In 2011-2013 EIFL provided financial support to 34 projects that implemented national and institutional open access (OA) advocacy campaigns to reach out to research communities and OA publishing initiatives.

Through small grants and support from their own institutions, the projects engaged in a wide variety of campaigns and activities, including: holding workshops, creating websites, building institutional OA repositories, creating e-learning courses, and implementing OA publishing platforms.

The case studies resulting from the projects reveal impressive first-time achievements and will help increase the availability of research literature in developing and transition countries.

Learn more about the key achievements for this national OA campaign in Poland below. You can access the full case study (strategies, tactics and tools, success stories and lessons learnt) by clicking on the download button.

About the project in Poland

In 2011, Nicolaus Copernicus University and Akademia Gorniczo-Hutnicza University of Science and Technology implemented EIFL-funded project: “OA e-learning course for Polish scientific community” (acronym: OAeL).

The course is the first of its kind in Poland designed as a fully open course which provides Polish students, researchers and librarians with high quality materials for self-learning and re-use. We hope that it will lead the way for more open science projects and programmes in the future.

The project was carried out by open science supporters: librarians, researchers and educators who are early adopters of innovation and who were already engaged in Open Access. It was crucial for effective collaboration to choose a group of practitioners who believes that transparency in science leads to development and innovation.

Key achievements:

• An e-learning course “Open Access – Open Science” with nine modules was developed and launched during OA week 2011; over 500 users visited the course page.
• The course platform is very flexible, allowing for easy expansion of existing content and the addition of new content.
• The course was announced broadly through national portals and sites.
• Silesian University of Technology will launch the course for their students in the next academic year at their Moodle LMS.
• Of the feedback that has been received so far, 15 people asked about the course certificates; and 10 people (mainly librarians) reported that they found the course useful.
• The project resulted in the creation of a successful partnership between Nicolaus Copernicus University and Akademia Gorniczo-Hutnicza (AGH) University of Science and Technology.