Open Access in Greece: current trends and developments

Abstract

Within this paper we attempt to give a comprehensive presentation about OA in Greece. We are going through a detailed analysis of current status in OA publishing as well as through a presentation of all related initiatives. Although the majority of the research output of Greek researchers is being published in international journals, the last five years there has been a significant increase in e-publishing activity, along with OA, in Greek scientific journals. This increase followed up the fast development and success of Institutional Repositories in most of Greek academic institutions. According to 2009 Report on Scholarly Publishing & Open Access in Greece 20 out of the 33 academic institutions in Greece operate an OA Institutional Repository, 29 exclusively e-journals titles are being published (most of them OA), while another 47 tiles are being published in both print and electronic format (with complete or partial OA to their e-version) and 42 digital journal archives are being operated mostly under an OA status. Further more we discuss the role of Academic Institutions in OA publishing, in particular the role and OA initiatives of the University of Patras, and current trends and future challenges in OA in a national and regional level.