lock-in created by the major digital players and digital publishers.
3. ECA applies the principle of the European Commission: to be as open as possible, be as close as necessary. We support open sharing of ideas in order to foster innovation and bring researcher’s ideas closer to social work practice. We respect intellectual property rights. The principle about greater efficiency and productivity, more transparency and better response to interdisciplinary research needs – this principle has to be applied with respect for differences between disciplines and their commonly used channels for scholarly communication.

Open Science task force

To achieve its strategic Open Science ambition ECA has also commissioned an Open Science Task Force. Its mission is to coordinate the openness efforts and to disseminate Open Science results. The Task Force also intends to be a platform to share ideas, insights and experience.

As such, the Open Science Task Force is a form for dialogue and discussion with researchers and innovation ideas sharing place. We invite to become a member of the Open Science Task Force forum or Byzantine Cabinet for dialogue with discussion with researchers involving students of the Master study programs.

Members:
Assist. prof. Guntis Dišlers (chair), assist. prof. Dace Dolace (co-chair), Dr. George van Durtanossky, pr., dr. Alexander Shabelnik, dr. Efrosinya Sedova, Anete Gricaičuka, Anete Ankmane.

Three working groups are operating under the Open Science Task Force:

1. Byzantine Cabinet,
2. Translation of ancient texts,
3. Roadmap to foster changes in the social work profession.

Responsible Research and Innovation

Open Science glossary

Aggregator - an “aggregator” is a website or computer software that collects the metadata from several data providers and makes them accessible.

Archiving - in the Open Access “archiving” (or “self)archiving” is a collection of scientific and technical information in a digital repository. The archived information is available in Open Access. Also known as: depositing.

Article processing charges (APCs) - “Author pays” is the publishing model whereby the author, the author’s institute, or the research-funding agency, pays a fee (the “APC”) to the publisher to place the publication in immediate and complete Open Access. This is opposed to the user pays model, which is applied in traditional scientific publishing.

Citation - Many, if not all, scientific publications are based on previous work. The publications that have been used to write a paper are generally compiled in a reference list at the end of the publication. References to other publications are called “citations”. A citation is used to measure the impact of an article (the more an article is cited, the higher its impact), and the sum of all citations is used to calculate impact factors. A debate is going on about the impact of Open Access articles and about whether these are cited more than toll access articles.

Copyright - “Copyright” is the set of exclusive rights granted to the author of an original published work, including reproduction rights, distribution rights, adaptation rights. This is similar to authors’ rights. Copyright is often confused with or reduced to “the right to take a copy”, whereas the latter is only one small part of copyright. The copyrights can be licensed, transferred and/or assigned, depending on the agreement between author and publisher.

Data provider - In the context of interoperability of different databases, the “data provider” links to one or several OAI repositories and distributes them to a service provider

Depositing - a document deposit is the act of publishing a text online in a repository. Also known as: (self)archiving.

Impact factor - The “impact factor” is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to articles published in science and social science journals. It is frequently used to indicate the relative importance of a journal within its field. The Impact factor (IF) was developed by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI).

Open Access publishing - Open Access journals provide immediate Open Access to the articles published in them (often referred to as Gold Open Access). There is a large variety in business models and publishing methods.

Open Educational Resources (OER) - freely accessible, usually openly licensed documents and media that are useful for teaching, learning, educational, assessment and research purposes. Although some people consider the use of an open format to be an essential characteristic of OER, this is not a universally acknowledged requirement.

Overlay journal - electronic journal that is basically a compilation of existing papers, archived in repositories.

Peer review - process of evaluation of an article – before publication - by a reading committee. Members of this committee are experts in the discipline of the described topic. The purpose of the review is to guarantee excellent scientific quality for the final published paper. While double-blind pre-publication peer review is the most common standard for reviewing, recently journals have been experimenting with other forms such as post-publication peer reveiw or non-anonymous peer review.

Platinum Open Access - Platinum open access is a model of scholarly publishing that does not charge author fees. The costs associated with scholarly publication are covered through other means, such as volunteer work, donations, subsidies, grants, etc.

Pre-print - A preprint is a version of the article before peer review. Several preprint versions of one publication may exist. Some publishers allow the preprint version to be put in Open Access.

Repository: a repository is a digital archive that is used to collect and preserve information, such as publications and data. A lot of repositories make use of the OAI-PMH protocol, allowing easy harvesting and interoperability.

1. An Institutional repository collects the research output of scientific institutions and depositing is only possible for researchers affiliated with the institution
2. Subject repositories (or: disciplinary repository) collect the research output of one or several scientific fields
3. Data repositories are specialized in collecting and preserving data. Most are subject-based, although some of them collect data from all research areas. They can be found through sites like databib.org and re3data.org