Open Access in Estonia

Abstract

Estonia has been developing its Open Access policy quite recently. Estonia does not have a national-level official position on Open Access yet, but during the last years there has been a clear change regarding access to and dissemination of scientific information and in the principles for giving out research grants. Since 2009 one of the main supporters of Open Access initiative in Estonia has been The University of Tartu Library (UTL).  The library has developed and introduced different possibilities for open access publishing services, offered at the University of Tartu and also hosted several international conferences, focusing on topics concerning open access to research results and open data. To support the OA movement in Estonia, UTL participates in the European Commission (EC) funded OpenAIRE and OpenAIREplus projects.  In the beginning of 2014, the University of Tartu joined the DataCite organisation, becoming the only organisation in Estonia with the right to assign unique DOI numbers to single objects and data collections.