The RDA BG Node was established by the end of 2019 at Sofia University, Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics to act as a long-term central contact point between the Research Data Alliance and data practitioners, funding organizations, research agencies and other relevant stakeholders in Bulgaria.
The Data Management workshop brought together researchers from Sofia University, the University of Barcelona, the Institute of Information and Communication Technologies (IICT), the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics (IMI) – Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, the software company Ontotext with program officers from the Science department of the Ministry of Education and Science (MES), and the National Centre for Information and Documentation (NACID).
Mrs. Karina Angelieva, Deputy Minister of Education and Science, opened the workshop with a speech on the national policy on open science. She pointed that the initial policies were aimed at requiring an open dissemination of the research results achieved from publicly funded research. However, now the scope of the policies has grown and we may find national policies fostering Open Science practices at any point of the research level.
Prof. Stefanov, the coordinator of the National science program on ICT in science, education and security, explained the liaison between RDA BG Node activities and the program’s goals. Possibilities of BG researchers to take part in RDA working groups were presented by Prof. Maria Nisheva, coordinator of the RDA BG Node, and vice-dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics (FMI) of Sofia University. Associate Professor Dimiter Vassilev, FMI, a member of RDA working group on Wheat Data Interoperability, talked about A Model of Wheat Data Integration. The interactions between RDA-Europe and the European Open Science Cloud were described by Prof. Ana Proykova, coordinator of the RDA BG Node, a member of the ESFRI-EOSC Task force group, Chair of the ESFRI strategic working group on data, computing, and digital infrastructures.
Prof. Todor Gurov, IICT – BAS, presented the National Initiatives for Open Science project (NI4OS), funded by Horison2020 – EOSC program and the possible activities with the RDA BG Node.
Ms Hristiyania Ancheva presented the Bulgarian portal for open science – a newly established platform funded by MES. Prof. Peter Stanchev, IMI – BAS, talked about the possible future activities of RDA BG Node and OpenAire-Bulgaria.
Dr. Oleg Konstantinov provided the link to the movie RDA BG Node in action which he composed of interviews given to him by RDA BG node members: Prof. Ana Proykova, Prof. Maria Nisheva, Prof. Kiril Simov and Dr. Dimiter Iliev, Coordinators of ClaDa-BG, Prof. Krassen Stefanov, Ms. Vanya Grashkina, Executive Director of NACID, Assoc. Prof. Eliza Stefanova, Vice-Rector, Sofia University, Ms. Karina Angelieva, Deputy Minister, MES.