Introduction

Malta researchers publish articles in international OA periodicals.The University of Malta (UM) was established in 1769 and is Malta's highest teaching and research institution. It is a publicly funded institution that serves 11,000 students, including over 1,000 foreign students from 92 countries, and employs over 1,000 academics and 800 technical and administrative personnel. The UM is divided into 14 faculties as well as a host of interdisciplinary institutes, centres, and schools. The UM aims to develop studies and research programmes that are important and timely in response to the country's needs. There is no journal in DOAJ from Malta.

Most journals which are published locally are being converted to Open Access. These include: Malta Medical Journal - Journal of the University of Malta, and Xjenza - Journal of the Malta Chamber of Scientists.

The Mediterranean Journal of Educational Studies (MJES) published by Euro-Mediterranean Centre for Educational Research, University of Malta has been produced in hard copy format since 1996, with 24 issues being published at that point. In 2008, a decision was made by the editorial board to join the Open Access publishing movement and to make the MJES available free of charge online.

Currently, there is one OA mandate registered in ROARMAP.

In 2014, University of Malta Library launched its institutional repository. OAR@UoM is integrated with the UoM Library's portal HyDi and accessible via the Library website.

Enabling Environment

Malta has only one University: University of Malta. Research in Malta has increased considerably in the past few years as a result of the setting up of a national research funding scheme. At a national level, research is funded primarily though grants offered by the Malta Council for Science of Technology (MCST), Malta Enterprise, and government programs aimed at supporting PhD students, and through EU by providing considerable research funding. In January 2017, the UM Library established an Open Science Department whose remit is to support the dissemination of the intellectual output, research and data produced by the UM. The department is fully committed to promote Open Science and to support with the processing and uploading of research output on the IR – OAR@UM.

National and Institutional Level Policies/Mandates

The Malta Council for Science & Technology (MCST) has secured the support of the Commission's Policy Support Facility (funded through Horizon 2020) to draft a National Open Science Policy. Following the kick off meeting that was held in Brussels in July 2019, two (2) country visits (in Malta) of the panel of experts were held in October 2019 and December 2019. The implementation of the policy is planned to take place in the last quarter of 2020.

The University of Malta (UM) adopted an Open Access Policy which was approved by Senate on 20th September, 2017. The aim of this policy is to support UM researchers in providing Open Access to their peer-reviewed research publications through deposit in the UM’s Institutional Repository, OAR@UM.

Potential Barriers

Research in Malta is not coordinated centrally, which does not to keep records for all researchers' activities. There is a low awareness on Open Access within the research community although researchers in particular disciplines as physics are more aware of it than others.

Key Organizations

University of Malta, is publishing in BioMed Central, and join OA publishing community by MJES.

Communication address: Msida MSD 2080, Malta, Tel.: (+356) 23402340, Fax: (+356) 23402342.

MCST - Malta Council for Science and Technology- a national advisory body to Government on science and technology policy as well as the national contact organization for the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).

Communication address: Villa Bighi, Kalkara KKR1320, Malta, Tel.: (+356) 21 660340, Fax: (+356) 21660341.

Mediterranean Journal of Educational Studies, Professor Ronald G. Sultana, Founding Editor and Editor in Chief, EMCER. Communication address: University of Malta, Msida MSD 2080, Malta, Tel.: +356 2340 2936, Fax: +356 21 338126.

Events and Programs

●     11 February 2021, Open Science: The Future of Scholarly Communication

●     09 February 2018, Open Access in Practice: Dissemination, Visibility, Usage & Impact of Scholarly Research

●     Open Access Week - Half-day Seminar, 2015-10-20, Malta, Organized by University of Malta Library, Type: seminar, talks, presentations, workshop

●     1-3 September, 2015: "The 19th International Conference on Electronic Publishing", scheduled to be held in Malta. The International Conference on Electronic Publishing (Elpub) approaches its 20th anniversary. Elpub 2015 is the 19th edition of the conference and it will continue the tradition, bringing together academics, publishers, lecturers, librarians, developers, entrepreneurs, users and all other stakeholders interested in issues regarding electronic publishing in widely differing contexts. Elpub 2015 will particularly focus on the interplay of two dimensions of the electronic publishing – the ever growing volume of digital collections, and the improved understanding of the widest user group, the one of the citizens.

●     May 2015: University of Malta (MT), “Open Access and its Impact on Research and Scholarship”. This was a FOSTER training event.

●     Various workshops and other activities for the University of Malta's Library that celebrates Open Access Week yearly.

Publications

●     Cuschieri, S. 2018. “WASP: Is Open Access Publishing the Way Forward? A Review of the Different Ways in Which Research Papers Can Be Published.” Early Human Development 121:54–57. doi: 10.1016/j.earlhumdev.2018.02.017.

●     Cuschieri, S., and V. Grech. 2018. “WASP (Write a Scientific Paper): Open Access Unsolicited Emails for Scholarly Work – Young and Senior Researchers Perspectives.” Early Human Development 122:64–66. doi: 10.1016/j.earlhumdev.2018.04.006.

●     Ryan Scicluna. Open access and academic research. 2015.

●     Ryan Scicluna. Open Access and Dissemination of Research. 2016.