Is Knowledge Exchange the Silver Bullet for Fostering Open and Responsible Research and Innovation? A Case Study on Bulgaria

Abstract

Bulgaria is one of the European countries with a very uneven Open and Responsible Research and Innovation (ORRI) landscape. On one hand, in terms of legal framework, the latest national law on scientific research from May 2024[1] places open research at the core of the scientific enquiry. It is supported by the Implementation Plan for the National Strategy for the Development of Scientific Research 2017–2030.

However, the national and institutional ORRI infrastructures in the country are not fully developed. There are only 11 institutional repositories from Bulgaria listed in the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR). With 52 Universities and 42 academic institutes only within the Academy of Sciences, this evidence shows that the majority of institutions do not have visible digital repositories. Paradoxically, the major national repository BPOS (Bulgarian Portal for Open Science) is not listed in ROAR. In January 2025, 73,759 open-access (OA) publications were deposited in BPOS. There are 4292 registered users of this platform, while there are some 14,000 researchers in Bulgaria.[2] There is no information on any repositories in Bulgaria that support the deposit of research data, methodologies, or reuse tools, such as Jupyter Notebooks. These data demonstrate that the majority of Bulgarian researchers are not users of the national OA infrastructure, and the datasets deposit is still underdeveloped.

Furthermore, a recent study among researchers in Bulgaria found that only about one-third of recently surveyed academics are familiar with the EU's OA goals.[3] The authors’ primary is to offer more OA training to researchers. In line with this recommendation, we present an ongoing project which contributes to capacity building with a particular focus on early-stage and experienced researchers.

This paper analyses the quadruple helix of ORRI in Bulgaria, exploring the role of government, academia, businesses and citizens. It draws from the experiences of the ORBIT[4] (Open Research Bulgarian Incubator) project funded by a cascading grant of the REINFORCING (https://openresearch.bg/). The University of Strathclyde in Glasgow contributed to the design and delivery of the knowledge exchange (KE) programme implemented by ORBIT.

This effort started with a co-creation phase involving local stakeholders (academics, citizens & businesses, and research managers & policy makers). This informed the design of workshops for experienced researchers and a Knowledge Exchange (KE) programme for PhD students. While stand-alone training programmes have a positive role in raising awareness, it is common that participants often lack sufficient support to implement what they have learned in real life. To provide additional support to the participants, ORBIT designed its own pedagogical approach which combines a stage of active knowledge acquisition (an intensive winter school), a stage for experimenting with a specific ORRI instrument with the support of a mentor (a mentorship programme), and an opportunity to present this experience to the wider community (dissemination during a final conference).

To measure the progress of participants, ORBIT also developed a self-assessment tool that captures researchers’ ORRI knowledge and skills. While various institutional self-assessment tools exist, the individual one is an innovative outcome and will help to measure the impact of ORRI KE.

Collaboration in designing training programmes helps to offer new programmes addressing specific needs. There are two major takeaways from the work of ORBIT. First, aligning knowledge exchange activities to specific local challenges and addressing the capabilities of the local researchers is a necessary preparatory step to offer a programme fine-tuned to the local needs. However, it is not always trivial, as for many countries, there is insufficient information on the local attitudes and needs in the domain of open research. To fill this gap, ORBIT organised a series of focus groups with different stakeholders. Second, for countries where researchers are not incentivised to contribute to open research through the existing research assessment processes, it remains vital to offer training that reinforces the skills and the usefulness of their efforts. This is why ORBIT opted for a mentoring programme. The future will show if this was a productive way forward.

I would like to conclude with a personal note of thanks to the organisers of the Edinburgh Open Research Conference. When I attended the conference in 2024, I was impressed by the diversity of institutional approaches to open research. This was a great personal inspiration for me in contributing to the design of the ORBIT activities. Seeing how many institutions offer different flavours and combinations of activities was really helpful and I think we will arrive at a deeper analysis on the usefulness of the various intervention as a community in the future. Beyond the number of attendees onsite and online and those who would check the digital presence, the Edinburgh Open Research series of conferences leads to a wider international impact in improving the open research practices. In this particular case it led to activities which directly impacted over 150 researchers and other stakeholders in Bulgaria, the first case studies of best practices from the country, and inspired the first national award.

[1] Law on the promotion of scientific research and innovation. Published in the State Gazette, No. 39, May 1, 2024 (in Bulgarian). https://lex.bg/bg/laws/ldoc/2137242579

[2] Deloitte (2013) Researchers’ Report 2013. Country Profile: Bulgaria. https://www.euraxess.lt/sites/default/files/policy_library/bulgaria_country_profile_rr2013_final.pdf

[3] Boock, M. et al. (2020), "Bulgarian authors’ open access awareness and preferences", Library Management, Vol. 41 No. 2/3, pp. 91-102. https://doi.org/10.1108/LM-08-2019-0059.

[4] ORBIT: “Open Research Bulgarian IncubaTor” is financed by REINFORCING Project funded by the EU (REINFORCING-I1_4).