Open Access Strategy and the Role of Romanian Research Libraries in its Application

Open access represents an important trend in research libraries' sector. Scholarly journals and books are at the heart of research and science, and, therefore, it is very important for Romanian research libraries to understand the aims, scope and impact of open access. Romania is the first country where EU Framework Programme for Research, Development and Innovation Horizon 2020 was launched and this can be an extremely significant opportunity for Romanian libraries to increase their role in scientific life. Nowadays, librarians are very much implied in search of scientific open access information, in order to support knowledge production and consumption in research institutes and universities. There are a lot of international success models for open access, and this aspect is very significant for Romanian librarians, in order to properly assist researchers in their work. The most important publishers support both gold and green open access, and, in matters pertaining this latter option, libraries offer their support by paying subscriptions to journals with open archive. As an example of positive attitude regarding open access and, implicitly, open science, a series of researchers at the Institute of Mathematics of the Romanian Academy (IMAR) publish their articles in open access, and their works can be read free from EuDML (The European Digital Mathematics Library), on their personal pages which can be accessed from the web-page of IMAR, or in journals with open access policies. The article aims to present the results of a survey on opinions and approaches of IMAR's researchers regarding open access publishing. Digital preservation and data management are, also, vital for research libraries in contemporary digital age. Librarians supporting researchers in institutes and universities must also comply with the ethics principles of open access, in terms of copyright and licensing issues, and so they can better carry out their mission by supporting authors in publishing in open access their high quality results, in the context of the scientific developments in the modern world.