The Progress of Open Access in Croatia

Promotion of open access in Croatia started early, encouraged by the Budapest Open Access Initiative in 2002. Most activities were organized by librarians, information professionals and a small number of interested scientists. The Working group on open access (OA) within the Croatian Information Association was founded and that was an important moment for OA advocacy. The first projects leading to the realization of OA soon appeared: in 2006, the first institutional repositories were established, and Hrčak, the central portal of Croatian scientific journals was founded. To date, an increasing number of individuals and institutions are collaborating to promote OA (e.g. the Croatian Declaration on Open Access), as well as to build an infrastructure for its realization. The best example is the cooperation of many academic institutions in building Dabar – the network of digital academic archives and repositories. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the course of promotion and realization of OA in Croatia and to compare it to the European and global context