Education quality progress in Ukrainian HEIs is limited by lack of a strong academic integrity culture, which is required for sustainable positive change. Growing such a culture is a complex time consuming task, however we believe it can be effectively approached with appropriate processes and instruments. Academic integrity is based on openness and transparency principles, i.e. acting visibly, understandably and predictably promoting participation and accountability. At the same time Open Science, an international movement aimed at supporting better quality science, is based on the same values and is offering a variety of approaches and mechanisms able to grow change. That is why we trust that adopting and promoting Open Science practices and transparency will lead to academic integrity improvement and, in turn, rise of education quality in the target HEIs. The OS roadmap is diverse. However, introducing Open Peer Review (OPR) has the biggest potential in Ukraine as it brings transparency to the already familiar practice of academic evaluation and provides hands-on learning opportunities for early career researchers (ECRs), helping to build new skills under collective mentorship of international experts. Hence, we plan to develop and implement an online OPR platform for academic conferences (as they provide additional face-to-face promotion opportunities, journals don’t) and build an international virtual community of peer reviewers and researchers on the base of it. Combined with general and subject-specific OS subjects to be introduced in the partner HEIs for Master students and PhD candidates as well as open online course for everyone, our OPR service is intended to give our target universities (and Ukrainian HE system in general) a much needed impetus for change towards openness and integrity. Hence, we consider open practices as a QA process and its technological backbone (the OPR platform and virtual community of experts-reviewers) as a QA mechanism.

The FOSTER+ project will focus on promoting the practical implementation of Open Science, with activities targeting academic staff, young scientists and policy-makers in particular. Building on the existing FOSTER portal and training materials, FOSTER+ will develop more advanced-level and discipline-specific materials that build capacity for the practical adoption of Open Science and promote a change in culture. Disciplinary partners in the life sciences, social sciences and humanities will tailor training content to the practices of each domain. Over 50 training events will be delivered, reaching over 4,500 participants. Workshops will be outcome-oriented, providing participants with tangible skills, such as selecting relevant repositories, understanding how to license research data, and negotiating EU data protection laws. FOSTER+ will develop a multi-module Open Science Toolkit, covering key topics such as responsible research and innovation, research data management, software carpentry, text and data mining, reproducible research and open peer review. E-learning courses will be delivered for each module via the Learning Management System and materials will be made available to support face-to-face training delivery. The Open Science Trainer Bootcamp will convene a cohort of trainers with high multiplier potential and equip them to deliver courses within their institution/disciplines. The Bootcamp will be open to both researchers and intermediaries who provide the research environment and infrastructure to support open science. Gamification tools will incentivise the trainer network to add new content to the portal and run more innovative events. Enhancements to content maps and learning structures will enable individualised learning pathways to be recommended to users, and digital badges will be assigned to reward completion. All of the training content will be openly licensed and e-learning materials will be provided in open standards for reuse elsewhere.

The objective of ALMASI is to provide the research community with an aligned, nonprofit, high-quality, and sustainable scholarly communication ecosystem across three world regions: Africa, Europe, and Latin America. This will enable scholarly communities to take full responsibility for innovative, valid, reliable and accessible publishing services and solutions that do not charge fees to readers or authors, commonly known as Diamond Open Access. This aligned nonprofit publishing ecosystem will take into account specific needs across the diversity of disciplines, global regions, and languages. The project will achieve this goal by concentrating on measures that will harmonise and strengthen existing nonprofit publishing services and solutions. ALMASI will establish a framework for knowledge transfer, coordination, and alignment of non-technological publishing skills, services, and solutions. The project will focus on (1) mapping nonprofit publishing services and solutions across the 3 regions; (2) aligned quality support instruments for publishing services; (3) shared training materials and curricula for publishing services, journal editors, and publishing staff; and (4) long-term financial sustainability and OS policies for scholarly publishing. The project will be carried out in the context of the nascent Global Diamond Federation, which is supported by UNESCO.