Open Practices, Transparency and Integrity for Modern Academia Erasmus Project

Project Title

Open Practices, Transparency and Integrity for Modern Academia

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Capacity Building in higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics:

Project Summary

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.

Project Website

https://lpnu.ua/en/optima

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 938664 Eur

Project Coordinator

LVIV POLYTECHNIC NATIONAL UNIVERSITY & Country: UA

Project Partners

• LUTSK NATIONAL TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY
• EURODOC-LE CONSEIL EUROPEEN DES DOCTORANTS ET JEUNES DOCTEURS
• POLITECHNIKA WROCLAWSKA
• UNIVERSITE COTE D’AZUR
• NATIONAL AGENCY FOR HIGHER EDUCATION QUALITY ASSURANCE
• NATIONAL ANTARCTIC SCIENTIFIC CENTER
• STICHTING EIFL.NET